Thinking of upgrading a cruncher. Best @ 3930k priceline ?

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

If you go 4p Opteron the board alone will set you back over $600. Also, $400 6174s are rare......$500 each is a more realistic price. So let's see, 600+ 2000+ cost of 4 HSFs, 16 sticks of RAM. Plan on spending $3000 if you want a 4p rig with 6174s. A more cost effective approach would be to buy 4 6128s for a total of $500 and the board for $600 plus HSFs and RAM. Could probably do that for around $1400 and get 300-350K PPD if you OC the CPUs on a Supermicro board. That would be pretty efficient PPD/Watt.

:hmm:

Stop giving me ideas...

:awe:

You can get 6174s cheap on eBay... actually, now that I checked, they went up in price LOL. They were in the $400 range before; now they're $500 or more. So you're right.

Since the OP is now mentioning this will also be for daily tasks too then the 3930K is a much better choice because of the much higher single-threaded performance, but DDR3-1600 is a smarter choice than 1866.

I don't want to derail the thread. If you can, check your PMs because I've seen some people mention the Supermicro boards, too, because of OCing potential.

 

[blckgrffn]

FWIW, he did make it clear this guy needed to be able to play games.

What I am a little bewildered by is the Windows XP. Mark, PM me if you need a legit license for something modern for some reason. All of your boxes are leaving huge ppd on the table running F@H 32 bit.

Run 64bit Windows and a 64bit Linux guest.

I will send you a NFR, unused copy of xp 64 if it comes to that! We want your ppd :awe:

 

[Markfw]

As for the ram, its $10 more for 1833 vs 1600. Seemed like a good expenditure.

As for the memory, yes, it only sees 3 gig for the vm box. Crap.

 

[Markfw]

FWIW, he did make it clear this guy needed to be able to play games.

What I am a little bewildered by is the Windows XP. Mark, PM me if you need a legit license for something modern for some reason. All of your boxes are leaving huge ppd on the table running F@H 32 bit.

Run 64bit Windows and a 64bit Linux guest.

I will send you a NFR, unused copy of xp 64 if it comes to that! We want your ppd :awe:

Can you "upgrade" to xp 64 ? I don't want to have to re-install over 100 games and software.

I have a legit win7 64 professional dual boot, just all sorts of problems with it, first re-installing all of that software, and when I run F@H, the text in my command windows doesn't even show up in the log file ! WTF ???

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

As for the ram, its $10 more for 1833 vs 1600. Seemed like a good expenditure.

As for the memory, yes, it only sees 3 gig for the vm box. Crap.

Those $10 could go towards a better cooler, no? SB-E sucks a good amount of power when heavily OCed. And there's no benefit to 1866 because you already have huge bandwidth at your disposal due to quad-channel.

But go with the 3930K definitely.

 

[Markfw]

Those $10 could go towards a better cooler, no? SB-E sucks a good amount of power when heavily OCed. And there's no benefit to 1866 because you already have huge bandwidth at your disposal due to quad-channel.

But go with the 3930K definitely.

Megahalem not good ? I also have 2 true 120's just sitting around, but the megahalem should be better.

 

[blckgrffn]

Megahalem not good ? I also have 2 true 120's just sitting around, but the megahalem should be better.

Haha, yeah, I would say that would be pretty darn good!

Returned your PM...

I see why you are running XP still in that case - I have gotten so used to tearing down builds and putting them back I don't even flinch.

Have you heard of ninite.com? It really helps accelerate a build by prepackaging a ton of third party applications, and between that and steam installing my games (and video drivers on AMD platforms) I've found that the "longest" task in a PC rebuild is getting all of the Windows Updates applied

*grumble grumble .net framework grumble grumble*

 

[Markfw]

Problem is, I have a lot of dinosaur games, like red alert (original) Dune 2000 etc...

But we will take this one thing at a time. Maybe build the new box from scratch using XP64 , and work on re-installing games over the next few years...

 

[blckgrffn]

Problem is, I have a lot of dinosaur games, like red alert (original) Dune 2000 etc...

But we will take this one thing at a time. Maybe build the new box from scratch using XP64 , and work on re-installing games over the next few years...

Dune 2000! I played the crap out of that game online. Man, good times. I mean, compared to "modern" RTS that is pretty archaic (build queues! no way!) but I could at least hold my own there.

Once I "graduated" from Bronze to Silver in SC2 I freaking couldn't hack it anymore. Too stressful...

Anyway, happy to help out!

http://slickdeals.net/f/4045574-EVG...9-with-free-shipping?token=AAIDAwAAAAAFOz27Bg

A couple of those would also be good for another ~40k ppd. Just get that 1k PSU you've been dreaming of

I think the 560Ti 448 core (cut down 570) would likely be a better bet when it comes to power consumption though, and either better or very competitive. I think the GTX 480 only has 448 shaders as well.

In response to your question about the 560 ti (and the ti 448 and 570):

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...a-geforce-gtx-560-ti-448-cores-review-11.html

 

[Markfw]

Well, I pulled the trigger on 3930k + 24 gig of 1833 + Asrock Extreme7. I have the kit for the megahalem coming, and an AX1200 Corsair PSU and a 1.5 tb hard drive. It will just have a GTS 250 video card until I get everything reinstalled and copied over.

 

[blckgrffn]

Well, I pulled the trigger on 3930k + 24 gig of 1833 + Asrock Extreme7. I have the kit for the megahalem coming, and an AX1200 Corsair PSU and a 1.5 tb hard drive. It will just have a GTS 250 video card until I get everything reinstalled and copied over.

EPIC.

LoL @ GTS 250, that's the strongest dedicated cruncher I have

 

[theAnimal]

You never clarified or mentioned this in the OP.

If that's the case, go for the 3930K now and get cheaper RAM because 1866MHz will do nothing for you either in normal programs or folding@home.

RAM speed and latency does make a difference in F@H, not a huge difference of course.

 

[blckgrffn]

RAM speed and latency does make a difference in F@H, not a huge difference of course.

Right. Even 1% of the course of the year can be useful, though. And that seems like it should be easy to realize...

I know that on some of the server boards, it is really important to hunt for DDR3 with tight timings. I remember reading over on the folding forum someone running a 2-Way Opteron was seeing a 2-4% increase in ppd just by getting ram at CAS7 vs 9. Again, when you put ~$1200 into a folding rig and pay ~$200 a year to run it, every extra bit helps.

 

[ZipSpeed]

Nice Mark! Will be a great addition to the TeAm.

I just made an offer on eBay for a couple Opteron 6128 for $100 a piece. Waiting to hear back on whether the seller will bite.

 

[blckgrffn]

Nice Mark! Will be a great addition to the TeAm.

I just made an offer on eBay for a couple Opteron 6128 for $100 a piece. Waiting to hear back on whether the seller will bite.

Interesting That's a lot threads on the cheap and a big enough price difference to justify the power usage for quite some time - especially comparing them to GPUs.

 

[ZipSpeed]

The seller accepted. 16 threads for $200. Now to find the rest of the parts for cheap.

 

[blckgrffn]

The seller accepted. 16 threads for $200. Now to find the rest of the parts for cheap.

GL. If you succeed, I may follow...

Nat

 

[Sunny129]

The seller accepted. 16 threads for $200. Now to find the rest of the parts for cheap.

...and thus the adventure begins

 

[ZipSpeed]

Nothing on eBay that caught my eye for the motherboard. I'm looking at the Asus KGPE-D16 and the sellers are all asking a higher price than Newegg. Any suggestions at other places I should look and ships to Canada?

 

[Diogenes2]

Well, I pulled the trigger on 3930k + 24 gig of 1833 + Asrock Extreme7. I have the kit for the megahalem coming, and an AX1200 Corsair PSU and a 1.5 tb hard drive. It will just have a GTS 250 video card until I get everything reinstalled and copied over.

24g RAM?

How many sticks of what size ?

Your best performance will be with 4 sticks in quad channel ..


You will enjoy the 3930K ..

 

[Markfw]

Virtual box will run in windows XP and I believe the VM can run a 64bit flavor of Linux. What I'm not sure about is if all the RAM will be visible to the VM since the host OS is 32bit. You need to have 4gb or so of RAM available to the VM to run -bigadv.

Well, I installed virtualbox, and yes it will only let me use 3 gig. I am going to install the 64 bit XP that Blackgriffin is sending me, install from scratch and bit the bullet and re-install everything over the years. So I will have a 24 gig box, and should be able to deliver 10-16 gig to thr vmbox then. THEN I will need help on how to set that up.

 

[somethingsketchy]

...So I will have a 24 gig box, and should be able to deliver 10-16 gig to thr vmbox then. THEN I will need help on how to set that up.

That's actually the easy part. With VirtualBox (at creation time of the Virtual Machine), you can specify how much RAM you want to use. Three mouse clicks and some keys to specify 16384MB of RAM (binary for 16GB) and how many cores/threads for the VM, and you're golden.

The difficulty part will be deciding where to store the VM

 

[DooKey]

Well, I installed virtualbox, and yes it will only let me use 3 gig. I am going to install the 64 bit XP that Blackgriffin is sending me, install from scratch and bit the bullet and re-install everything over the years. So I will have a 24 gig box, and should be able to deliver 10-16 gig to thr vmbox then. THEN I will need help on how to set that up.

I dedicate 5gb to the vm and it's more than enough. Hit this thread at [H]ardforum for setup instructions: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1037529274#post1037529274

Only thing to change is use the command -bigadv in place of -bigbeta in the instructions. Feel free to PM me for help if needed.

 

[Markfw]

Well, one of my 470's has an odd problem. It gets over 100c even at 100% fan, AND I already cleaned out the dust.

So I bought 2 560ti's for the new box.

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

You could have gotten a dual-socket G34 motherboard and 2 Opteron 6128s.