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What cruncher should I build?

petrusbroder

petrusbroder

Elite Member
I have been working quite a lot and have now some "playing money". I want a cruncher which produces the most credits in BOINC - either in MilkyWay or Collatz. I know that NVIDIA-GPUs are very good with Collatz, and that ATI-GPUs are great with MilkyWay. I also know that the budget is limited ...
So what is the best from a most-credits-in BOINC-combined - considering the price?

1. AMD Phenom II 1055 with GTX460 (complete computer for USD 715)
2. AMD Phenom II 1055 with GTX275 (complete computer for USD 735)
3. AMD Phenom II 1055 with ATI 5850 (complete computer for USD 832)
4. Intel i7 860 with GTX460 (complete computer for USD 858)
5. Intel i7 860 with GTX275 (complete computer for USD 878)
6. Intel i7 860 with ATI5859 (complete computer for USD 974)

The computer would have 4 GByte, RAM, a 1 TB HDD, a DVD-RW, a 750W PSU, a case with 3 120 mm fans and a Noctua U12P CPU-cooler/fan, all of which I already have.

I may be able to purchase 2 GPUs - but only GTX460 since I get those cards at a special introductory price. Does Collatz crunch on those cards? Is it more efficient to crunch MilkyWay or Collatz - I like both projects equally well. I know that I can crunch Seti better with NVIDIA ... the permutations are almost too many ...

I have calculated that getting the Phenom II 1090 is not as efficient - that CPU costs 30% more but adds only 14% more in crunching power; getting an it-875 costs 16% more but adds only 5% more crunching power. I also know that the i7 860 will crunch 8 WUs at the same time and the Phenom II 6 WUs - but which of those will crunch the most in 24h? The clock is the same for both: 2.8GHz. OTOH: isn't the i7 processor more overclockable?

Any ideas, thoughts or advice?
Any stats?

I need the input before sunday evening, the introductory price of the GTX460 will end Sunday night 24:00 local time.
 
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I vote for 1!

You get 6 *physical* cores and I heard the X6 are very overclockable! This means that you'll get 6 tasks at full speed (or even overclocked) while with the intel cpu you won't get 8 tasks at full speed as 4 of the 8 cores are virtual!

The GTX460 is great too and you'll profit from the cuda 3 apps which are much faster than cuda 2!
with that card you could do gpugrid, folding, collatz, milkyway, seti, dnetc, ...

(how and were did you manage to get that special price for the 460?)

EDIT: as far as I recall the gtx460 even gets special tasks at folding and gpugrid to make use of fermi's full potential
 
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I am a very solid customer at a local medium sized computer hardware store - and the owner gives that price to those who have been customers for at least 5 years and have purchased stuff for at least USD750/year ... If I get all the HW from him I may get a 5% discount on top ... the limit is two GTX460 ...
 
I almost bought a GTX460 on Newegg this morning but i convinced myself to wait until I see performance data on the project message boards. I did see one post on the F@H message board of 9000 ppd. On the gpugrid message board a couple of people have ordered them but no data yet. I suspect the GTX460 will not compete with the 5850 on collatz, milkyway or dnetc.

The 5850 and the GTX460 are my favorite choices these days when looking at low power consumption, low GPU temps and cost. Although the 5850 costs 50% more than the GTX460, you can expect well over 100K ppd on milkyway or dnetc.

If you want to crunch gpugrid, the ATI cards are not an option.

BTW, you need two 6 pin PSU connectors to power both cards. Both cards only draw about 305 watts at full load.

Dajeepster, what do you think?
 
biodoc said:
I almost bought a GTX460 on Newegg this morning but i convinced myself to wait until I see performance data on the project message boards. I did see one post on the F@H message board of 9000 ppd. On the gpugrid message board a couple of people have ordered them but no data yet. I suspect the GTX460 will not compete with the 5850 on collatz, milkyway or dnetc.

The 5850 and the GTX460 are my favorite choices these days when looking at low power consumption, low GPU temps and cost. Although the 5850 costs 50% more than the GTX460, you can expect well over 100K ppd on milkyway or dnetc.

If you want to crunch gpugrid, the ATI cards are not an option.

BTW, you need two 6 pin PSU connectors to power both cards. Both cards only draw about 305 watts at full load.

Dajeepster, what do you think?
Click to expand...

I got my 5850 on the way.. Paid $250.00 for it along with a zalman cooler off ebay. Got it from a guy that was selling his parts off for an xbox360.
 
biodoc said:
I almost bought a GTX460 on Newegg this morning but i convinced myself to wait until I see performance data on the project message boards. I did see one post on the F@H message board of 9000 ppd. On the gpugrid message board a couple of people have ordered them but no data yet. I suspect the GTX460 will not compete with the 5850 on collatz, milkyway or dnetc.

The 5850 and the GTX460 are my favorite choices these days when looking at low power consumption, low GPU temps and cost. Although the 5850 costs 50% more than the GTX460, you can expect well over 100K ppd on milkyway or dnetc.

If you want to crunch gpugrid, the ATI cards are not an option.

BTW, you need two 6 pin PSU connectors to power both cards. Both cards only draw about 305 watts at full load.

Dajeepster, what do you think?
Click to expand...

Sound good.
My only concern about the GTX460 is that you might have to wait a little while for projects to get thier code to work efficiently. Since the architecture did change a little for this gpu and that there is no ECC built into the gpu, I'm not sure if this will be an ideal card across the board for crunching yet... especially for milkyway which doesn't do a quorum of results.

if you want the highest ppd, I would go with the ATI, since you have 3 good high ppd projects... milkyway, collatze, and DNETC.

oh.. and not even the GTX480 competes with the 5850 on these projects.

the gtx460 would be good for f@h, grugrid, and seti@home.

but if you could, i would try and go for a 5870... you get about a 15kppd difference between the 5850 and 5870.

btw... i want a couple gtx460... i can add them to my slowly growing gpugrid/seti fleet.
 
MarkFW has an AMD x6 1090T which he has OC'd to 4 GHz. I believe he gets around 15,000 ppd on F@H.
 
petrusbroder said:
Thanks for all the info until now - there is time until Sunday ... 😉
Click to expand...

"I have been working quite a lot and have now some "playing money""
lucky sod!!

wish i could get some "playing money" 🙂

what's the old saying from 200 years ago?
oh yeah, buy the best number cruncher you can buy lol 😀
 
TAandy said:
"I have been working quite a lot and have now some "playing money""
lucky sod!!

wish i could get some "playing money" 🙂

what's the old saying from 200 years ago?
oh yeah, buy the best number cruncher you can buy lol 😀
Click to expand...

The playing money comes from three weeks of working 90h+/week in May/June ... Those weeks were - looking at them now - quite horrible.

Yeah, I will buy the best comp I can - but which is the one? 🙄
 
petrusbroder said:
The playing money comes from three weeks of working 90h+/week in May/June ... Those weeks were - looking at them now - quite horrible.

Yeah, I will buy the best comp I can - but which is the one? 🙄
Click to expand...

ouch!!
haven't had chance for hours like that in over a year and a half.
airplane sales just aren't going up lol
as much as i wish they were 🙂
 
Are you an airplane seller? That must be quite sensitive to the rises and falls in the economy ... What kind of airplanes (I assume not Boeing 787s ... but I could be wrong of course...)
Cheers!
/Petrus sees TAandy and himself standing at a nicely polished bar with some large ales/
 
petrusbroder said:
Are you an airplane seller? That must be quite sensitive to the rises and falls in the economy ... What kind of airplanes (I assume not Boeing 787s ... but I could be wrong of course...)
Cheers!
/Petrus sees TAandy and himself standing at a nicely polished bar with some large ales/
Click to expand...

airplane seller?
i wish lmao.
i do the menial job.
making sure the parts are ok to go to the main factory.
so that there's no problems when it comes to fitting them!!

now,
that "Petrus sees TAandy and himself standing at a nicely polished bar with some large ales"
sounds good 🙂

not boeing, or airbus.
third largest.
Bombardier.

hate what i do, but quite proud of it.
in a sad sort of way 🙂
 
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petrusbroder said:
The playing money comes from three weeks of working 90h+/week in May/June ... Those weeks were - looking at them now - quite horrible.

Yeah, I will buy the best comp I can - but which is the one? 🙄
Click to expand...

If you had worked a little harder, you could be building all six!
 
GLeeM said:
I get better than 20,000 ppd on my i7 920 @ 3.99 with the current -bigadv Windows WUs.
Click to expand...

MarkFW was running smp2 client on XP 32 with the -advmethods flag. (his post later in the thread)

I wonder if anyone has run -bigadv on the x6 AMD?
 
Here's some data from a few of the top computers on Simap. All the data is from the same batch of WUs and all rigs are running some flavor 64 bit Windows. Obviously we don't know the true clock speed of these rigs. The AMD chips are comptetitive.


HTML: 
Processor	                       Time (sec)	cores	Credit 	PPD
Intel Core i7 CPU X 980 @ 3.33GHz	3,041.77	12	21.30	7260
AMD Phenom(tm) II X6 1055T Processor	1,847.16	6	21.28	5972
AMD Phenom(tm) II X6 1090T Processor	1,869.00	6	21.21	5883
AMD Phenom(tm) II X6 1090T Processor	1,980.60	6	21.2	5549
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 860 @ 2.80GHz	2,686.56	8	21.18	5449
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 930 @ 2.80GHz	2,731.05	8	21.27	5383
 
biodoc said:
Here's some data from a few of the top computers on Simap. All the data is from the same batch of WUs and all rigs are running some flavor 64 bit Windows. Obviously we don't know the true clock speed of these rigs. The AMD chips are comptetitive.


HTML: 
Processor	                       Time (sec)	cores	Credit 	PPD
Intel Core i7 CPU X 980 @ 3.33GHz	3,041.77	12	21.30	7260
AMD Phenom(tm) II X6 1055T Processor	1,847.16	6	21.28	5972
AMD Phenom(tm) II X6 1090T Processor	1,869.00	6	21.21	5883
AMD Phenom(tm) II X6 1090T Processor	1,980.60	6	21.2	5549
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 860 @ 2.80GHz	2,686.56	8	21.18	5449
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 930 @ 2.80GHz	2,731.05	8	21.27	5383
Click to expand...

I bet most of the CPUs are overclocked to around the 4Ghz mark. It's doable on all of them. I use stock AMD cooling so my 965 black edition sits at it's 3.4Ghz default value ()🙂
 
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