I did ask this question in the Francois bail thread but its digressed :-)

Given all the hype about the Skull Trail/Mac Pro has anone had a look at the AMD Barcelona setup?

I was considering an ASUS KFN4-DRS motherboard with dual AMD opterons 2347 (Barcelona), which while slower at 1.9Ghz still should give better bang for the buck. Faster ones coming soon... They have pretty good FPU performance, even though the clock speed is lower. Anyone had a look at them?

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BOINC blog

I did ask this question in the Francois bail thread but its digressed :-)

Given all the hype about the Skull Trail/Mac Pro has anone had a look at the AMD Barcelona setup?

I was considering an ASUS KFN4-DRS motherboard with dual AMD opterons 2347 (Barcelona), which while slower at 1.9Ghz still should give better bang for the buck. Faster ones coming soon... They have pretty good FPU performance, even though the clock speed is lower. Anyone had a look at them?

If you type "Barcelona" into the Forum Search box, you will find plenty of discussion on this a few weeks back.

The consensus was (if I interpret correctly) that, in the "Bang-for-Bucks" stakes, you couldn't beat a G0 Q6600.

F.

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Cannot give Seti comparison but Techreport Folding@home comparison give details of AMD Opteron 2350 and 2360 against some Xeons. The Xeon e5346 is in about the same price bracket as the Opteron 2347.

If you type "Barcelona" into the Forum Search box, you will find plenty of discussion on this a few weeks back.

Did that. All it found was this thread.

The consensus was (if I interpret correctly) that, in the "Bang-for-Bucks" stakes, you couldn't beat a G0 Q6600.

F.

Thanks for the info.

Its a pity. I would have thought one could build an 8 core machine which while slower than a Skull Trail or MacPro costs a heck of a lot less.

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BOINC blog

If you type "Barcelona" into the Forum Search box, you will find plenty of discussion on this a few weeks back.

Did that. All it found was this thread.

You need to allow the 'Advanced search' to look back 6 months: Barcelona appears on SETI

If you type "Barcelona" into the Forum Search box, you will find plenty of discussion on this a few weeks back.

Did that. All it found was this thread.

You need to allow the 'Advanced search' to look back 6 months: Barcelona appears on SETI

Thanks for the link. Took a while to read thru it all :-)

As they said (and was summarised before) despite the 8 cores its still slower, so I guess its another Q6600 for the farm.

After the discussion above I went out and got another Q6600 box today. I have setup all the bits and now its off and crunching. It should be able to get my RAC up a bit more :-)

I now have 3 of them so lets see if I can give the MacPro's a run for their money, and still paid less than a Skull Trail.

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BOINC blog

After the discussion above I went out and got another Q6600 box today. I have setup all the bits and now its off and crunching. It should be able to get my RAC up a bit more :-)

I now have 3 of them so lets see if I can give the MacPro's a run for their money, and still paid less than a Skull Trail.

Good job, man......
The Q6600 is by far THE best bang for the buck in Seti crunching today!!!
Much better than an AMD BBQa......LOL.

(Runs for cover from the AMD camp).....

LOL....it's all good guys, whatever turns yur turnip......

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"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

The Q6600 is by far THE best bang for the buck in Seti crunching today!!!
Much better than an AMD BBQa......LOL.

Yeah I am happy with my 2 6600's @3gig each. Cheap, quiet, reliable 24/7 crunchers, except when I forget to get the PC to auto log in to windows & MS updates reboot the PC - ARGH!!!!!

I was always an Athlon fan back a while ago, but now with 2 dual cores & 2 Quads, well I guess I still have two Athlon 2800's as well, so.... :)

The Q6600 is by far THE best bang for the buck in Seti crunching today!!!
Much better than an AMD BBQa......LOL.

Yeah I am happy with my 2 6600's @3gig each. Cheap, quiet, reliable 24/7 crunchers, except when I forget to get the PC to auto log in to windows & MS updates reboot the PC - ARGH!!!!!

I was always an Athlon fan back a while ago, but now with 2 dual cores & 2 Quads, well I guess I still have two Athlon 2800's as well, so.... :)

Ooooh....the dreaded auto updates......I have 'em all turned off on my crunching rigs.....they are all running through a hardware router firewall, so I am not too concerned about 'security' updates......

---

"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

I did ask this question in the Francois bail thread but its digressed :-)

Given all the hype about the Skull Trail/Mac Pro has anone had a look at the AMD Barcelona setup?

I was considering an ASUS KFN4-DRS motherboard with dual AMD opterons 2347 (Barcelona), which while slower at 1.9Ghz still should give better bang for the buck. Faster ones coming soon... They have pretty good FPU performance, even though the clock speed is lower. Anyone had a look at them?

Considering the fact that a Phenom 9500 Quad Core at around $200 and an ASUS M2N32SLI mainboard with DDR2 800 RAM can turn out 2200-2600 credits depending on the WU's crunched, I don't really get it..

If You want 8 cores, You'll of course need 2 boards, as dual Phenom Mainboards are nonexistant, but price/power consumption/processing power wise, You'll have to look far and wide to find anything better.
Spend a lot more money and get Yourself an Intel Quad Powered Host, but before You do, take a look at the top Hosts, and You'll find my 2 Phenoms hovering around the top 600 hosts alongside Xeons and Core 2 Quads.

Best of luck to You on Your decision.

ChrisD

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I did ask this question in the Francois bail thread but its digressed :-)

Given all the hype about the Skull Trail/Mac Pro has anone had a look at the AMD Barcelona setup?

I was considering an ASUS KFN4-DRS motherboard with dual AMD opterons 2347 (Barcelona), which while slower at 1.9Ghz still should give better bang for the buck. Faster ones coming soon... They have pretty good FPU performance, even though the clock speed is lower. Anyone had a look at them?

Considering the fact that a Phenom 9500 Quad Core at around $200 and an ASUS M2N32SLI mainboard with DDR2 800 RAM can turn out 2200-2600 credits depending on the WU's crunched, I don't really get it..

If You want 8 cores, You'll of course need 2 boards, as dual Phenom Mainboards are nonexistant, but price/power consumption/processing power wise, You'll have to look far and wide to find anything better.
Spend a lot more money and get Yourself an Intel Quad Powered Host, but before You do, take a look at the top Hosts, and You'll find my 2 Phenoms hovering around the top 600 hosts alongside Xeons and Core 2 Quads.

Best of luck to You on Your decision.

ChrisD

I just looked up the UK prices, your cpu & mobo £185, the Q6600 and Gigabyrte P35 ds3r mobo I bought £205, collected Tues 26th.
I only have 50% resource on Seti and claimed 2183 cr for 24 hrs of work on 28th.
It did about 800 cr on Beta (host 351) in 24 hrs and since connected to Einstein at 15:20 on Tues has claimed over 4,000 cr there, over 1,000/day. host 252515.

A BOINC credit of ~4000/day.
On that I think the Q6600 is the better buy.

A BOINC credit of ~4000/day.
On that I think the Q6600 is the better buy.

No debate about it......
Sheesh, where is the argument about AMD VS Intel.....
I don't mean to tick off the AMD fellas, I am sure that AMD has it's merits for some applications.......given.
But...........all you have to do is look at the top computers on Seti, and you will see all the empirical evidence you need to establish what works best at crunching Seti.....see any AMD's there???? NOT...'nuff said???

---

"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

I did ask this question in the Francois bail thread but its digressed :-)

Given all the hype about the Skull Trail/Mac Pro has anone had a look at the AMD Barcelona setup?

I was considering an ASUS KFN4-DRS motherboard with dual AMD opterons 2347 (Barcelona), which while slower at 1.9Ghz still should give better bang for the buck. Faster ones coming soon... They have pretty good FPU performance, even though the clock speed is lower. Anyone had a look at them?

Considering the fact that a Phenom 9500 Quad Core at around $200 and an ASUS M2N32SLI mainboard with DDR2 800 RAM can turn out 2200-2600 credits depending on the WU's crunched, I don't really get it..

If You want 8 cores, You'll of course need 2 boards, as dual Phenom Mainboards are nonexistant, but price/power consumption/processing power wise, You'll have to look far and wide to find anything better.
Spend a lot more money and get Yourself an Intel Quad Powered Host, but before You do, take a look at the top Hosts, and You'll find my 2 Phenoms hovering around the top 600 hosts alongside Xeons and Core 2 Quads.

Best of luck to You on Your decision.

ChrisD

I just looked up the UK prices, your cpu & mobo £185, the Q6600 and Gigabyrte P35 ds3r mobo I bought £205, collected Tues 26th.
I only have 50% resource on Seti and claimed 2183 cr for 24 hrs of work on 28th.
It did about 800 cr on Beta (host 351) in 24 hrs and since connected to Einstein at 15:20 on Tues has claimed over 4,000 cr there, over 1,000/day. host 252515.

A BOINC credit of ~4000/day.
On that I think the Q6600 is the better buy.

No debate about it......
Sheesh, where is the argument about AMD VS Intel.....
I don't mean to tick off the AMD fellas, I am sure that AMD has it's merits for some applications.......given.
But...........all you have to do is look at the top computers on Seti, and you will see all the empirical evidence you need to establish what works best at crunching Seti.....'nuff said???

I just go where the performance is best, had AMD DX4 100, AthlonXP 2000+, and Athlon FX 3200+ in the past, but at the moment Intel is the better buy.

No debate about it......
Sheesh, where is the argument about AMD VS Intel.....
I don't mean to tick off the AMD fellas, I am sure that AMD has it's merits for some applications.......given.
But...........all you have to do is look at the top computers on Seti, and you will see all the empirical evidence you need to establish what works best at crunching Seti.....'nuff said???

I just go where the performance is best, had AMD DX4 100, AthlonXP 2000+, and Athlon FX 3200+ in the past, but at the moment Intel is the better buy.

Yup......and I had a $1000.00 FX-60 running at one time too (wanna buy it, LOL...) but when the core 2 architecture came on the scene, it was toaste......power hungry inefficient cruncher.....took it offline for the cheapest core 2 I could get. And far better off, I might add.

And before I get bashed too badly......I must add that I was the king of the OCd Semprons too......

---

"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

I did ask this question in the Francois bail thread but its digressed :-)

Given all the hype about the Skull Trail/Mac Pro has anone had a look at the AMD Barcelona setup?

I was considering an ASUS KFN4-DRS motherboard with dual AMD opterons 2347 (Barcelona), which while slower at 1.9Ghz still should give better bang for the buck. Faster ones coming soon... They have pretty good FPU performance, even though the clock speed is lower. Anyone had a look at them?

Considering the fact that a Phenom 9500 Quad Core at around $200 and an ASUS M2N32SLI mainboard with DDR2 800 RAM can turn out 2200-2600 credits depending on the WU's crunched, I don't really get it..

If You want 8 cores, You'll of course need 2 boards, as dual Phenom Mainboards are nonexistant, but price/power consumption/processing power wise, You'll have to look far and wide to find anything better.
Spend a lot more money and get Yourself an Intel Quad Powered Host, but before You do, take a look at the top Hosts, and You'll find my 2 Phenoms hovering around the top 600 hosts alongside Xeons and Core 2 Quads.

Best of luck to You on Your decision.

ChrisD

I just looked up the UK prices, your cpu & mobo £185, the Q6600 and Gigabyrte P35 ds3r mobo I bought £205, collected Tues 26th.
I only have 50% resource on Seti and claimed 2183 cr for 24 hrs of work on 28th.
It did about 800 cr on Beta (host 351) in 24 hrs and since connected to Einstein at 15:20 on Tues has claimed over 4,000 cr there, over 1,000/day. host 252515.

A BOINC credit of ~4000/day.
On that I think the Q6600 is the better buy.

No debate about it......
Sheesh, where is the argument about AMD VS Intel.....
I don't mean to tick off the AMD fellas, I am sure that AMD has it's merits for some applications.......given.
But...........all you have to do is look at the top computers on Seti, and you will see all the empirical evidence you need to establish what works best at crunching Seti.....'nuff said???

I just go where the performance is best, had AMD DX4 100, AthlonXP 2000+, and Athlon FX 3200+ in the past, but at the moment Intel is the better buy.

I am not quite with You..???

Your Host # 252515 reports 1556 Flops and 3554 INT per CPU, which gives You 4000+ credits crunching Einstein at home.
I do not intent to do Einstein, (sorry, but I like SETI better), however my newest Phenom Host reports 2480 FLOPS and 5537 INT per CPU. This should earn me over 6000 credits if I chose to do Einstein.

This is like the question, do You like Lager or do You prefer Ale?

I have several retired Pentium CPUs ranging from PII450 to P4-1600 as well as retired Athlons on the shelf, so I am not all AMD.

What I do not understand, is the fact that I am 'grounded' every time I say that I think the AMD Phenom is not all that bad.

My 2 Phenom Hosts are turning out 2300+ credits each, running SETI 24/7.

If I can pay the power bill, I will have 3 hosts amongst the top 700 Hosts in about 4 weeks time producing 7000+ credits per day..

You'll have to admit, that did a dual Phenum Main board exist, this 8 core host would end up amongst the top 30 Hosts doing SETI scoring about 5000 credit/day average.

I really think the Phenom is underestimated and misunderstood..

'nuff said :) have a nice week-end everybody.

ChrisD

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Well first off, there is nothing wrong with Phenom. It puts up respectable numbers for what and where it is in it's development. Unfortunately for AMD, it just wasn't enough to hold off the Intel juggernaut.

However, I have to disagree with you here. You would have zero chance of pulling a RAC of 6000 on EAH with one, even if you could overclock it by a factor of 2. Pulling 2000 would be a pretty good accomplishment using the stock EAH app (check the CPCS for them on BOINCstats).

One other point here is it's completely useless to wonder what a dual socket Phenom could do, since it is no more likely to happen than a dual socket Q-Ball is for the exact same reason.

If you want to look at what AMD 'Big Gun Battleships' can do you will just have to wait until Barcelona is shipped again at the next stepping. Personally, I don't think there will be much chance of AMD closing the gap at all until they're at 45 nm (for SAH use that is). Even then if Intel stays on schedule Nehalem will be coming out which should theoretically negate AMD's architectural advantages.

However, since Intel saw fit to proceed with Skulltrail, it might have been interesting to see what Quad FX could have done if AMD hadn't dropped the project on a bang for the buck basis in this strictly uber-niche market.

Alinator

snip....
I am not quite with You..???

Your Host # 252515 reports 1556 Flops and 3554 INT per CPU, which gives You 4000+ credits crunching Einstein at home.
I do not intent to do Einstein, (sorry, but I like SETI better), however my newest Phenom Host reports 2480 FLOPS and 5537 INT per CPU. This should earn me over 6000 credits if I chose to do Einstein.

This is like the question, do You like Lager or do You prefer Ale?

I have several retired Pentium CPUs ranging from PII450 to P4-1600 as well as retired Athlons on the shelf, so I am not all AMD.

What I do not understand, is the fact that I am 'grounded' every time I say that I think the AMD Phenom is not all that bad.

My 2 Phenom Hosts are turning out 2300+ credits each, running SETI 24/7.

If I can pay the power bill, I will have 3 hosts amongst the top 700 Hosts in about 4 weeks time producing 7000+ credits per day..

You'll have to admit, that did a dual Phenum Main board exist, this 8 core host would end up amongst the top 30 Hosts doing SETI scoring about 5000 credit/day average.

I really think the Phenom is underestimated and misunderstood..

'nuff said :) have a nice week-end everybody.

ChrisD

I think you are trying to rely on the benchmark figure too much. It has long been known the benchmarks, which can be wildly different between Linux and Windows on a dual boot computer, are therefore no guide to how a computer will perform on a Project.
The predicted time for a unit is calculated from estimated Flops and the benchmark figures but adjusted with the DCF. Therefore when comparing the performance of computers on A project one needs to know benchmarks and DCF of each computer, if the RAC's are not known. (the DCF is different for each project crunched by the computer).
There is also a problem, known since days of P4 HT's that benchmarks are not accurate on multi cpu computers, on some OS's, the benchmark is run and then probably divided by number of cpu's even though only one cpu was used in running benchmarks.

Benchmarks	Flops	int	Seti DCF	Beta DCF	Einstein DCF
E6600		2677	6150	0.23775		0.262246	0.424755
Q6600		1557	3554	0.085375	0.140929	0.161047

Notes;
1, Optimised apps used on Seti,
2, Default apps used on Beta
3, Power user app used on Q6600 at Einstein
4, Default app used on E6600 at Einstein.

I would therefore suggest a well built Q6600, running at stock speeds 24/7, using the correct optimised app would have and RAC over 3000 after it has been run for a while and the RAC and pending have settled.

And therefore, I have to disagree on your opinion of the Phenom cpu, when running Seti, (and Einstein).

Andy

P.S. Regarding alcohol, I am virtually tea total, mainly because when I was in my 20's and in the Army, I was on a rapid response team. This involved driving on bad roads and repairing equipments with voltages over 4000V DC. Even on supposed days off the call out time could decrease from 12 hrs to 1 hr if things got bad. We were in a country that suffers from lightning frequently, and it had a liking for our tall masts.
I also found out that nurses, our HQ was about 200 yards (metre) from a Military hospital with several hundred nurses, had a preference for sober car owning men.

I also found out that nurses, our HQ was about 200 yards (metre) from a Military hospital with several hundred nurses, had a preference for sober car owning men.

100% true, I can vouch for that......ex RCT

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I also found out that nurses, our HQ was about 200 yards (metre) from a Military hospital with several hundred nurses, had a preference for sober car owning men.

100% true, I can vouch for that......ex RCT

No wonder you get lost so frequently ;-)