Thanks a lot for so many replies! This is exactly what I've been looking for. :)

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"Failure is not an option."
Gene Kranz, Apollo 13 Flight Director

"Be the change you want to see in the World"
Mahatma Gandhi

My web-page:
www.dywanik.eu

Personally I have a Phenom II 940 with no Cuda that is currently howering about place 160, OC'ed to 3,6Ghz. RAC is still going up, slowly.

It can run at 3.8 and 4.0Ghz for short periods (until the temps get to high), but I'll have to get better cooling to do that permanently (Still considering if I want to, its plenty fast for my needs at 3.6G).

If I where to go for a cost-effective cruncher, I would go for Core Quad or Phenom 2. The Phenom can be had with motherboards supporting up to 4 GPU's (my board has 4 PCI-E slots), I don't know about the intel boards, but 3 slots are possible at least.

An AMD DDR2 board with 4 PCI-E slots can be had relatively cheap, the supporting RAM is also relatively cheap, and a Phenom II 920 is also cheap, (and normally clocks to 3.5 GHz no trouble). Add a GFX card (isn't 9800GTX/GTX250 considered the most cost/product effective at this point?), and you will have quite a capable machine, with upgrade potential (new & comming Phenoms are backwards compatible with DDR2 boards). And you can add more/better GPU's as you get the money.

You can do the same on the Intel side. A Q6600 is still a good CPU, with OC potential (Q9400 is also a good choice, but costs a little more) It will not be as upgradeable (socket 775 is near EOL), but you will still be able to get a faster processor later (very fast ones are available, and these will probably get cheaper as the Core i7/i5 become more common), and add more/better GPU's as you get the money.

One could build one of the above mentioned systems and then take the money saved over an i7 system and use it for another GPU. In the end it would have a higher RAC.

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Thanks Dywanik for asking this question. I too am doing some research into either buying a new computer or rebuilding my old P4. I will print this out and do more research for sure. I have a limited budget so i want to make every dollar count. I have seen at home depo a HP computer with a AMD phennom for $699 . Dont know if it was the ll phennom or not. Then gate way has a i7 2.66ghz quad core with 3 mb ddr3 mem. and a ATI Radeon HD 4850 with 512MB mem. for $1129.00. So i dont know which way to go yet Ill keep reading this thread and hope to see a ray of light.

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Old James

The Radeon 4850, though a good GFX card, is not usable for Seti@home yet.

For that you need a computer with a CUDA capable (nVidia) card. This will change sometime in the future, when OpenCL and DirectX11 become standard, but I don't think anyone knows when it'll be right now.

If you go for the Phenom PC, make sure its a Phenom II. These a much faster than the old Phenoms, which where not very impressive (they could run a CUDA setup without problems though).

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The Radeon 4850, though a good GFX card, is not usable for Seti@home yet.

For that you need a computer with a CUDA capable (nVidia) card. This will change sometime in the future, when OpenCL and DirectX11 become standard, but I don't think anyone knows when it'll be right now.

If you go for the Phenom PC, make sure its a Phenom II. These a much faster than the old Phenoms, which where not very impressive (they could run a CUDA setup without problems though).

Thanks Karsten , I will remember that Phenom ll.

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Old James

Just remember to consider all alternatives.

If you go AMD, it should be Phenom II. An Intel Core2 Quad setup would also do very well. I think the i7's are too expensive for now, but thats my opinion, and others will disagree.

Most important if you want high RAC is to get one or more powerfull CUDA cards, and to remember to run with optimized clients on the CPU.

For best RAC in the long run, run optimized Astropulse on the CPU, and Multibeam on the GPU('s) only.
This will give the highest throughput, when the RAC stabilizes, but could take a long time to get there, because of the long turnaround time for Astropulse WU's.

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For anyone who lives near a MicroCenter and wants to do a low cost Intel system, they have the Q8200 for 99.99 right now.

-Dave

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Dear Friends in Space!
I'm planning to set up a SETI/BOINC oriented system. I've been reading lots of posts and unfortunately my research is inconclusive. Therefore you guys are my last hope. ;-) So to clear a little bit. The system should cost at most $1000, should be eco friendly (low power consumption) and size doesn't matter. And now, I discovered myself (+read about it ;)) that the most important thing in CPU is L2 cache (I have Pentium M 1.8 GHz 2MB which is more efficient that Xeon 2.6 GHz 512 KB) but what about L3 cache? As far as I know it's little less accessible for the core than L2 but Itaniums and i7s has lots of it... And now there's also the CUDA thing... I'll appreciate any suggestions! Thx in advance and happy crunchin'! :-)

Saw an iteresting combination today. Look at:
http://www.driversheaven.net/reviews.php?reviewid=747
This may take some beating and the OS is Vista64.

Toppie.

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Umm...sorry. My fault. It should read
http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews.php?reviewid=747

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What OS is recommended?

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Plus SETI Classic = 21,082 WUs

What OS is recommended?

What are you most comfortable with? It honestly doesn't seem to make much of a difference when crunching.

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What OS is recommended?

Linux is free, but takes some know-how to get it configured. Windows costs money, but is pretty much point-and-click to get it configured. On a crunching level, both are close enough to make the performance difference negligible.

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Linux laptop:
record uptime: 1511d 20h 19m (ended due to the power brick giving-up)

What OS is recommended?

Linux is free, but takes some know-how to get it configured. Windows costs money, but is pretty much point-and-click to get it configured. On a crunching level, both are close enough to make the performance difference negligible.

Actually I my Mandriva Linux box is easier to configure than windows. Linux basically has all the drivers you need to get your system running. In 5-10 years ago this might not have been so. Today you can count on Linux to install and work the first time you start the system.

BTW I have to say XP pro 64 is a pain to get wireless drivers to work. let alone the windows generic drivers working properly

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In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope

What OS is recommended?

Linux is free, but takes some know-how to get it configured. Windows costs money, but is pretty much point-and-click to get it configured. On a crunching level, both are close enough to make the performance difference negligible.

Actually I my Mandriva Linux box is easier to configure than windows. Linux basically has all the drivers you need to get your system running. In 5-10 years ago this might not have been so. Today you can count on Linux to install and work the first time you start the system.

BTW I have to say XP pro 64 is a pain to get wireless drivers to work. let alone the windows generic drivers working properly

I can say from experience that this is not true. I tried running Kubuntu and Mandriva on a Pentium 4 2.53GHz machine and neither one of them would automatically detect and configure my network settings. Strangly enough, the Live CDs did detect and configure the NIC card which is why I thought it would work.

Then of course, once I got up and running, there was nothing to do but watch the uptime counter and browse websites. Fun! :)

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BTW I have to say XP pro 64 is a pain to get wireless drivers to work. let alone the windows generic drivers working properly

I tried to play my games in XP pro 64 and the audio drivers were buggy as hell as well.

I finally installed Windows 7 64 and the games work fine on there.

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