Hello,

For some months I've be running SETI on my only PC, now I'm going to get a nice little cruncher station to help.

What I have in mind is a Core2 Duo E4300 CPU with a MSI P35 Neo motherboard.

Do you think that's a good choice ? I've read that the core2 duo CPU's offer a good calculation rate for the price but didn't try myself.

I'll also run it on ubuntu or maybe debian (yeah maybe a linux switcher coming)has somebody had problems with that config ?

Any advice would help, so thanks.

Hello,

For some months I've be running SETI on my only PC, now I'm going to get a nice little cruncher station to help.

What I have in mind is a Core2 Duo E4300 CPU with a MSI P35 Neo motherboard.

Do you think that's a good choice ? I've read that the core2 duo CPU's offer a good calculation rate for the price but didn't try myself.

I'll also run it on ubuntu or maybe debian (yeah maybe a linux switcher coming)has somebody had problems with that config ?

Any advice would help, so thanks.

My 4300 has a RAC of 1,310.08, for just a bit more my Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6420 has a RAC of 2280. For about $30.00 more I would go with the E6420.

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Official Abuser of Boinc Buttons...
And no good credit hound!

I'll also run it on ubuntu or maybe debian (yeah maybe a linux switcher coming)has somebody had problems with that config ?

Any advice would help, so thanks.

I have Ubuntu on a Core 2 duo, I used the 64 bit Feisty Fawn, 7.04, added ia32 libs from the Synaptic Package manager. I use the 64 bit BOINC 5.10 for Linux, and BOINC manager works for me and everything. BOINC client would run for me without the ia32 libs, but BOINC manager didn't until I put them in. I used the Gigabyte SATA ports (dvd and hard drive) on my P35 board and I didn't encounter any problems. But if your board has IDE on a JMB chip, I think Linux 2.6.18 or higher can handle it now.

My only complaint about your choice is the MSI MB. If you may want to over-clock in the future, look at ASUS or ABIT motherboards instead.

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Boinc Button Abuser In Training >My Shrubbers<

While it is a fair bit more expensive than you've been considering (going by the e4300 specification) you should give the q6600 a good look.

4mb cache, same as the e6420, and double the crunching capacity of a dualcore in the same package; no need to duplicate mobo, ram, psu, etc.

After the price drop that's just happened, they have to be one of the best value CPUs around.

Re: Ubuntu/linux, I've been running BOINC on some for ages, no worries ; )

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Crunching SETI@Home as a member of the Whirlpool BOINC Teams

While it is a fair bit more expensive than you've been considering (going by the e4300 specification) you should give the q6600 a good look.

4mb cache, same as the e6420, and double the crunching capacity of a dualcore in the same package; no need to duplicate mobo, ram, psu, etc.

After the price drop that's just happened, they have to be one of the best value CPUs around.

Re: Ubuntu/linux, I've been running BOINC on some for ages, no worries ; )

And if you're into it, they OC like a dream.

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

While it is a fair bit more expensive than you've been considering (going by the e4300 specification) you should give the q6600 a good look.

4mb cache, same as the e6420, and double the crunching capacity of a dualcore in the same package; no need to duplicate mobo, ram, psu, etc.

After the price drop that's just happened, they have to be one of the best value CPUs around.

Re: Ubuntu/linux, I've been running BOINC on some for ages, no worries ; )

I like that Q6600, price isn't bad either. Getting ready to build a few machines for the new store I am opening. My RAC should climb good in the next couple months.

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Official Abuser of Boinc Buttons...
And no good credit hound!

About 3-4 months ago I put together Bad Axe 2 + C2D E6600 + 2 GB RAM, I just bumped it from 2.7 GHz (stock is 2.4 GHz) to 2.97 GHz on stock cooling. My RAC right now is 2,109 and it is climbing.

The point of above bragging is this. You have two choices.

Choice one. Overclock. Then buy the best hardware you can afford. Don't cut corners on motherboard, RAM, power supply.

Choice two. No overclocking. In this case buy the cheapest and run it at stock setting.

You will get ahead either way.

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Well thanks for all your advices.

In fact I think I'll go on E6420, the q6600 is tempting (arghh forget my sorry English) but right out of my budget for a while.

To Ohiomike : P35 was cool because of it's specs, I see also a nice ASUS P5N-E SLI. The only hope is that the nforce chipset is as linux-compatible as intel chipset (Pam Heinze told me a little manip to do to linux with P35, I don't know if I have to do it also on P5N).

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Well thanks for all your advices.

In fact I think I'll go on E6420, the q6600 is tempting (arghh forget my sorry English) but right out of my budget for a while.

To Ohiomike : P35 was cool because of it's specs, I see also a nice ASUS P5N-E SLI. The only hope is that the nforce chipset is as linux-compatible as intel chipset (Pam Heinze told me a little manip to do to linux with P35, I don't know if I have to do it also on P5N).

Good choice, I thought I would suggest it as you said it was a crunching machine and to get almost double wasn't much more cost. Good luck with your new machine and just so you know, that chip overclocks real well and even when it was 90F in my room it ran at 2.6 MH without even a hickup and in the winter on air it runs @ 3.0.

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Official Abuser of Boinc Buttons...
And no good credit hound!

Starship, it might be a good idea to use Simons (Chickens) cruncher instead of the default. It should double your crunch speed. You can find out more about that at Simon's messages marked by the avatar of a yawning cat. It looks like you might be using the default cruncher.

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well the machine is on it's way, I passed damn hardware problems but it's finally nice and with only the size of desktop flat box (I had to migrate to a micro - ATX
GA-G33 mobo, but it seems powerfull as well).

The last thing is to manage the (other damn) connection on the (damn damn damn) sagem modem and then it's ready. Further news to come soon

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Finally the beast is running !! try it on 5.10.8 a few days because it DOES recognize my 2 cores (instead of 5.8 and below).

To Clyde : Yes i run the default on the 2 comps now. I'll try on Tophat (new PC) when I'm sure it does well with the default. I'll try first Chicken soup on my main PC but some question first :

- I'm running 5.8 on it : do I need to change the Boinc client before I get Chicken for running seti or can I keep the stable Boinc default client with the custom seti client ?

- On Boinc 5.8 I'm running Einstein too. Will the required changes affect it ?

Thanks for all previous advices, it seems running fine.

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I do not think that you have any problems using the chicken soup. I use boinc 5.8.16 with chicken and running einstein at the same time on my q6600.

Finally the beast is running !! try it on 5.10.8 a few days because it DOES recognize my 2 cores (instead of 5.8 and below).

To Clyde : Yes i run the default on the 2 comps now. I'll try on Tophat (new PC) when I'm sure it does well with the default. I'll try first Chicken soup on my main PC but some question first :

- I'm running 5.8 on it : do I need to change the Boinc client before I get Chicken for running seti or can I keep the stable Boinc default client with the custom seti client ?

- On Boinc 5.8 I'm running Einstein too. Will the required changes affect it ?

Thanks for all previous advices, it seems running fine.

First the optimized "application", or "Chicken soup" is not dependent on the version of BOINC you run. It is the "Science Application" which is completely independent of the "BOINC Client", which is the application that actually does the talking to Berkeley or whatever other project you run. See "What is Client Server Manager and Application" in the SETI Enhanced FAQ in my sig for a complete discussion of each part's responsibilties. The only difference that the 5.10.x versions makes is in the requests from the server to abort a wu that is no longer needed and possibly in the splitting up of the "connect to" times to allow an extra cache. Just off the top of my head I don't recall when this ability started. Other than that, "Chicken Soup" as it has become known around here is compatible with all versions of BOINC and will run equally well with all.
Edit: The actual "Chicken Soup application" that you install DOES depend upon the capabilities of your processor, or what instruction sets it supports. MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, etc. So be sure to get the one that supports the highest instruction set that your processor supports. I think he has an auto-select applet to detect the proper version for Windows, but I'm not sure about Linux. (I run Linux and always just select the proper one for my architecture.)

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Jim

Some people plan their life out and look back at the wealth they've had.
Others live life day by day and look back at the wealth of experiences and enjoyment they've had.

To immediately find out how much better Chicken's cruncher is one could compare crunchtimes of the default with that of Chicken. He/she would have to look at the number of seconds of several results of each angle range class to get a good idea. Of course I don't know but I think that Chicken's improvement applies to Linux just as it does to Windows.

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