Sorry, I don't think in it's current form the Skull Trail system is anything special. The next generation - with Nehalem, that will be a different matter.

The Intel Core 2 Extreme processor QX9775 is available now at an MSRP of $1,499 each. Estimated street pricing for the Intel Desktop Board D5400XS is $649. Platform components are sold separately.

A little bit of a rip off.

How much was your Mac Pro again?

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Daniel

It was standard recommended config, £1750. or $2799 in the US.

Which is Dual Quad Xeons - 2.8GHZ
2GB FB-DIMMS
D5400 Motherboard - Same as Skull Trail
320GB HD
Bluetooth
Keyboard + Mouse

All the other stuff, power supply etc.

I know the chips are a little different and you can over clock them, but by the time you get the cooling right and a big enough case etc, your looking at over $5000 for a gaming machine, you'd have to be a professional gamer or very stupid to spend that money.

Also given the ability of only four mem slots, sorry, i'll stand by my view that the current version is a con.

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Did some rearch on the costs here is what I found.
A MacPro from the Apple store costs $5899.00. This is a base system with two 3.2 Xeon and four 2 Gig sticks.

To put together a similar system skulltrail system would cost $5,108.
Here is the break down

SKT System Costs

1 Intel D5400XS $614.65 $614.65
2 Intel QX9775 $1,599.97 $3,199.94
2 Zalman HSF $53.90 $107.80
4 DDR2-800 FB-Dimms (4x2) $109.00 $436.00
1 ATI Radeon HD2600 $190.00 $190.00
1 320GB HD $80.00 $80.00
1 Optical Drive $30.00 $30.00
1 Case Antec 900 $100.00 $100.00
1 CoolMaster 750 W Power Supply $140.00 $140.00
1 Mounse & Keyboard $30.00 $30.00
1 Vista Ultimate $180.00 $180.00
$5,108.39

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erm a couple of points

1. have you included postage ? sound silly but if you get all that from different suppliers then it mounts up :-)

2. theres no overall system warranty

3. its resale value is very much less than a mac pro

4, it only has one external firewire port ! which is virtually useless in the pro/workstation market

5. no firewire 800

6. only one gigabit rj45 port

7. only four ram slots with support for only 8GB total

8. it only runs vista ultimate :-) (oh yes and linux but thats no drawback)

9. the antec case mention is unbelievably ugly :-) and would look a bit silly in a pro environment (silly comment i know!)

10. theres at least 6 different warranty/support structures involved instead of maybe two in the mac pro

ok thats all i can think of for the while... just observations ...

the resale value of the system is the real difference... give it a year and try and sell the thing :-)

regards

adrian

Did some rearch on the costs here is what I found.
A MacPro from the Apple store costs $5899.00. This is a base system with two 3.2 Xeon and four 2 Gig sticks.
To put together a similar system skulltrail system would cost $5,108.
Here is the break down

SKT System Costs

1 Intel D5400XS $614.65 $614.65
2 Intel QX9775 $1,599.97 $3,199.94
2 Zalman HSF $53.90 $107.80
4 DDR2-800 FB-Dimms (4x2) $109.00 $436.00
1 ATI Radeon HD2600 $190.00 $190.00
1 320GB HD $80.00 $80.00
1 Optical Drive $30.00 $30.00
1 Case Antec 900 $100.00 $100.00
1 CoolMaster 750 W Power Supply $140.00 $140.00
1 Mounse & Keyboard $30.00 $30.00
1 Vista Ultimate $180.00 $180.00
$5,108.39

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63. (1) (b) "music" includes sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats

I know that the $5.899 are the official pricing at the Apple-site...but no one (with a sane mind ;) ) is ordering the memory from Apple. So you get an amount of $4.399 and have to spend another 432 €/$653 (I guess the RAM will cost the same in the US as over here) for 4x2GB...and you will end up with less than $5.000...

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I never suggested one over the other. Just put forth the numbers. Adrian I agree with you on everything except the case. I like the way it looks. :) Actually, I just pick one at random for purpose of cost comparison. If you buy your Mac without the memory then buy it elsewhere, the Mac will cost a little less than the SKT. So if I was going to plop down $5K on a new crucher I would buy the Mac. The dear doctor, with all his resources has a RAC in the 6-7K range. The Mac's are hitting over 10K. Do I need to say more?

No, but I will anyway. For the same $5,000 I could put together 6 - Q6600 based computers. They have a RAC in the 3,500 range. So that is a combined RAC of about 21,000 for the six. True this will never show up in the top computers page, but it would get more work done than either the Macs or the SKT. For the time being I'll keep building q6600 machnes. Have 3 and waiting for parts to build Q4

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. . . the good Dr is movin' baCk up real fast again: 4081480 - 12 - Dr who? - 6,678.16 - 497,246

. . . go for iT Francois . . .

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BOINC Wiki . . .

Science Status Page . . .

Doc, he's not reporting enough units to be achieving that. If you go through that results reported in the past few days, even with that machine running 24/7 it's got a max RAC of less the 6,000.

Not sure what to believe anymore.

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Doc, he's not reporting enough units to be achieving that. If you go through that results reported in the past few days, even with that machine running 24/7 it's got a max RAC of less the 6,000.

Not sure what to believe anymore.

Always believe in the kittys.........
They will be back here crunching in about a week, BTW......

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

Doc, he's not reporting enough units to be achieving that. If you go through that results reported in the past few days, even with that machine running 24/7 it's got a max RAC of less the 6,000.

Not sure what to believe anymore.

It does look like he has it doing something else at the moment based on what's currently coming in, so it has to be Pendings clearing which is sustaining the RAC at the moment.

So I'm not seeing anything too unusual.

Alinator

Alinator, i'm not accusing who of anything, i think many things, but I don't think Francois would knowingly fudge the system

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LOL...

Didn't think you were, but I understand your concern given some of the other discussion going on lately. ;-)

What I meant was he has the machine doing something besides crunching SAH right now.

He apparently has had it offline (network wise) off and on which lead to some delayed reporting, but that's no big deal. IOW, that's no different than someone on DU who only connects once a week for example.

Alinator

Carlos wrote:

...Do I need to say more?

No, but I will anyway. For the same $5,000 I could put together 6 - Q6600 based computers. They have a RAC in the 3,500 range. So that is a combined RAC of about 21,000 for the six. True this will never show up in the top computers page, but it would get more work done than either the Macs or the SKT. For the time being I'll keep building q6600 machnes. Have 3 and waiting for parts to build Q4

I completely agree with you. I'm in the process of replacing my older P4s with $500-600 Q6600 rigs. Hope to get ~4000RAC each with minor OCs on air. The newer rigs draw less than 170Watts, about the same as the P4's, but with 4-8 times RAC per box. that Translates to 4-8 times RAC per Watt!!! Plus, the church loves receiving the P4s as donations :-)

I cap my SETI power consumption @ 1000W ($66/month) so it looks like I'm limited to 5 Q6600 crunchers with monitor, etc. Anyone know the power draw of the SKT fully loaded, 4 FB-DIMMS, with ATI HD 2900 or dual Nvidia 8800 GTX running SLI (only 2 cards each). I bet the lights in the room dim when the SKT comes to life. LOL Forget the initial cost, I can't afford to operate the darn thing!

BOINC on,
John

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LOL...

I guess you answered your own question! I would say your Q-Ball strategy is wisest! :-)

Look at it this way... The money you save over a Skulltrail can be used to offset the extra power cost to run another Q-Ball or 2. ;-)

Alinator

I convinced my wife, that I need a quad core. Now, to save the money. LOL

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It's a bit sad, really... Who?ever came up with the speeding ticket based on CineBench & 3DMark makes us laugh at first impression; ironically, IMO, consumers who purchase Skulltrail should be taxed (fined) in the same manner purchasers of Gas-guzzlers are taxed, without 8500 lb exception.

In much the same way most gas-guzzling behemoths tend to perform poorly in high performance racing, SKT isn't much of a S@H cruncher, either.

'nuf said...

Edit: fix above url

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Yep, but as was pointed out earlier the host has been run with a 'delayed' reporting strategy lately. It's only pulling a RAC of 6990 currently using the BOINCStats thirty day sliding window method, which would put it at 15th on the list here.

This works out to the same ranking as taking the average of his high and low water marks for this last report cycle.

So offhand I'd say he still has a bit of work to do before you could say Skulltrail is the 'King of Crunchers'.

This raises an interesting question though. I wonder what one of the front runner MacPro's could post for a peak RAC if they held off reporting for as long as possible? Hmmmm! :-)

Alinator

Well i'll fill the cache on this machine over the ext few days and then let it crunch all the unit and see what a blip this causes, how about that.

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Go for it Francois, I'm with you :) best of luck.

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Nothing magical happening, just another surge of WUs.
Check out the times for yourself and compare to any of the top 10 Macs.

It goes UP, then will crash down again as the flow trickles.

As a matter of fact, my iMac 2.0Ghz turns quicker times per WU.
He just has 4x the number of cores....
BUT.....all of the top 10 Macs run quicker WU times than me ; >)
So...even if I had 8 cores...I still wouldn't be there.

Therefore......

Just compare a few WUs and you'll quickly see nothing has changed ; > )

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