Fastest D@H crunching rig for under $500
Message boards : Cafe Docking : Fastest D@H crunching rig for under $500
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David Ball
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Joined: Sep 18 06 Posts: 274 ID: 115 Credit: 1,634,401 RAC: 0 |
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I'm looking to replace some of my ancient hardware and wanted to find out what people have Bought/Built for under $500 and how long it takes to crunch a D@H work unit.
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2856 | Rating: 0
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I'm looking to replace some of my ancient hardware and wanted to find out what people have Bought/Built for under $500 and how long it takes to crunch a D@H work unit. Do you mean an entirely new computer, case and all? I think one of the least expensive things you can do is replace your Sempron 3100+ with an Athlon64 3400+. If your motherboard will do 2.4Gb, you can cut nearly 45 mins/WU. Look at my 1182. It is a 3400+ OC'd three percent. Looks like you do 10,886 WUs and I do 8,123....call it 8,367 because of OC. The delta in CPUs is 1.8G vs 2.4G and 256K cache vs 512K. I just looked on eBay....I see a couple of "new" 3400+s for <$100. |
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David Ball
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Joined: Sep 18 06 Posts: 274 ID: 115 Credit: 1,634,401 RAC: 0 |
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Hi j2satx,
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2879 | Rating: 0
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Hi j2satx, Changing CPUs and/or adding RAM won't affect your Microsoft OS activation code. |
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2880 | Rating: 0
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Hi j2satx, A real reasonably priced mobo for X2 is Biostar GeForce 6100M9....also will let you do a few percent OC. I'm running single Opterons in a couple of them.....and thinking to go to dual-core Opterons. The 165s and 170s seem to be available for a good price....(of course I'm talking about eBay). The best (most of the time) prices for CPUs are from ZipZoomFly. An Opteron 165 is the same price as an A64 X2 3800+ and you get more L2. You can run "matched pairs" of DDR -266/333/400 RAM on them. |
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2881 | Rating: 0
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Hi j2satx, What is the model of the Soyo mobo? |
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2882 | Rating: 0
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Hi j2satx, Intel's URL says the 845GL chipset will run Pentium 4. I'd bet money you could run the 2.4 P4 as you suggested, but maybe you could run faster. You should ask eMachine's Tech Support what's the fastest P4 you could run on that board. |
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2883 | Rating: 0
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Hi j2satx, Found this on Internet for the D2386: Intel® Northwood Up to 3.06G Celeron up to 2.8G Prescott 2.8G and up |
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David Ball
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Joined: Sep 18 06 Posts: 274 ID: 115 Credit: 1,634,401 RAC: 0 |
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A real reasonably priced mobo for X2 is Biostar GeForce 6100M9 I was thinking of a Biostar, but some of the reviews scared me off. I'm beginning to think that some of the people who write hardware reviews on sites either have too high expectations or don't know what they're doing or just had bad luck. By the time you read all the reviews for different products, you're almost to paranoid to get anything! I think a lot of them are buying the fastest, most expensive memory they can find. Then, they blame the motherboard because it doesn't work. I wonder how many people understand that the spec for things like DDR and DDR2 specify a voltage and their fancy, superfast memory wants a higher voltage. When the standard calls for 1.8v and their fancy memory wants 2.4v, it probably won't work on some boards. BTW, I had heard that there were going to be some price cuts and new announcements in April. I noticed that some sites started listing a lot of things as out-of-stock this afternoon. I'm wondering what's up. On thing I've heard is that the Intel C2D E6300 and E6400 are being replaced by the E6325 and E6435, which will be the same speed but 4MB cache instead of 2MB. Also, there are supposed to be some more AMD price cuts, if some sites are to be believed. We might be moving our server to an Opty 180. I wonder how that would perform? These days, you pay almost as much for a Celeron 2.4 server if you want serious connectivity. I'm beginning to think that the actual hardware is a small part of the server rental. -- David ____________ The views expressed are my own. Facts are subject to memory error :-) Have you read a good science fiction novel lately? |
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David Ball
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...snip... Thanks for the info!!! IIRC, the 845GL chipset is limited to a 400 MHz FSB. I had a guy in tech support at Microcenter in Atlanta tell me a couple of years ago that a faster Northwood would downclock to a 400 MHz FSB, but he mentioned it in passing and I never followed up on it. I might get one and try it. The reason I was thinking of the 2.4 GHz CPU was that it was the fastest I could find with a 400MHz FSB. It would be nice to breath some life back in the old system. That 128KB cache really seems to be a killer on the Celeron 2.3 that's in there now. -- David ____________ The views expressed are my own. Facts are subject to memory error :-) Have you read a good science fiction novel lately? |
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David Ball
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I ordered a Northwood P4 2.8 for the celeron system. I had already had to replace the power supply in that machine so I'm a little hesitant to put a Prescott in it.
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2899 | Rating: 0
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I ordered a Northwood P4 2.8 for the celeron system. I had already had to replace the power supply in that machine so I'm a little hesitant to put a Prescott in it. The fastest AMD CPU for that mobo is XP 3000+........going for $150. For the same $150, you can buy an AsRock 775 mobo and an Intel PD805. You can still run it with 333 memory and easily OC to 2.8Gb. One of my PD805s (not OC'd) runs a WU in around 12,700. |
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For the same $150, you can buy an AsRock 775 mobo and an Intel PD805. You can still run it with 333 memory and easily OC to 2.8Gb. If you can get one (just cancel the already ordered hardware... :-P ) , I should vote for this option also. A lot of value for your money, but I would recommend using a good CPU-cooler. The 805 can get very hot if not cooled properly. I've got one running on a Asrock 775Dual-880Pro Mobo, supports both DDR and DDRII and has IDE and Sata. Both AGP and PCI-Expres slots for Video are present. So choices enough on what to use... ;-) ____________ 
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David Ball
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The system that the CPU is for is a 3 year old Celeron 2.3 system with a 845GL (400 MHz FSB) motherboard that has the OEM version of XP Pro. I think I can get away with replacing the cpu with a Northwood P4 2.8Ghz 533 MHz fsb chip, but a motherboard replacement would make it a "new system" and M$ wouldn't let you move OEM XP licenses, the last I heard. The P4 will downclock to a 400 MHz FSB but the extra 500 MHz clocking on the CPU and going from 128kb to 512kB L2 cache should really help. The power supply is barely strong enough now, and the motherboard was made for the lower powered 130nm Northwoods, so I don't want to push my luck on the power issue.
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The system that the CPU is for is a 3 year old Celeron 2.3 system with a 845GL (400 MHz FSB) motherboard that has the OEM version of XP Pro. I think I can get away with replacing the cpu with a Northwood P4 2.8Ghz 533 MHz fsb chip, but a motherboard replacement would make it a "new system" and M$ wouldn't let you move OEM XP licenses, the last I heard. The P4 will downclock to a 400 MHz FSB but the extra 500 MHz clocking on the CPU and going from 128kb to 512kB L2 cache should really help. The power supply is barely strong enough now, and the motherboard was made for the lower powered 130nm Northwoods, so I don't want to push my luck on the power issue. Do you need to stay Microsoft...or...can you go Linux? |
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David Ball
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I would love to go all Linux but I have some legacy stuff that needs Access and has tens of thousands of lines of Visual Studio 6 C++ code that use the access database. Also, even if I use Linux for a development environment for new projects, they need to be tested on Windows.
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I would love to go all Linux but I have some legacy stuff that needs Access and has tens of thousands of lines of Visual Studio 6 C++ code that use the access database. Also, even if I use Linux for a development environment for new projects, they need to be tested on Windows. I also have some machines that must remain Windows. I just upgraded all my Ubuntu 6.10 to 7.04. |
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Andre Kerstens
Forum moderator Project tester Volunteer tester 
Joined: Sep 11 06 Posts: 749 ID: 1 Credit: 15,199 RAC: 0 |
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Have you guys ever thought about running VM's? We have only Linux machines in our labs and most of these run Windows VM's as well for testing purposes. Most of our Linux machines have uptimes of over 200 days; try to do that on a Windows box :-) Also, that way you can run Boinc on Linux (often faster than linux) and do whatever you have to do at times on Windows. I like to say to our students that that is where Windows belongs: in a window :-)
I would love to go all Linux but I have some legacy stuff that needs Access and has tens of thousands of lines of Visual Studio 6 C++ code that use the access database. Also, even if I use Linux for a development environment for new projects, they need to be tested on Windows. ____________ D@H the greatest project in the world... a while from now! |
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2936 | Rating: 0
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David Ball
Forum moderator Volunteer tester
Joined: Sep 18 06 Posts: 274 ID: 115 Credit: 1,634,401 RAC: 0 |
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Have you guys ever thought about running VM's? We have only Linux machines in our labs and most of these run Windows VM's as well for testing purposes. Most of our Linux machines have uptimes of over 200 days; try to do that on a Windows box :-) Also, that way you can run Boinc on Linux (often faster than linux) and do whatever you have to do at times on Windows. I like to say to our students that that is where Windows belongs: in a window :-) That sounds ideal. Could you tell me what versions of Linux and Windows and what VM software you're using and maybe some about how to set it up. Does it involve a lot of Downloading or can you get everything on CD (I'm stuck on Dial-up) ? You have my email address if you don't want to say in the forum. Thanks, -- David ____________ The views expressed are my own. Facts are subject to memory error :-) Have you read a good science fiction novel lately? |
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Andre Kerstens
Forum moderator Project tester Volunteer tester
Joined: Sep 11 06 Posts: 749 ID: 1 Credit: 15,199 RAC: 0 |
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Hi David,
Have you guys ever thought about running VM's? We have only Linux machines in our labs and most of these run Windows VM's as well for testing purposes. Most of our Linux machines have uptimes of over 200 days; try to do that on a Windows box :-) Also, that way you can run Boinc on Linux (often faster than linux) and do whatever you have to do at times on Windows. I like to say to our students that that is where Windows belongs: in a window :-) ____________ D@H the greatest project in the world... a while from now! |
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ID:
2947 | Rating: 0
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David Ball
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Joined: Sep 18 06 Posts: 274 ID: 115 Credit: 1,634,401 RAC: 0 |
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Hi,
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ID:
2951 | Rating: 0
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Hi, Run CPU-Z or WCPUID to see what the CPU is really running at. |
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ID:
2952 | Rating: 0
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David Ball
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Joined: Sep 18 06 Posts: 274 ID: 115 Credit: 1,634,401 RAC: 0 |
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cpuz 1.35 says
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ID:
2953 | Rating: 0
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FSB: 99.6 MHz Shouldn't this be 133Mhz..?? 133*21=2793Mhz ;-) Edit: I think you should look in the Bios of the mobo and find out what can be altered. Max multiplier..?? Max FSB..?? ____________
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ID:
2954 | Rating: 0
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David Ball
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Joined: Sep 18 06 Posts: 274 ID: 115 Credit: 1,634,401 RAC: 0 |
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Hi Rene,
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ID:
2955 | Rating: 0
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To bad you can't change the bios settings, but at least you ended up with a system that's performing better.
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ID:
2956 | Rating: 0
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David Ball
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Joined: Sep 18 06 Posts: 274 ID: 115 Credit: 1,634,401 RAC: 0 |
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ID:
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Message boards : Cafe Docking : Fastest D@H crunching rig for under $500
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