Contemplating a dedicated Folding Box

B

Buckus

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Feb 17, 2004
Messages
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I'm contemplating a dedicated folding box and wanted to see what you guys thing would be the best bang for the buck. I would spend about $1,000. Not sure if it would be better to aim for a dual-GPU setup or more CPU cores. Also, AMD vs. Intel ppd, and Nvidia vs ATI/AMD.

Thanks
 
Haven't noticed you before so WELCOME!

There is some debate and thin data on X79 but what I have seen looks promising.

On a positive note if you keep an eye on the FS FT here in the folding section people have been selling dual quad rigs for less than that. In fact the other day I noted a dual quad for about half that. Those dual quad Intel rigs can largely be upgraded to dual hex making you bigadv capable in January.

Answers to specific questions Nvidia is a clear winner and Intel is also a clear winner. If you have free power GPU folding may be for you but most of us run big CPU folders on Linux. Excellent resources here for installing Ubuntu and then optimizing it.

Good luck and ask questions. I have never seen such a helpful group as here. I can't even tell you the last time I saw someone here type "search the forums" or equivalent. People here are just so nice.

On the dual 1366 socket front worth keeping an eye out for cheap SR2's as they can overclock the CPU of your choice. The Asus board is also dual socket but doesn't support overclocking so you will see the price is much cheaper on them here.

Dual socket Intel boards require Xeon badged CPU's but you can run a single I7 for initial setup or bios flashing etc.

On the ram front the lower latency and faster speed the better.

Good luck and happy hunting.
 
Some ideas here for this exact topic. Multiprocessor is the way to go these days with the upcoming bigadv thread minimum increase next month. Yes, you should be able to build a new bigadv-capable machine for $1000.
 
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