Folding and X2's

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dr_dirtnap

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 4, 2004
Messages
339
Anyone folding on an X2 yet? I'm wondering how well they are folding. If you actually get 2x the speed or if you take some kind of performace hit.

Thinking this might be a great way to go since the cost of power and AC might help offset the cost of the X2.
 
I wish I was... Does that count?

Folding mostly depends on CPU speed, and the x2s have two real cpus, so that's good. The bus bandwidth is effectively halved due to the fact that the 2 processors are on the same hypertransport link to everything else, but that shouldn't be a problem. I predict that an x2 will be almost exactly twice as fast as a single-core part for FAH purposes. And, you can play games and still get some folding done!
 
Wasn't there something about a MOBO that would hold 8 opterons on the forums a while back,or did I read that somewhere else?
 
Yeah, but the bummer is that current FAH client will only run up to 8 instances. Don't know if there is a fix around that. Maybe setting the affinity in the taskmanager.....
 
I don't think X2's release until next week.

Being as they are dual-core, the second core should outperform the first core due to not having to run the OS. There shouldn't be any significant performance hit from them being dual-core, but you might want to run at least 1GB RAM in order to run bigpackets (2 x 140MB of data + Windows XP = need lots of RAM).
 
codysown said:
Wasn't there something about a MOBO that would hold 8 opterons on the forums a while back,or did I read that somewhere else?
Click to expand...

This thread is the one about the 16 way Tyan. But since F@H only runs 8 sessions concurrently, you'd have to host half in a VPC type environment. But I'm not sure if VPC handles additional processors in such a way that is useful and or useable for a purpose such as that.

I just wish I were in a position to go to the Tech Tour and get one of those cheap dually bundles. Thats a killer deal for just a little driving.

 
EgyptBoy20 said:
2 X2's...Someone should try that!
Click to expand...

OK now I'm confused again. I was under the impression the X2s are socket 939, not 940 like the Opterons, and there are no dual 939 boards (and never will be)?

I've already decided I'm getting the X2 4400 and an Asus mobo this week, but should I wait for a 939 dual socket setup, if there is going to be such a thing?

edit---will the 939 chips run in a 940 board, double or single?
 
X2's are S939 (only one physical CPU suppoted). Opteron 265,270 and 275 would be the equivalent 2-processor S940 solution.


 
dr_dirtnap said:
Yeah, but the bummer is that current FAH client will only run up to 8 instances. Don't know if there is a fix around that. Maybe setting the affinity in the taskmanager.....
Click to expand...

It's easy, if you have 16 cores you run 8 linux clients and 8 WINE clients...
 
HTPC Rookie said:
OK now I'm confused again. I was under the impression the X2s are socket 939, not 940 like the Opterons, and there are no dual 939 boards (and never will be)?

I've already decided I'm getting the X2 4400 and an Asus mobo this week, but should I wait for a 939 dual socket setup, if there is going to be such a thing?

edit---will the 939 chips run in a 940 board, double or single?
Click to expand...
A) Yep, they're 939. However, AMD is moving away from 939 entirely and moving to only 940s. That 939 won't be good for much longer.
B) I'd save up and get a dual 940 and a 265 or so. Then you can get another later.
C) Yes, you can run one 939 in a dual (or single) 940 board IIRC. However, you can't use a 939 and a 940 together.
 
unhappy_mage said:
A) Yep, they're 939. However, AMD is moving away from 939 entirely and moving to only 940s. That 939 won't be good for much longer.
B) I'd save up and get a dual 940 and a 265 or so. Then you can get another later.
C) Yes, you can run one 939 in a dual (or single) 940 board IIRC. However, you can't use a 939 and a 940 together.
Click to expand...

Interesting AMD would can the S939 soon after they came out with a new (X2) series of chip. Hopefully that means they've already got something in the pipe even better.

If you can run a dual core 939 in a dual 940 mobo it would be perfect for what I want, the best of both worlds. The Opterons don't really interest me, although after building several dual systems at work they sure used to. Since it's folding and 3D rendering I want the power for, price difference between the high-end Optys and the X2s isn't worth it IMHO.

You wouldn't have a link to any mobos that say they take both a 939 and a 940 in their specs would you? Especially if they're dual socket 940 boards?

I've got $6,000 to spend on this system. I've already got the memory, drives, vid card, PS. Leaves just the mobo / case / chip(s).
 
HTPC Rookie said:
If you can run a dual core 939 in a dual 940 mobo it would be perfect for what I want, the best of both worlds. The Opterons don't really interest me,

You wouldn't have a link to any mobos that say they take both a 939 and a 940 in their specs would you? Especially if they're dual socket 940 boards?
Click to expand...
You can only run one dual core x2 in a dual 940 board, not two. You need opterons to run two physical chips. There's an extra HT link in the 2xx series processors, and three extras on the 8xx series. That's where the price difference comes in (as well as the fact that they're low volume products so they demand a premium).

I'll get a link if you want one in a minute.
 
Maybe I'll go ahead and get a dual 940 mobo, put just one X2 in it for now. Down the road get another mobo, a single 939, move the X2 to it, and get a couple dual core Opterons for the dual 940.

This could work out pretty well.
 
Sounds like a good plan, especially considering how cheap 939 boards will be.

On the other hand, consider how cheap dual opteron boards will be. You could just get a 939:board now and then get a duallie when they get cheap. The AMD plan is to keep adding more cores (they just announced plans for 4 on a single chip iirc), so it's not like you'll be completely out of date.
 
That's an even better plan.

For the single 939 board, I'd like to go Asus, most of my mobos now are Asus and not a problem with any of them. But for the dual Opteron, it's Tyan.

On the Asus, does anyone have experience with the Via K8T800 or K8T890 chipsets? I'm really not interested in SLI, so the nForce4 would be overkill.

With the Tyan, I'll take whatever they decide to use for a chipset.
 
Just over a year ago “Socket “A”” is dead threads were everywhere. Strange, you can still buy them. Then came the Socket “754” is dead, but AMD released all new 754 product and will continue to do so for a while. New motherboards are on the way too.

939 and 940 are alive and well and should continue for quite sometime. M2 is the replacement for 939 due sometime next year with a RAM change to DDR3, possibly.

X-2 will run the same as a dually (single 939 socket) giving each folding client 100% of each side of the CPU.

You can buy an 8 way Opteron board today (Monarch sells a whole machine sans CPU’s) which will support 8 dual core CPU’s.

If you keep waiting for the “next” technology you will never buy a new computer ;)
 
BiilR, your points are excellent ones, especially the wait for next technology one. Unhappy_mage and I were looking at a most-cost-effective, with future-upgrade-path-considered point of view. I like his ideas..it jives very well with my future needs and planned path.

However of course, who knows what's around the corner that'll make my X2 939, and dual-dual-core Opteron setups look like a Cyrix chip? If it's a year from now, I can deal with it. If it's next month, I'm gonna be seriously bummed I spent what I did on instant obsolescence.

I'm still having a hard time finding a 940 mobo that says a 939 chip will run in it.
 
My brother tells me it doesn't work. I don't believe him, but still, he's entitled to his opinion. :rolleyes:

Edit: D'oh! He's right! What are the odds, I ask you? According to amd's builder's guide, on page 31, the pins are laid out differently, so they won't fit in each others' sockets nohow. Too bad.
 
Dang I hate bowing to my brother! LOL

It's all good though, I'll just run with what we discussed above, get the X2 running now, wait for the Opty stuff to drop in price.

Thanks for the help!
 
HTPC Rookie said:
BiilR, your points are excellent ones, especially the wait for next technology one. Unhappy_mage and I were looking at a most-cost-effective, with future-upgrade-path-considered point of view. I like his ideas..it jives very well with my future needs and planned path.

However of course, who knows what's around the corner that'll make my X2 939, and dual-dual-core Opteron setups look like a Cyrix chip? If it's a year from now, I can deal with it. If it's next month, I'm gonna be seriously bummed I spent what I did on instant obsolescence.

I'm still having a hard time finding a 940 mobo that says a 939 chip will run in it.
Click to expand...

Lol, no, no way will a 939 chip work in a 940 board. Two very different designs. The 939 X2 chip due this month is (for the moment) the latest and greatest AMD as to offer and is in direct competition to similar product to Intel.

For most people X2 really won’t be any advantage for a while, but, for us folders it sure will, it will replace the old dually design with a much faster alternative and the best part It’s a proven over clocker. It’s also substantially cheaper then dual opterons, at least for the time being.

Were I looking to start over, or add on, X2 would be the logical choice for both a good gamer and great folding machine.

Luck
 
LOL unhappy_mage and I both learned something new yesterday, and it doesn't affect my build plans, so it's all good!

Overclocking the 4400 sounds like a plan. Anyone have experience with pushing them yet? Wondering just how high they'll go and still be stable.
 
Putting together a pair of X2 computers (4 cores total) is cheaper than putting together one dually Socket 940 board with dual-core opterons. The dual-core opterons start at about $900 and go up to around $1400, and the top speed is 2.2Ghz. You could probably get 2 X2 2.2Ghz processors for the price of one dual-core Opteron, not to mention the X2 can use cheaper motherboards and RAM (ECC not required).
 
Buckus said:
Putting together a pair of X2 computers (4 cores total) is cheaper than putting together one dually Socket 940 board with dual-core opterons. The dual-core opterons start at about $900 and go up to around $1400, and the top speed is 2.2Ghz. You could probably get 2 X2 2.2Ghz processors for the price of one dual-core Opteron, not to mention the X2 can use cheaper motherboards and RAM (ECC not required).
Click to expand...

You're saying two physical, seperate X2 systems? A path I hadn't really even thought of. Could work out very cost effective, I've got the drives, vid cards, memory, power supplies little stuff like keyboards NICs and rom drives already, so all I'd need is two mobos, two chips, and two cases....guessing about 1800 bucks total ($1300 chips, $300 mobos, $200 cases).

Hmmmm....beddy interesting capi-tahn
 
Anyone have a good word on Socket 939 pricing for DX2s?

Right now, AMD's pricing structure looks like AMD knows it has a more elegant dual-core solution than Intel, and they're making the buyer (us!) pay for it if we are willing/able to. I know it's part of the confusion game, but...

At this point, I would like to only do platform upgrades, not CPU upgrades. I'd rather jump to dual-core because it's it's like dual-CPU w/o the hassles. I'd rather go AMD because NetBurst CPUs throttle up to be hogs when you load the CPU. NetBurst CPUs seem to idle very well, but when you load them with Folding, the power consumption skyrockets past AMD levels. If Intel woke up and offered a dual Pentium-M solution, I'd jump on that and even pay a small price premium..

I don't have a pressing need to upgrade (other than to get Folding points) since I'm always running different boxes for different tasks, but AMD doesn't seem to be pricing their dx2 solution to be comptetive w/Intel's offerings, so I personally won't upgrade my mobo/CPU/ram right now.

I suspect that part of the pricing is that they do not want to S939 to price gouge their S940 solutions - after all, has any enthusiast web site been given review hardware to answer whether or not multiple HTransport buses actually make that much of a difference in the consumer market? If you find one, let me know.

I suspect that in non-server apps, single HTransport doesn't yield a great gain for most apps. It's always hard to benchmark server hardware, even if you have the resources to do it right. AMD has the resources and they know they're spanking butt with the Opteron solutions. I think they're over-pricing the S939 dx2s because they're afraid that cheap S939s will kill their S940 market, dx2 or not.

When I'm at home, I'm mainly interested in my recreation, work, and Folding! But, I fold on the cheap as much as I can. For instance, hardware costs for my dual Xenon@2GHz w/2 73GB UltraSCSI-320 drives and a gig of ECC ram were $1100 about TWO years ago. It's a Dell unit that I bought from a deal listing in this forum. It pulls <200 watts folding 4 instances. It was ~$700 shipped and the drives were listed at the time for more than $300 each, so I could have parted the system out if I needed the money, but I didn't because it is so buttery smooth (because of the drives and CPU) to use as a workstation.

S939 dx2 for the right price sounds good for me. I have more CPUs than mobos right now, and I'd rather not add to my collection, but in the near term, if the AMD dx2 pricing doesn't drop, I'll need to start looking at doing SocketA upgrades and I'll ask for advice here.

What I'm folding with doesn't seem to be cutting it these days.
 
Ok, so yesterday I ordered (from the 'egg of course) an A8V Deluxe, a gig of Rosewill memory (which from what I'm reading AFTER it has shipped is not compatible with the A8V (shi-ott!), will order some Corsair off the approved list I guess), an Antec TrueBlue 480 PS, a Swiftech MCX64-V, and a Silverstone SST-TJ01 case.

And of course as of yesterday when I ordered all this about noon, the A64 X2 4400 chips were sold out. They have the 4600 in stock, but the price jump isn't worth it IMHO. Worst part is that as of 7 AM Friday morning they had the 4400 chips in stock, but I couldn't order because I had to drive off to work. Got the 4400 on backorder though.

Going to set this up with SCSI array running (8) U160 10K Seagate 36GB drives in (software) RAID-5, with an Adaptec 29160 card, which will be of course plugged into a 32 bit slot on the A8V (not worried about that at this point, but might be fun to find a S939 mobo with a 64 bit slot later). Toss in an old AGP 8X 9200 card, and of course the DVD-R and CD-R drives.

This will be my experiment system, if everything works OK, and it's as snappy as I'm hoping, then I'll go for the 4800 setup.

Any recommendations / advice / flames / etc.? Anything I could have done better, keeping in mind it's just an experimental / learning system?
 
KodiakStar said:
I hate you.


:D

in a [H] sort of way.
Click to expand...

LOL maybe I outta take the / flames part out?

Mainly what I'm still scratching the skull about is, my main use for dual-proc and / or dual-core is for 3D rendering using Bryce (and of course Folding).

So I'm wondering if it's the processor that does most of the work, the video card just spits out what's been rendered already? Would I see any gain with rendering a 3D movie with a faster vid card? I'm not a gamer at all, have a PS2 for that. So would it be worth it for me to get a faster video interface mobo and a faster vid card for the 4800 setup?

Also, I am a STRONG believer in SCSI and FCAL for storage. But I don't see a S939 mobo with a 64 bit slot coming out, ever, since that'll probably be used only on the server (Opteron) side of things. So, it's either PATA or SATA. Should I wait until the SATA-2 dust (price) settles for drives like the Raptor, get a S939 mobo with support for that spec? Or just go with a couple of the WD 7200 250GB drives I already have, run with the on-board Promise RAID controller on the A8V?
 
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