Ideas for a 16-thread build (bigadv)

[Tobit]

Most of you know I am a beta tester and love doing this and pushing the work units and cores to their limits and reporting it all back to Stanford. Y'all know I typically will also setup particular boxen with specific beta testing goals in mind. For example, my current farm of five classic clients.

Without going into a lot of details as to my goals with this box, I'm looking for ideas on building a new bigadv cruncher for my farm that a) has 16 threads (no more, no less) and b) will complete a typical bigadv unit in a day and a half and c) will not break the bank (no exotic CPUs or an SR-2).

I figure something like a dual E5530 config might be my best bet although it is still a tad slower than my day and a half goal. I am currently "borrowing" a dual E5530 setup now and it completes a typical bigadv unit in almost exactly two days. However, although I am grateful for the use of this hardware and it is proving very useful, I don't have the full control over it that I would like.

Dual E5530's run at right around the 28 minute mark, I'd like to be around the 22-24 minute per frame mark on a 6900.

Any other ideas or just continually monitor eBay for the best 8-thread Gainestown chips I can find?

 

[sirmonkey1985]

yeah scratch the 16 cores and go 24 cores with 2x12 core magny-cours then you will be ready to upgrade to bulldozer if the time ever comes that those arent powerful enough

 

[Tobit]

I have 8-thread and 24-thread machines already, specifically looking for a 16-thread build here.

 

[sirmonkey1985]

then how about a 48 core beast instead.. 16 is going backwards damnit!

 

[may i be worthy]

There used to be a boot.ini switch you could use to boot windows with certain number of cores - but I suppose it would be hard to tell windows which cores to disable on a hyperthreading two socket system.

And I know that is not the same thing as testing on a real 16 core machine, but it certainly would be closer than manually hacking affinities after FAH has launched. Just a thought.

 

[sirmonkey1985]

There used to be a boot.ini switch you could use to boot windows with certain number of cores - but I suppose it would be hard to tell windows which cores to disable on a hyperthreading two socket system.

And I know that is not the same thing as testing on a real 16 core machine, but it certainly would be closer than manually hacking affinities after FAH has launched. Just a thought.

all depends on how the processor internally lists the cores. if the physical cores are 0-3 and hyperthreaded are 4-7 then it would work by telling it how many cores to use per processor. the boot.ini thing still works. but i've only done it on processors with physical cores and not hyperthreaded cores.

 

[Tobit]

Looks like a pair of X5550's might work nicely. Couple options out there for these chips at a decent-ish price.

 

[amdgamer]

What about an Asus or Tyan dual G34 motherboard loaded up with a pair of Opteron 6134's@ 2.3ghz? I don't know what your TPF's would be though, but you would get your 16 physical cores.

It sure would be nice to see some more AMD processors folding for the team.

 

[Tobit]

What about an Asus or Tyan dual G34 motherboard loaded up with a pair of Opteron 6134's@ 2.3ghz? I don't know what your TPF's would be though, but you would get your 16 physical cores.

Yeah, I'll have to think about this. There's a definitely shortage of AMD bigadv all around due to the generally low clock speeds of AMD processors and usually lower cache sizes. I'll give this some thought.

 

[Kendrak]

You could buy my dual e5530 SR-2 rig.......

Move the clocks up and down to hit you TPF goal(s)

 

[lehmann]

thats a easy one tobit build a 24 core boxed use your 16 threads and put the rest in my name

 

[sirmonkey1985]

What about an Asus or Tyan dual G34 motherboard loaded up with a pair of Opteron 6134's@ 2.3ghz? I don't know what your TPF's would be though, but you would get your 16 physical cores.

It sure would be nice to see some more AMD processors folding for the team.

newegg was even selling 3ghz 8 core magny's as well. i think they were going for like 2 grand a piece though but prices have dropped considerably on the magny's since then.. hell might even be able to find some 8 core ES chips for sell on fleabay. should have no problems hitting mid/high 3ghz range on them.

found the ones you mentioned amd, 100 bucks less then newegg on ebay for 480 bucks a piece.
http://cgi.ebay.com/AMD-Opteron-613...urs-/150518364094?pt=CPUs&hash=item230b97f7be

 

[musky]

Dual X5550 (2.93 w/ turbo) - 1 day 13 hours on a P6900. Under Linux, it would meet your goal of a day and a half. For those of you curious, that is 58K ppd, and this one is drawing 275W with an 80+ Gold PSU. That puts it a little over 210 ppd/W.

 

[amdgamer]

Yeah, I'll have to think about this. There's a definitely shortage of AMD bigadv all around due to the generally low clock speeds of AMD processors and usually lower cache sizes. I'll give this some thought.

Yeah, from a beta testing standpoint I bet it would be very useful exactly because there arn't a whole lot of people running AMD Opteron setups. I don't know whether it could meet your deadline preferences though, although overclocking is a solution as Monkey said if you can find some unlocked "special" 8 core Magny chips.

You could buy my dual e5530 SR-2 rig.......

Move the clocks up and down to hit you TPF goal(s)

You are selling your SR2?

I wonder whether Tobit is looking for 16 physical cores or just 16 logical cores

thats a easy one tobit build a 24 core boxed use your 16 threads and put the rest in my name

Haha! That's definately a good one.

newegg was even selling 3ghz 8 core magny's as well. i think they were going for like 2 grand a piece though but prices have dropped considerably on the magny's since then.. hell might even be able to find some 8 core ES chips for sell on fleabay. should have no problems hitting mid/high 3ghz range on them.

found the ones you mentioned amd, 100 bucks less then newegg on ebay for 480 bucks a piece.
http://cgi.ebay.com/AMD-Opteron-613...urs-/150518364094?pt=CPUs&hash=item230b97f7be

You guys might remember that I was considered a dual 8 core Magny build before I decided to commit to using a Gulftown for folding2, but I would be very curious to see someone running dual 8 core Magnys for folding. The best part as you stated earlier is that he would have a system that would be nice and ready for Bulldozer and thus a potential for a future dual Interlagos upgrade which would yield 32 physical cores

 

[sirmonkey1985]

well at that time amdgamer the prices were nuts on the magny's. now that bulldozer is coming out theres not much use for them so the prices have dropped a ton. but clock for clock AMD's magny cours kill xeons when it comes to F@H. i mean hell take a look at e10's rig when it was a duel socket and quad socket. quad socket hes running 48 cores at 1.9ghz and is head to head with a 24 thread 4.3ghz xeon.

though 75% of that performance in bigadv is thanks to the quad channel DDR3. but yeah over the long term G34 is the way to go. AMD wont be dropping G34 support for at least another 3-4 years. where as if you drop a grand on lga-1366 xeons. support disapears in late Q2 2011 when its replaced with the new socket. the only problem with the AMD side is that server board manufactures hate updating bios to support newer processors, especially Asus.

 

[musky]

well at that time amdgamer the prices were nuts on the magny's. now that bulldozer is coming out theres not much use for them so the prices have dropped a ton. but clock for clock AMD's magny cours kill xeons when it comes to F@H. i mean hell take a look at e10's rig when it was a duel socket and quad socket. quad socket hes running 48 cores at 1.9ghz and is head to head with a 24 thread 4.3ghz xeon.

How do you figure this is close? You are comparing a 12 physical core Intel system to a 48 physical core AMD system. "Clock for clock" to me implies you are starting with the same number of cores. Give me 48 Gulftown cores at 1.9 GHz and I will smoke the MC system, assuming F@H can scale to 96 threads...

 

[may i be worthy]

I think there is room for everyone to be happy - AMD fans can look at 10e's rig and feel pretty damn good, Intel fans can look at SR2s and say it took 48 cores to pip my 12...

And platform agnostics like me are happy there is competition, although I wish there were more. I could not seriously consider AMD for my next build as my work software will not scale as well to 48 cores.

 

[jfb9301]

And platform agnostics like me are happy there is competition, although I wish there were more. I could not seriously consider AMD for my next build as my work software will not scale as well to 48 cores.

I could not have said it better myself. I've been running multi-threaded machines for my home desktop since '99 or so. You have to build the machine to the application. Or Select the software to the machine. Lots of slow cores goes well with software that scales well with lots of SMP cores. A few fast cores goes well with stuff that thread hogs.

 

[Tobit]

I'd like to play with a pair of AMD 6148's but with the high price of both the board and CPUs, I might not be able to do it. Better bang for my buck will probably be in the form of used Intel X5550's or new retail boxed E5620's.

 

[sirmonkey1985]

How do you figure this is close? You are comparing a 12 physical core Intel system to a 48 physical core AMD system. "Clock for clock" to me implies you are starting with the same number of cores. Give me 48 Gulftown cores at 1.9 GHz and I will smoke the MC system, assuming F@H can scale to 96 threads...

ha ha ha ... no... but i see you miss the point i was making by a few miles. oh well not awake enough and to tired to bother explaining it, maybe later.


btw that whole 48 physical core thing vs 12 physical core's on a hyperthreaded xeon thing honestly doesnt fly but if that excuse makes people happier then feel free to keep using it..

 

[musky]

ha ha ha ... no... but i see you miss the point i was making by a few miles. oh well not awake enough and to tired to bother explaining it, maybe later.


btw that whole 48 physical core thing vs 12 physical core's on a hyperthreaded xeon thing honestly doesnt fly but if that excuse makes people happier then feel free to keep using it..

Yeah, don't bother. Not trying to start a fight. You run your AMD machines and I'll run my Intel machines and we'll all be happy.

 

[10e]

Dual X5550 (2.93 w/ turbo) - 1 day 13 hours on a P6900. Under Linux, it would meet your goal of a day and a half. For those of you curious, that is 58K ppd, and this one is drawing 275W with an 80+ Gold PSU. That puts it a little over 210 ppd/W.

This is probably the best bet right here for the fastest stock, non-overclocked 16 core system. No need to worry about BCLKs and DDR3 2500 RAM

well at that time amdgamer the prices were nuts on the magny's. now that bulldozer is coming out theres not much use for them so the prices have dropped a ton. but clock for clock AMD's magny cours kill xeons when it comes to F@H. i mean hell take a look at e10's rig when it was a duel socket and quad socket. quad socket hes running 48 cores at 1.9ghz and is head to head with a 24 thread 4.3ghz xeon.

though 75% of that performance in bigadv is thanks to the quad channel DDR3. but yeah over the long term G34 is the way to go. AMD wont be dropping G34 support for at least another 3-4 years. where as if you drop a grand on lga-1366 xeons. support disapears in late Q2 2011 when its replaced with the new socket. the only problem with the AMD side is that server board manufactures hate updating bios to support newer processors, especially Asus.

Hopefully they will update, or I have a $450 doorstop named Asus KGPE-D16!

The quad channel RAM is advantageous because it is feeding dual channel to every 6 cores, BUT that is with the RAM only going up to DDR3 1333. Imagine what could happen if noticeable improvements could be brought on by DDR3 1600 quad channel bandwidth.

Moar D!

I think there is room for everyone to be happy - AMD fans can look at 10e's rig and feel pretty damn good, Intel fans can look at SR2s and say it took 48 cores to pip my 12...

And platform agnostics like me are happy there is competition, although I wish there were more. I could not seriously consider AMD for my next build as my work software will not scale as well to 48 cores.

I am pretty agnostic as well and happy with the competition. Had those 6168 Black Edition chips not fallen into my lap after already having two retail versions I'd be still just working on overclocking them to get ..... Moar D!

My SR-2 and SkankBox48 © are indicative of my hardware agnostic attitude. I think at the end of the day we are spending a lot of time talking about cores, but really the 24 to 48 core migration also meant one big change:

More FPU!

But really if SR-2 and Xeon overclocking didn't exist the price difference in Canada would drive me towards Magny Cours. The 6168s here are nearly $300.00 less than the x5650s retail.

From what I've read on FoldingForum, brute FPU force is what drives folding@home CPU performance, and I know for you it would also help in the rendering arena, so we'll see what 2011 brings. I'm thinking more FPU power and more cores per chip, so win-win for Folding Thunder and Render Lightning!

Wow what a melodramatic post.

 

[10e]

Yeah, don't bother. Not trying to start a fight. You run your AMD machines and I'll run my Intel machines and we'll all be happy.

You both seem pretty darn happy to me!

I think even a 24 core + 24 thread box with chips running at 2.66 Ghz would be pretty damn fast in F@H if Intel Cores+threads scale like the AMD cores do.