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Next Build

T

tkam

[H]ard|DCer of the Month - Dec. 2012
Joined
Dec 18, 2007
Messages
436
So I'm starting to plan for my next build. I was initially thinking of doing a dual nehalem box since I actually don't have any i7/nehalem box yet. The other option I was thinking of was a triple or quad gtx275 box. The quad might be out though as case options (need a case w/ 8+ expansion slots) are limited and the power requirements are pretty damn high.

 
tkam said:
I was initially thinking of doing a dual nehalem box since I actually don't have any i7/nehalem box yet. The other option I was thinking of was a triple or quad gtx275 box.
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Why not combine the two? ;)

And an i7 CPU actually consumes less power than a GTX275 and puts out more PPD with the LinSMP client.
 
Well a 275 is $199 AR.
A 295 that is two 275s put together is $500.

The question is how much do you want to cram in your box now, and 6 months from now.

The premium of $50 a core might be worth is to save building another rig down the line, or get every bit out of the money you spend on PSU, mobo, RAM, and so on.
 
I get 3k ppd from a single notfred VM on a Phenom II 720 BE at 3.5 Ghz. A 955 BE should get about 6k or a little better with 2 VMs. I hear of 3.6-3.8+ on air pretty commonly with those. There are some good 3x and 4x PCIe boards out there that support AM2+ or AM3 for much less than you pay for a premium X58 board.
 
If i go the dual nehalem route the most i'd spring for is a pair of E5520s which run at 2.26ghz. No way I could justify spending much more. Wonder what kinda PPD I'd get with those.

The trip gtx 275 route is probably going to be much higher PPD and mostly likely cheaper as well.
 
Do you have a particular need for the Dual Nehalem box? Your talking about a pretty significant overhead just for that priviledge (MoBo price being the most obvious one) plus of course the actual cost of Nehalem based Xeons. On top of that, you're looking at the memory requirements to feed and placate two very powerful CPUs.

If you're looking at the just points a Triple GTX275 is going to be good for 30K PpD (or 25 to 28 PpD average due to slower WUs depending of course on your OC's). If you went with an i7 and X58 MoBo, depending on your OC, you can add another 5 to 8K PpD. You could very easily power this with a Corsair HX1000 or even possibly the TX850. This would be significantly cheaper than just the MoBo & CPUs for a Dual Nehalem rig. This is the route that I am looking at. I already have an i7 that is waiting in the wings. I'll probably get my new rig up and running in the next 2 months.

 
Are you going to be doing anything else with the rig or will it be a dedicated folder? If you do a lot of gaming it might be better to go with the graphics cards and say an AM3 combo. If you dont game much but you do some photo processing, video encoding, etc the i7s might be a little more money but as you said more power efficient and you might get more use out of them. Good luck with your decision. :)
 
Has anyone tried the new Istanbul 6-core AMD chips for folding? If the folding performance/clock speed is the same as it is on my 720 one of these Opty 2427s at 2.2 Ghz should make about 2k per VM or 6k per CPU. Closest thing pricewise to that is the Xeon L5520 at 2.26 Ghz.
 
Sounds like it would be a sick setup for sure, tkam. Although, how much wattage would a mobo with dual Nehalems use??
 
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