Who is Still Crunching with a 4-Processor Rig?

L

Linden

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Sep 8, 2005
Messages
1,199
Are you still using a 4P for distributed computing? If so, what program, what projects?

As for my systems, they are crunching BOINC projects typically 24 hours a day. Their resources are split 50/50 between World Computing Grid and Rosetta.

I haven't really kept up with the technological advancements of different projects in a long time. Is a 4P still something 'special,' or has it become simply a complicated and power hungry means for not-so-impressive production. Simply put, I'm wondering if my considerable monthly donation, as measured by electricity costs, would be better justified supporting another charity or in upgrading my DC hardware. Please be open with your comments. You won't hurt my feelings. :)
 
Last edited:
I still use a couple AMD 4P and a AMD 2P systems for crunching. They hold their own doing WCG, and short time-frame PG tasks.
Mostly run survers in the Fall, Winter and Spring to help heat my house. I shut them off in the Summer time.
Summer I just run one or two X58, X79 computers. They are on anyway for TV capture and file server duty.
 
Right now we face issue with WUs on bigger slot sizes ... Nothing above 24 ... Or very rare. Also with the end of BA you only get regular A4 projects; not the same level of points.
Right now GPUs are the way to fold; if you want to "upgrade" ...
 
ChristianVirtual said:
Right now we face issue with WUs on bigger slot sizes ... Nothing above 24 ... Or very rare. Also with the end of BA you only get regular A4 projects; not the same level of points.
Right now GPUs are the way to fold; if you want to "upgrade" ...
Click to expand...
About a year and a half ago, I moved my machines from Folding to BOINC projects, as I thought I could make more productive contributions to BOINC projects. So now, a year and a half later, I'm re-evaluating, again.
 
Linden said:
About a year and a half ago, I moved my machines from Folding to BOINC projects, as I thought I could make more productive contributions to BOINC projects. So now, a year and a half later, I'm re-evaluating, again.
Click to expand...
The 4P might not be as useful these days; one day in the far far future AVX get supported ... That could boost the performance again.
See here: FAH Blog — Folding@home

New Gromacs core. The Gromacs core continues to be a workhorse core for CPU clients and we are working on releasing an updated core with more broad hardware support, including support for AVX, which will give some donors an automatic performance boost.​

If your 2P boxes have enough PCI lanes a number of new GPUs ( Pascal ) can give you quite some PPD plus Linux fold a bit faster then Windows with GPUs.
 
Apologies, I was vague. By 're-evaluating,' my meaning was that 1) I must consider whether to shift the 4Ps over to other BOINC projects for which the computers might be better suited, 2) to keep them in their current employment, or 3) to scrap the machines altogether and rebuild. Currently, the 4Ps are crunching Rosetta work units and World Computing Grid tasks. These machines use a LOT of power, which is expensive. I could build several new computers for the price of operating these 4Ps over the course of just one year.

So really, it all boils down to this, with respect to 4Ps: To be or not to be? Yeah sure, I can't be fully objective; but at least I can try. Would I be better off scrapping these things and building newer computers with up-to-date CPUs/GPUs? I'm near a tipping point right now on literally pulling the plug - four plugs, actually, and dismantling these power hogs. According to BAM (BOINC information and management software/site), I'm number 80 in the world for Rosetta and number 8XX in the world for WCG. It would appear these 4Ps are performing well, but maybe it's actually not all that good, considering the high power consumption. In other words, it would be instructive to see baselines for hardware performance comparisons. In F@H, such baselines and benchmarks are readily available; not so with BOINC.
 
Last edited:
Linden, I still run 4P E5-4650 rigs but I'm not paying for power. I would say there's nothing special like there used to be with F@H BigAdv. I'm running BOINC splitting between WCG and Poem@Home. I recently decommissioned four of these systems and sent them to another site so I'm mainly back to 2-CPU rigs and a few GPU rigs. If I were looking for the best bang for the buck, I would concentrate on GPUs. A single-CPU, dual-GPU rig is probably the sweet spot.
 
The reason that the 4P's still do well at WCG/Rosetta is that they don't have optimized apps to take advantage of newer hardware. The G34 AMD chips do well compared to other rigs because of this. So technically, they are wasting available resources by not optimizing their code. If they did, you would see newer rigs mop the floor with the older and you probably wouldn't feel so hot about them any more. Just my opinion of course. The major advantage to the 4P's is still not having to support several boxes. The major disadvantage is when one goes down, you lose a ton of cores/threads. I just recently sent the single 4P rig I had on loan back to its owner due to trying to cut power usage and am debating on selling a 2P. Both were G34 setups. Neither were all that great at projects that supported AVX extensions like PrimeGrid. The Intel 2P on the other hand is still pretty good to use. So, depending on your socket type, you may want to try liquidating some of them to try and maximize your return for other upgrades. If you plan on continuing with Rosetta/WCG, GPU upgrades are pointless. If you want to move to other projects with newer hardware, then that would be another discussion. Moving to other projects with the same hardware, I would not recommend if it is AMD hardware as you probably will not be all that happy with it.
 
Good content guys, thanks. You're providing the type of feedback I was hoping for.
 
My 4P AMD socket F does about the same as my 4P G34 (stock 6172) and dual intel x5650. Doing WCG. Socket F throws off massive amount of heat though!!
The AMD 62xx and 63xx CPUs with AVX do not do as well as Intel CPUs (Sandy bridge and newer) with AVX . The AVX on AMD CPUs was not implemented properly for some reason. (As per primegrid forums)
You could consider upgrading to 62xx or 63xx series CPUs to get even more cores running. Those prices are coming down for used CPUs on ebay.

Bottom line IMHO is if your doing WCG keep the 4P rigs, lower the overclock or run them stock to save some electric. Overcocking them really draws a lot more power right?
Cut back some in the Summer or when it is warm out to lower A/C load/costs.
Maybe sell one off and buy a nice new GPU, for GPU grid crunching..
 
Bill1024 said:
Bottom line IMHO is if your doing WCG keep the 4P rigs, lower the overclock or run them stock to save some electric. Overcocking them really draws a lot more power right?
Cut back some in the Summer or when it is warm out to lower A/C load/costs.
Click to expand...
Ah, you made me check. Lowering the CPU reference clock to stock only lowered power consumption by about 50 Watts (per computer), which is not enough to make a difference either long or short term. But thanks for the suggestion. As it stands now, I'm probably going to let them complete their current tasks but to download no new tasks. They've run for several years faithfully; but I'm not accepting the power bill anymore.
 
Linden said:
Ah, you made me check. Lowering the CPU reference clock to stock only lowered power consumption by about 50 Watts (per computer), which is not enough to make a difference either long or short term. But thanks for the suggestion. As it stands now, I'm probably going to let them complete their current tasks but to download no new tasks. They've run for several years faithfully; but I'm not accepting the power bill anymore.
Click to expand...

Yeah I hear you on the electric bill part. 50 watts x 4 is 200 watts, or almost 5kw a day. 150kw a month. That adds up over a year
I don't know where you live but I am up in the North East and it gets cold here in the Fall and Winter.
Consider using them as heaters in the cold season. Better crunching than paying an oil/propane/natgas heating bill.

Sell them and build a nice gaming rig and crunch once in a while.
Sell them and go on a little vacation!!

Good luck
 
Still running F@H on my SM 4P using 6180SE CPUs. Not even close to getting the level of points as the old BA days, but still contributing nonetheless.

Bet you guys thought I never visited the DC forum anymore, didn't ya? ;)

Ax
 
Lots of people still running 2P and 4P for BOINC. I think there's always going to be projects that are CPU focused or can only run on CPU. So there is always value if you can stomach the power bill. Some of us found a way to get the power bill paid for by someone else, so we're still looking to crunch that way.
 
MGMCCALLEY said:
Lots of people still running 2P and 4P for BOINC. I think there's always going to be projects that are CPU focused or can only run on CPU.
Click to expand...
Maybe there others who would like to get into 64-Core BOINC crunching. My 4Ps are all going up for sale very shortly in the [H] DC trading forum. I'm not leaving DC, I'm just shifting to a less power intensive mode with different hardware. My power rates here in Alaska are pretty steep. If it weren't for the that, I'd keep running these machines for quite some time. They are a rather satisfying adventure - the most fun I've had in 17 years of computer building and tuning.
 
Nope, cold and dark, in storage. Probably ought to flog it.
 
plext0r said:
Let's go MGMCCALLEY! It's all you! ;)
Click to expand...

I got one. All I could afford at the moment, and I traded some GPU power for it. I'm also upgrading my 2P rigs to E5-2670s from 2620s, so I should be about tripling my WCG performance.
 
MGM wanted all four of my sale rigs; but I wouldn't let him. He would smoke all of you guys on the CPU projects; the rank and file [H]orde folders would slink away in shame, and the whole BOINC team would come tumbling down in disarray. :(

Couldn't let that happen!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top