Re: Mersenne: please recommend a machine
On Saturday 08 March 2003 03:35, spike66 wrote: Some of you hardware jockeys please give me a clue. I have two machines at home running GIMPS 24-7. One is a P4-2Ghz. The other is a 5 yr old 350 Mhz PII, which is in need of a tech refresh. Clearly there is more to computer performance than clock speed, but for GIMPS I suppose clock speed is everything. Is it? My other machine already has a DVD writer, networked etc, so I need not rebuy that. What should I buy? I have no hard spending limit, but I am looking for value and suppose that a thousand dollar machine would be more than adequate. Does AMD vs Intel matter? Does bus speed matter? 1) In this position you are _far_ better off building your own system. It's interesting in itself, offers a cash saving when you can delete unwanted parts or recycle old peripherals and is the only way you can guarantee to get optimised performance. Medium or large systems builders catering for the retail or direct sales market will almost always not be able tell you the specification of important parts of the system - in fact just about all they will be able to tell you is processor type, speed HDD size. This is like choosing an automobile on the basis of number of cylinders, top speed number of seats - usually there are other factors you might want to consider. 2) If you want to use the system for general purpose tasks then there is something to be said for AMD systems. But, because of the efficiency of SSE2 code in Prime95/mprime, a P4 system is _much_ better value for money if that's what you're intending to use the system for. 3) Whether you go for AMD or Athlon, avoid the top two or three CPU speeds. You pay increasingly large amounts of money for relatively small increases in speed. In any case, if you're building a system which is otherwise state of the art, you will be able to upgrade the processor in one year to a processor chip faster than today's top of the range, keep the old one and still have money in your pocket. (The old processor chip can of course be sold on eBay). 4) The chipset for P4 systems is in a state of flux at the moment. There are several available but only two worth considering: i850e and e7205. The differences here are substantial e.g. i850e supports 533 MHz RDRAM (PC1066) whereare the e7205 supports dual-channel DDRAM. Actually the theoretical memory bandwidth are the same - but DDR is much cheaper easier to obtain. Also the e7205 chipset, and only the e7205 chipset, supports hyperthreading. Systems using single-channel DDRAM memory will be considerably slower with the same clock speed - probably 10-15%. The way I look at it, the ~$200 required to buy a 10% faster processor is better spent on a more efficient memory subsystem. Same applies with RDRAM - using cheap PC800 RDRAM in a system which supports PC1066 is a very bad compromise. The last two systems I've built have been as follows: P4-2533 / Asus P4T533-C / 4 x 128MB PC1066 RDRAM P4-2666 / Asus P4G8X / 2 x 256MB PC2100 DDRAM Neither of these mobos are cheap, but bear in mind that the P4G8X has just about everything you might need on board, except the graphics adapter. (6 USBv2, 2 Firewire, 6 channel audio, gigabit LAN as well as the still-standard PS/2, serial parallel ports). It also supports RAID but only on the two serial ATA ports it boasts in addition to the two standard IDE ports. The combination I used for the P4-266 system should come in _well_ under $1000. You could probably recycle the old peripherials (monitor, kb, mouse, floppy, CD, hard disk) from your old P2-350 unless you really feel like shelling out. You _might_ be able to recycle the old case as well - however you will probably need to replace the PSU with a new one in order to supply the power requirements of a P4 system. Look for PSUs rated over 300W with dual fans - I particularly reccomend the Enermax PSU with rheostat fan speed control because it's quiet effective, though certainly not cheap. In any event it would be worthwhile considering replacing the case with a new, top-end version in order to get decent cooling without having to have noisy fans. The Coolermaster ATC-200/201 cases are very well built, elegant and have 4 quiet fans - cooler and much quieter than one standard one. Thermaltake Xaser cases are cool and also feature multiple fans with a speed controller; they're significantly cheaper and undoubtedly adequate but much tinnier in build quality. You should also consider the Zalman CPU cooler instead of the retail Intel unit. It's very effective and very quiet (except when turned up to maximum, which shouldn't be neccessary!) Adding a Coolermaster case Zalman fan to the suggested P4-266/P4G8X system will get you close to the $1000 mark. The last wrinkle here is that you will probably _not_ be able to recycle the graphics card from your old system. All decent P4 mobos _require_ an AGP graphics card capable of
Re: Mersenne: please recommend a machine
On Sat, Mar 08, 2003 at 09:11:38AM +, Brian J. Beesley wrote: You _might_ be able to recycle the old case as well - however you will probably need to replace the PSU with a new one in order to supply the power requirements of a P4 system. Look for PSUs rated over 300W with dual fans - I particularly reccomend the Enermax PSU with rheostat fan speed control because it's quiet effective, though certainly not cheap. While we're at it -- is it possible nowadays to get power supplies _without_ fans, or at least with only one? I removed my (rather noisy) SCSI disks a month or so ago in favour of running diskless over NFS (unfortunately, I can't get the gigabit cabling to work, so it's `only' 100mbit ATM), so what I have left of fans is: - One 12dB CPU fan (80mm -- it used to be a problem that the CPU got hot, think 85°C, but after getting a proper heat sink it rarely goes over 60°C) - One microscopic fan on the graphics card - The two power supply fans (one 80mm and one 120mm) It's funny -- when the disks and the CPU cooler noise goes away, you suddenly start to care about the power supply, even though it is rather quiet already. As I barely have any equipment left in the PC anymore (an Athlon XP 1700+, some RAM, two rather old graphics cards, a network card and a sound card) I don't think I'm going to need very much power either... Anybody know what my options are if I want a silent power supply? :-) /* Steinar */ -- Homepage: http://www.sesse.net/ _ Unsubscribe list info -- http://www.ndatech.com/mersenne/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers
RE: Mersenne: please recommend a machine
I found this article to be helpful - http://www.hardcoreware.net/reviews/review-118-1.htm But, be prepared to shell out some doh. Thanks, brandon -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Steinar H. Gunderson Sent: Saturday, March 08, 2003 7:49 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Mersenne: please recommend a machine On Sat, Mar 08, 2003 at 09:11:38AM +, Brian J. Beesley wrote: You _might_ be able to recycle the old case as well - however you will probably need to replace the PSU with a new one in order to supply the power requirements of a P4 system. Look for PSUs rated over 300W with dual fans - I particularly reccomend the Enermax PSU with rheostat fan speed control because it's quiet effective, though certainly not cheap. While we're at it -- is it possible nowadays to get power supplies _without_ fans, or at least with only one? I removed my (rather noisy) SCSI disks a month or so ago in favour of running diskless over NFS (unfortunately, I can't get the gigabit cabling to work, so it's `only' 100mbit ATM), so what I have left of fans is: - One 12dB CPU fan (80mm -- it used to be a problem that the CPU got hot, think 85°C, but after getting a proper heat sink it rarely goes over 60°C) - One microscopic fan on the graphics card - The two power supply fans (one 80mm and one 120mm) It's funny -- when the disks and the CPU cooler noise goes away, you suddenly start to care about the power supply, even though it is rather quiet already. As I barely have any equipment left in the PC anymore (an Athlon XP 1700+, some RAM, two rather old graphics cards, a network card and a sound card) I don't think I'm going to need very much power either... Anybody know what my options are if I want a silent power supply? :-) /* Steinar */ -- Homepage: http://www.sesse.net/ _ Unsubscribe list info -- http://www.ndatech.com/mersenne/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers _ Unsubscribe list info -- http://www.ndatech.com/mersenne/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers
Re: Mersenne: please recommend a machine
whooops. I just sent a reply to 'Spike66's query on new machines to a completely differnet list by accident. Total brainfart. here's what I meant to post here Some of you hardware jockeys please give me a clue. I have two machines at home running GIMPS 24-7. One is a P4-2Ghz. The other is a 5 yr old 350 Mhz PII, which is in need of a tech refresh. Clearly there is more to computer performance than clock speed, but for GIMPS I suppose clock speed is everything. Is it? My other machine already has a DVD writer, networked etc, so I need not rebuy that. What should I buy? I have no hard spending limit, but I am looking for value and suppose that a thousand dollar machine would be more than adequate. Does AMD vs Intel matter? Does bus speed matter? The P4's significantly outperform currently available AMD processors in Mersenne due to SSE2 instructions. AMD CPUs are faster at some things at the same clock speeds, however, P4's are available at much higher clock speeds which more than compensates. Also, the Intel motherboard chipsets tend to have better implementations of PCI, AGP, with higher IO throughput and better compatibility. my current preferred machine on a balanced cost/performance basis is as follows... P4-2.53Ghz (533Mhz bus, retail version w/ Intel heatsink) Asus or Intel brand motherboard based on i845pe chipset with onboard LAN and Sound 512MB-1GB of 333Mhz DDR ram (aka PC2700) NVIDIA Geforce4 Ti4200 Seagate Baracuda ATA IV or V, 80 or 120GB. Toshiba 16X DVD-ROM TDK 48X CD-RW dropped into a nice solid 'aluminum' chassis such as an Antec or Lian Li with temperature controlled 80mm 'whisper' fans, and a quality 300W or so power supply. My current computer is way too noisy, I want to rectify that. note, I haven't actually BOUGHT this machine yet, but I'm getting closer. Also, Intel CPU prices are dropping again as they just made a wholesale price adjustment, so its quite possible the cost/performance point is about to move up another notch to 2.66Ghz. _ Unsubscribe list info -- http://www.ndatech.com/mersenne/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers
