LightningZ71
New Member
- Joined
- Feb 11, 2015
- Messages
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Hello all,
I've decided to return to distributed computing after a decade long break. Back when seti@home got going, I was an enthusiastic supporter, starting a team in my home town among my friends and getting my employer to donate after hours time on their non-essential systems to the project. That all eventually came to an end as I got married and had kids. Fast forward to today, I'm finally finding myself with some time on my hands, and a bit of a budget to put towards a hobby. I'd like to get back into supporting distributed computing again.
This is what I'll be starting with:
HP Proliant ML350 G5 (currently 1 X Xeon 5430, quad core, 2.66ghz, 6mb l2; 12 GB ram, lots of hard disk space: this will be doing double duty as the home file and media server, I have plans to get the second processor kit to up it to 8 cores)
3 X Dell OptiPlex 780 (one Q8400, 2 with Pentium dual cores, though, I'm soon getting two more Q8400s, 4GB ram each)
1 X HP PC with an earlier Core II dual core and 4GB ram
My best GPU is an old, cheap Geforce 210. I realize that its almost useless for GPU processing.
I have a couple of questions:
1) I can get three Geforce GT730s for the Proliant server (its got 3 X PCI-E X8 slots for them) for dirt cheap. While they aren't computing powerhouses, they have a later model GPU core which supports OpenCL and CUDA 3.5, so they should be useful for a few more years. They're also low power and not too heavy on heat generation (and I hear that the cores overclock well enough). I can't go overboard with high draw video cards as I am going to run into the limits on the electrical circuit to the office/media room where this is all going to be installed. One day, I'll run a new 20 amp circuit into that room, but that's a bit pricey at the moment.
2) Is it worth it to go into F@H with these systems with almost a total lack of GPU performance? Is WCG better for CPU only systems?
I also noticed that a several of you were into high core count systems. If things go well for me with the Proliant that I have, I'm considering spending some hobby budget on this particular system from www.savemyserver.com
HP DL580 G5 4 X Xeon X7460 Hex core 2.4Ghz processors, 32 GB ram $766
That's 24 cores and 8 PCI-E slots with an option for three more if I buy the bus expansion adapter.
I just can't beat that price per core no matter where I go to look. While I know that those are essentially Core 2 based Xeons, they are still decent with respect to throughput.
Also, if it looks like CPU processing is just not getting it done for any of the projects by later this year when I go to buy, I can instead just get one with 4 X L7345 xeons (the lower power ones to reduce the power draw) and 32 GB ram for $286 and get the PCI-E extender and put my money into better GPUs.
Any thoughts on that system?
I've decided to return to distributed computing after a decade long break. Back when seti@home got going, I was an enthusiastic supporter, starting a team in my home town among my friends and getting my employer to donate after hours time on their non-essential systems to the project. That all eventually came to an end as I got married and had kids. Fast forward to today, I'm finally finding myself with some time on my hands, and a bit of a budget to put towards a hobby. I'd like to get back into supporting distributed computing again.
This is what I'll be starting with:
HP Proliant ML350 G5 (currently 1 X Xeon 5430, quad core, 2.66ghz, 6mb l2; 12 GB ram, lots of hard disk space: this will be doing double duty as the home file and media server, I have plans to get the second processor kit to up it to 8 cores)
3 X Dell OptiPlex 780 (one Q8400, 2 with Pentium dual cores, though, I'm soon getting two more Q8400s, 4GB ram each)
1 X HP PC with an earlier Core II dual core and 4GB ram
My best GPU is an old, cheap Geforce 210. I realize that its almost useless for GPU processing.
I have a couple of questions:
1) I can get three Geforce GT730s for the Proliant server (its got 3 X PCI-E X8 slots for them) for dirt cheap. While they aren't computing powerhouses, they have a later model GPU core which supports OpenCL and CUDA 3.5, so they should be useful for a few more years. They're also low power and not too heavy on heat generation (and I hear that the cores overclock well enough). I can't go overboard with high draw video cards as I am going to run into the limits on the electrical circuit to the office/media room where this is all going to be installed. One day, I'll run a new 20 amp circuit into that room, but that's a bit pricey at the moment.
2) Is it worth it to go into F@H with these systems with almost a total lack of GPU performance? Is WCG better for CPU only systems?
I also noticed that a several of you were into high core count systems. If things go well for me with the Proliant that I have, I'm considering spending some hobby budget on this particular system from www.savemyserver.com
HP DL580 G5 4 X Xeon X7460 Hex core 2.4Ghz processors, 32 GB ram $766
That's 24 cores and 8 PCI-E slots with an option for three more if I buy the bus expansion adapter.
I just can't beat that price per core no matter where I go to look. While I know that those are essentially Core 2 based Xeons, they are still decent with respect to throughput.
Also, if it looks like CPU processing is just not getting it done for any of the projects by later this year when I go to buy, I can instead just get one with 4 X L7345 xeons (the lower power ones to reduce the power draw) and 32 GB ram for $286 and get the PCI-E extender and put my money into better GPUs.
Any thoughts on that system?
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