Folding Farm - What To Choose?

[patonb]

A sr-2 dual xeons can be had for about 1500 - 1700 bucks.. Sure theyre not hex cores, but quads with HTing. It'll overclock pretty good, and pull 120k ppd most likely, maybe even more.

But then factor into all the associated cosxt, including the cost of electricity, and the sr-2 setup starts to win.

One thing to remember, the fermi cards/wus are going to most likely reduce in points as things settle down.

But if its only a gpu farm, yha 460s.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

If/when i build a farm, i'll go cpu, and do dual xeons on and sr-2 type board. On big units it'll pull 145-180k ppd and 1/3rd the power.

How do the Magny-Cours Opterons stack up to the Xeons? It looks like you should be able to pick up a pair of 8 cores Opteron 6128's plus a dual socket G34 board for less than $1k which seems like a pretty good price for 16 K10.5 cores.

 

[patonb]

Theyre slower, but again, ppd per dollar is probably decent.... Only really seen xeons talked about, though one guy has his work development system folding.... 4 x 12cores!

Seems 32cores is better than 48. They think its a factor thing.

 

[PP Mguire]

In the long run I think you'll be better off with the 460's or 465's over a 295, just my opinion.

Yea im thinking the same thing if what he said is true on the 17k thing. I thought they would be more.

A sr-2 dual xeons can be had for about 1500 - 1700 bucks.. Sure theyre not hex cores, but quads with HTing. It'll overclock pretty good, and pull 120k ppd most likely, maybe even more.

But then factor into all the associated cosxt, including the cost of electricity, and the sr-2 setup starts to win.

One thing to remember, the fermi cards/wus are going to most likely reduce in points as things settle down.

But if its only a gpu farm, yha 460s.

Electric doesnt really matter considering how cheap a single PC is to run.

How do the Magny-Cours Opterons stack up to the Xeons? It looks like you should be able to pick up a pair of 8 cores Opteron 6128's plus a dual socket G34 board for less than $1k which seems like a pretty good price for 16 K10.5 cores.

I was wondering that myself.

 

[patonb]

7 video cards draw alot of power, my 2 260s draw 180Ws when running, so about 355Ws with machines and fans.

 

[Promethus]

i had an sr2 with xeon 5*** chips (cant say full name intel restrictions as its not for sale atm) i can say the sr2 is the most power in efficent mobo made to date if you looking for crazy benching than its great the chipset wont do over 200 without L2N it gets to hot even on water so solution is high multi chips mine are 31x hex core also i can say with the 3 470soc carrds i pulled 2300 watts at the wall full load if you plan to oc hard on the board you need liquid on the mobo as i saw up to 90c+ on it stock settings 100% load also you need lots of plugs and if you skip the 3 6pins on the mobo you lose bottom half of the pcie also consider dual nf200s lots of heat so if you go sr2 no question you will have to liquid it folding it 24/7 and if you want good ocs high multi chips meaning tons of $ fyi ive ran 11 different model chips and 6 ram sets on mine so ive done loads of testing as well as l2n so just my 0.02$


edit: FYI my chips cost me almost 4k each and they do about 5ghz on my mobo on liquid also keep in mind its about 15000 in parts to do it

 

[patonb]

Yikes! I'm certain the guys at [H]ard ain't running that fast.

 

[PP Mguire]

Aint got nothin on me.

Be about 30 bucks extra a month on the electric bill with 2 465s and 5 460s folding. Just a rough guestimate based on my findings in my article.

 

[patonb]

i really don't think youre guestimations are correct then.... I really think you've missed a decimal place.

 

[PP Mguire]

Well 2 280s and an i5 folding was 9 dollars extra on the bill for 3 months in a row in a 6 month testing period. Pretty sure a 280 sucks more power than a 460. Figure 2 465s and a 460 in one machine 12 bucks, 2 460s in my server we will say roughly 9 bucks too, then 2 460s in my guest PC another max 9 bucks (no CPU folding in it). Roughly 30 extra bucks on the bill give or take power consumption differences from the 460s and 280s. Like i said, it was a guesstimate but it wont be as bad as people want to think. Even if its a hard to reach 50 bucks thats still not bad considering when me and my gf lived by ourselves our electric bill hit a max of 140 bucks.