So if you need to heat indoors there can be a significant 'added value' for a farm of boxes.
Agreed. I think to an excellent approximation the entire power input to the box heats the place it sits (99.999+%). It might power the odd bit of capacitor corrosion here and there, but aside from that sort of thing there really is not much else place for it to go. I think nearly all the paltry amount of power that leaves as acoustic noise gets converted back to heat within the building, for example, and that is way under a watt, for sure.
Around here, resistive heating by mains electricity is several times more expensive per BTU than pretty much any other form of household heating (propane, natural gas, oil, firewood, and wood pellets being the main local competition).
So while I'd agree that substitutional savings during heating season could lower the excess cost, I'd think by only a modest proportion (I'll hazard a wild guess that it might lower it to 2/3 the initial calculation in a moderately typical case). But unless you are not paying for your power, or enjoy legacy hydroelectric power priced to keep the local aluminum smelter happy, and also have unusually high fossil power prices, it will still be a substantial penalty in most locations.
That said, I think we power bigots are not connecting with tekwyzrd. Perhaps he does not pay for his power, or for some reason has an insanely high personal effective discount rate. Either would change the rational choice rather drastically.
I just wanna give some numbers: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/default.aspx?p=92&p2=109&c=1
this is a 3.6 GHz single core Pentium 4. And it is up to 7 times slower then the stock i5 750 (benches to consider: rendering 3dmax, cinebench). It uses much more energy. A i5 750 is 160€ and a Gigabyte GA-P55M-UD2 for 90€ + memory. I would definitly save the money or look around at ebay for some used s775 stuff.
Instead of the q6600 you can also get a E8400 for roughly 100$. These clock easy at 4GHz and one E8400 is as fast as 4 Xeon single cores. And there is still money left for board an memory.
You have to consider the huge performance leap between the pentium4 and the core 2 era. (I jump the core2 train with a e6300 1.86Ghz->OC 3.3GHz and never want to look back)
Just my 2 ct
I've been debating the need to build a new computer and due to the opportunity to buy a couple good used motherboards at a VERY good price it looks like I'll be building a pair of dual xeon computers. The following link is the motherboard's info on the intel site. Intel SE7525RP2 Motherboard
Is anyone using an Intel SE7525RP2 motherboard? If so, what are your opinions?
I'm considering the SL8P6 or SL8P5 processors but wonder if there's a better choice.
I realize that for many people here this is obsolete but with my limited resources I can't afford the latest technology. The dual xeon boxes will be big improvements compared to the athlon xp computer I'm currently using. When I'm not using them the computers will be processing data for BOINC projects. I'd appreciate any constructive input anyone here could provide.
G'Day Tekwyzrd,
I understand about not being able to afford the latest technology, we all wish we could.
I also understand about the cost of electricity as here in Australia my last power bill (for 90 days) was over $1,000.00 and I only have 4 computers running in my house.
My computers were an older P4 2.53GHz pentium single core of 6 or more years vintage, reliable not efficient.
I also had 3 Opteron 285 (dual core dual socket) and an Opteron 275 (dual core dual socket).
My AMD 4800+ I sent to my brothers place and he pays for that one.
The heat coming from my room often went past 38 degrees Celcius, even in Winter it was above 27 to 30 most days.
Two of my Opteron 285 died of motherboard issues after 2.5 to 4 years. Big drop in room temperature.
I had enough money to be able to replace the CPU and motherboard on one Opteron computer and upgrade the Intel P4 (could not afford to repair the other Opteron), using existing components such as case, hard drives and power supply (I did have to source another PSU on one system).
This reduced costs plus I noted that the new Phenom II X4 cpus even though I still had 4 cores did not heat the room up nearly as much (needing only 1 CPU fan not 2).
So yes the new Tech can save a lot of power but I also have Opteron 285 CPUs spare that I would not hesitate to install in a new computer If I had the motherboards and the money to do so.
If I was unable to buy the new CPUs that I bought and could only get replacement motherboards for my two failed computers I would have gone down that track as it is all I could afford.
Tekwyzrd if the deal seems OK with you then go for it, the Xeons are still a step up from your current computer and as they are not totally for BOINC then if they meet your needs make the decision.
I am unable to help on the Intel processors as I am basically an AMD person and I don't follow the Intel chips as well as perhaps I should.
Be happy with your decision and crunch when you can.
I had agreed to buy the motherboards and at that point I had to decide on processors that would work on that model of motherboard. After a lot of searching I decided to go with a pair of 3.4GHz SL8P4. I realize the core based processors are more efficient but the price of the older components allow me to put together a faster computer for a low price. The motherboard has pci-x, which will allow me to make use of a 3ware raid controller that's been sitting here idle. The 800MHz fsb, 2MB L2 cache, and dual channel memory should give a decent performance increase compared to the Athlon XP 2600+ I'm currently using. I'll start with 2x 1GB PC2-3200 DDR2 but may increase it to 4x later.
Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.
Douglas Adams (1952 - 2001)
Indeed, it should be a big improvement over the Athlon XP. The Athlon XPs didn't even have SSE2, only SSE, that alone should speed up S5R6 on your new machine.
Please let us know how it performs once it's put into service.
Unless you need the new
)
Unless you need the new computer NOW, your best course seems to be putting aside the money you're saving by not using the xeons.
RE: So if you need to heat
)
Agreed. I think to an excellent approximation the entire power input to the box heats the place it sits (99.999+%). It might power the odd bit of capacitor corrosion here and there, but aside from that sort of thing there really is not much else place for it to go. I think nearly all the paltry amount of power that leaves as acoustic noise gets converted back to heat within the building, for example, and that is way under a watt, for sure.
Around here, resistive heating by mains electricity is several times more expensive per BTU than pretty much any other form of household heating (propane, natural gas, oil, firewood, and wood pellets being the main local competition).
So while I'd agree that substitutional savings during heating season could lower the excess cost, I'd think by only a modest proportion (I'll hazard a wild guess that it might lower it to 2/3 the initial calculation in a moderately typical case). But unless you are not paying for your power, or enjoy legacy hydroelectric power priced to keep the local aluminum smelter happy, and also have unusually high fossil power prices, it will still be a substantial penalty in most locations.
That said, I think we power bigots are not connecting with tekwyzrd. Perhaps he does not pay for his power, or for some reason has an insanely high personal effective discount rate. Either would change the rational choice rather drastically.
I just wanna give some
)
I just wanna give some numbers:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/default.aspx?p=92&p2=109&c=1
this is a 3.6 GHz single core Pentium 4. And it is up to 7 times slower then the stock i5 750 (benches to consider: rendering 3dmax, cinebench). It uses much more energy. A i5 750 is 160€ and a Gigabyte GA-P55M-UD2 for 90€ + memory. I would definitly save the money or look around at ebay for some used s775 stuff.
Instead of the q6600 you can also get a E8400 for roughly 100$. These clock easy at 4GHz and one E8400 is as fast as 4 Xeon single cores. And there is still money left for board an memory.
You have to consider the huge performance leap between the pentium4 and the core 2 era. (I jump the core2 train with a e6300 1.86Ghz->OC 3.3GHz and never want to look back)
Just my 2 ct
RE: I've been debating the
)
G'Day Tekwyzrd,
I understand about not being able to afford the latest technology, we all wish we could.
I also understand about the cost of electricity as here in Australia my last power bill (for 90 days) was over $1,000.00 and I only have 4 computers running in my house.
My computers were an older P4 2.53GHz pentium single core of 6 or more years vintage, reliable not efficient.
I also had 3 Opteron 285 (dual core dual socket) and an Opteron 275 (dual core dual socket).
My AMD 4800+ I sent to my brothers place and he pays for that one.
The heat coming from my room often went past 38 degrees Celcius, even in Winter it was above 27 to 30 most days.
Two of my Opteron 285 died of motherboard issues after 2.5 to 4 years. Big drop in room temperature.
I had enough money to be able to replace the CPU and motherboard on one Opteron computer and upgrade the Intel P4 (could not afford to repair the other Opteron), using existing components such as case, hard drives and power supply (I did have to source another PSU on one system).
This reduced costs plus I noted that the new Phenom II X4 cpus even though I still had 4 cores did not heat the room up nearly as much (needing only 1 CPU fan not 2).
So yes the new Tech can save a lot of power but I also have Opteron 285 CPUs spare that I would not hesitate to install in a new computer If I had the motherboards and the money to do so.
If I was unable to buy the new CPUs that I bought and could only get replacement motherboards for my two failed computers I would have gone down that track as it is all I could afford.
Tekwyzrd if the deal seems OK with you then go for it, the Xeons are still a step up from your current computer and as they are not totally for BOINC then if they meet your needs make the decision.
I am unable to help on the Intel processors as I am basically an AMD person and I don't follow the Intel chips as well as perhaps I should.
Be happy with your decision and crunch when you can.
Conan.
I had agreed to buy the
)
I had agreed to buy the motherboards and at that point I had to decide on processors that would work on that model of motherboard. After a lot of searching I decided to go with a pair of 3.4GHz SL8P4. I realize the core based processors are more efficient but the price of the older components allow me to put together a faster computer for a low price. The motherboard has pci-x, which will allow me to make use of a 3ware raid controller that's been sitting here idle. The 800MHz fsb, 2MB L2 cache, and dual channel memory should give a decent performance increase compared to the Athlon XP 2600+ I'm currently using. I'll start with 2x 1GB PC2-3200 DDR2 but may increase it to 4x later.
Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.
Douglas Adams (1952 - 2001)
Indeed, it should be a big
)
Indeed, it should be a big improvement over the Athlon XP. The Athlon XPs didn't even have SSE2, only SSE, that alone should speed up S5R6 on your new machine.
Please let us know how it performs once it's put into service.
CU
HBE
Still accumulating the last
)
Still accumulating the last of the parts but the computer will have:
2x SL8P4 Irwindale 3.4 GHz xeons
4x 1gb ddr2-pc3200 HYMP512R72P4-E3
ASUS EN9600GT silent pci-e
2x Hitachi Deskstar T7K250 250GB SATA Hard Drives (RAID 1)
3ware 4 port PATA RAID controller (pci-x)
4x Hitachi Deskstar (model info unavailable - in use) 80GB PATA Hard Drives (2x RAID 1)
Currently waiting for the SATA drives and cables. It should be up and running by the end of next week.
Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.
Douglas Adams (1952 - 2001)