Thinking about a CPU only cruncher

Trotador
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RE: RE: with

Quote:

One like this is a bit cheaper:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Dell-Precision-490-Dual-Core-Xeon-CPU-2-33GHz-4GB-80GB-FX-1500-Workstation-PC-/230698079051?hash=item35b6ad534b:m:mctRaMonYg4MpxTH2WWRIgA

"The Dell Precision 490 is equipped with up to two Dual or Quad-Core Intel Xeon 5100 and 5300 series 64-bit processors for a total of up to eight execution cores in two sockets." With hyper-threading that would be upto 16 cores.

You will get more crunching done with your phone. Kidding... of course

Gamboleer
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RE: thanks Gamboleer - i

Quote:
thanks Gamboleer - i checked on ebay and they are practically giving them away (in the US)! 8 Cores for 60USD. That is good value.

It's better than just 8 cores; they're 8 reasonably speedy, modern cores. I use this site to compare relative processing power for CPUs:

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

You can click on any individual CPU to get a detail page showing its age, single-threaded capability, and other details. For CPUs in current production, the buy links on the detail page for Amazon / NewEgg give a quick view for relative pricing (not as useful for older stuff, where you generally have to check eBay first).

This is the detail page for the E5-2660 V1:

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Xeon+E5-2660+%40+2.20GHz&id=1219

There is a similar site for GPUs (GPU Bench), but I have found it less useful for comparing cards for distributed computing, as different projects vary in performance according to type of computing (CUDA, OpenCL), and the benchmarks shown on GPU Bench don't really correspond to the number of flops you're going to output when doing GPU crunching. For example, the GTX 950 looks like a screaming fast card on GPU Bench (about the same as an AMD 7970!), but it's only about 50% faster than a GTX 650 and about 1/3 as fast on E@H as a 7970.

Back to CPUs, the reason I suggested the 2660's in addition to price, is that there are dual-processor server motherboards that can handle V1 and V2 processors. You can get two 2660 V1's for about $65 USD each now, which benchmark at nearly 12k each; combined they're benching more than any single processor on the market. That same motherboard can be upgraded all the way to E5-2697 V2 processors, which bench at 17,500 each. Most V2's are expensive now even as used pulls, but someday they'll be outdated enough to be inexpensive upgrades.

Gamboleer

NB the 2670's can also be had for a song, but they only offer about 5% more processing power at the expense of going from 95W to 115W TDP.

Gamboleer
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I just did some more poking

I just did some more poking around...dual ATX LGA-2011 (V1/V2) motherboards are hard to find; most are SSI-EEB. The only one I found that seems to be still in production is here:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182670

The PCI-E lanes are limited, but it looks OK otherwise. You'd need to be careful about which CPU coolers you purchase, as well...those slots are awfully close to each other!

Gamboleer
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I know you were looking for a

I know you were looking for a CPU-only cruncher, but in case anyone else reads this later: the picture of that motherboard I linked may be incorrect, and it may not take a PCI-E video card. It shows a 16x slot (which I thought from the specs was just running at 8x), but the pictures on the manufacturer's website show all 8x slots.

AgentB
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OK thanks for the links all,

OK thanks for the links all, i've pretty much given up on the idea of a building a SSE / EATX sized.

I've been looking at mobodirect at least to see who makes what, which leads...

Gigabyte GA-7PXSL
and
ASUS Z9PRD12 and they also make the Z9PE-D8 and Z9PA-D8.

Some more specific searching tomorrow i think. I may need to revise the budget or ... [Looks sideways at trusty i3-530 + 2 x gtx-460s... no i couldn't do that - could i?]

Trotador
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The Z9PE-D8 is also EEB, the

The Z9PE-D8 is also EEB, the Z9PA-D8 is ATX, pretty decent in my view, I have a couple of them :). It has two PCIx16 3.0, ready for GPU crunching if one wants.

Gamboleer
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RE: The Z9PE-D8 is also

Quote:
The Z9PE-D8 is also EEB, the Z9PA-D8 is ATX, pretty decent in my view, I have a couple of them :). It has two PCIx16 3.0, ready for GPU crunching if one wants.

I have a Z9PA-D8 on backorder at Amazon, but I think they've just gone out of production and I'm not hopeful. I may have to delay my ATX dual Xeon until the V3 chips become affordable.

I found out today that many of those 2660's and 2670's being dumped on eBay are allegedly from Facebook upgrading its servers last year.

Thunder
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I'm not sure if you're still

I'm not sure if you're still considering older 5300 or 5400 series Xeons, but I know they can be found pretty easily in matched pairs for ~$40US.

I happened to spot these that might be worth considering mating with them:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/201345508321

The only down-side is it only has pci-e x8 slots, but I have a similar board that I even threw an Nvidia GT730 pci-e x8 card into and it out-produces all but my gaming rig. I already had everything else I needed, so I think I put the whole thing together for about $90 US.

Gamboleer
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RE: The Z9PE-D8 is also

Quote:
The Z9PE-D8 is also EEB, the Z9PA-D8 is ATX, pretty decent in my view, I have a couple of them :). It has two PCIx16 3.0, ready for GPU crunching if one wants.

Trotador, about the Z9PA-D8: while researching this one, I saw complaints that CPU2 was not recognized when using standard (non-ECC) memory. I was wondering if you know anything about this, because I never saw a post saying this had been fixed with a BIOS update.

Trotador
Trotador
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RE: RE: The Z9PE-D8 is

Quote:
Quote:
The Z9PE-D8 is also EEB, the Z9PA-D8 is ATX, pretty decent in my view, I have a couple of them :). It has two PCIx16 3.0, ready for GPU crunching if one wants.

Trotador, about the Z9PA-D8: while researching this one, I saw complaints that CPU2 was not recognized when using standard (non-ECC) memory. I was wondering if you know anything about this, because I never saw a post saying this had been fixed with a BIOS update.

I've never had that problem and I only use non-ECC memory with this board.

btw in stock

https://www.amazon.es/Asus-ZEPAD8-Placa-Intel-z%C3%B3calo/dp/B00E0DMLZA/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1458412590&sr=8-2&keywords=z9pa-d8

The model Z9PA-D8C should be cheaper if you find it although not in amazon.es

[url]https://www.amazon.es/Asus-90SB02U0-M1UAY0-ASUSTek-Z9PA-D8C-Placa/dp/B00E8UIR4O?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0[/url]

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