Which CPU is better?
25 Jun 2007 8:02:28 UTC
Topic 192902
(moderation:
I want to buy a new computer which mainly runs BOINC.
Can you give me some advice?
I am just wondering which CPU is better, AMD or Intel?
Thanks a lot!
Hello everyone!I'm Zhang Chi from China.I am 16 and I am a middle school student.And I love science. I want to be a scientist in the future!
Which CPU is better?
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Right now the intel core 2 duo seems to be best overall. Performance does vary by project though so you may want to take which projects you run into consideration.
BOINC WIKI
BOINCing since 2002/12/8
RE: I want to buy a new
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It's a bit like buying a car, it depends on your priorities: pure speed, fuel-efficiency or comfort level?
For a computer mainly doing BOINC, you might want to take into consideration how much heat they are producing. I'm not sure what the price for electricity is in China, but even if that's not an issue per se, you probably don't want a PC running 24/7 that requires expensive & fancy cooling gear to keep the noise level down to a level you can stand 24/7. Therefore you might consider a PC build from "mobile" components.
Personally, I'm very happy with my Mac MINI (decent performance, low noise, low wattage).
CU
BRM
Personally I like RISC chips,
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Personally I like RISC chips, having worked 4 years on a MIPS 6000 minicomputer. But software is easier to find on CISC chips like AMD and Intel. It's more a matter of personal choice than of technical merit to choose between those 2 x86 architectures. Intel had designed a beautiful RISC chip (80870 if I remember well) but never marketed it. They should have rewritten all software running on the x86 architecture. Now even Apple has chosen the x86 architecture, abandoning the PowerPC.
Tullio
Since IIRC the P1, x86
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Since IIRC the P1, x86 processors have been RISC inside. The first step of the execution path is to convert the CISC instruction into one or more RISC ones. For the simple instructions that make up the overwelming majority of a program the mapping is generally 1:1. Only the rarely used rubegoldbergesque instructions get turned into a large number of RISC instructions during the conversion process.
I'm not sure why Intel and AMD choose not to expose the interal RISC architecture directly. It could be that they wanted to keep the freedom to make major internal changes without requiring the creation of a 2nd translation layer later. More likely I think given the size of the CISC to RISC translation engines in the early models is that there simply wasn't room to use even more silicon to switch between two different instruction streams. It's a moot issue now when cache capacities dominate die sizes of CPUs, but at the time the size of the conversion unit and the resultantly smaller maximum cache sizes it imposed were a major factor in why early pentiums weren't as fast as equivilant propriety risc chips.
Thanks for this information.
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Thanks for this information. If I understand correctly, then the Itanium chip is the only non-RISC architecture now present. Is this true?
Tullio
RE: I want to buy a new
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It depends which projects you want to run. If you run SETI@Home the only choice is the Mac Pro with Quad-Core Intel Xeons.(check the Top-computers list: http://setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu/top_hosts.php The first 4 are all Macs).
If you run Einstein@Home any multi-core Intel Xeon is the choice. The MacOS X optimized client used to be 20% faster than the Windows client, but the current version is not as optimized as it could be.
RE: It depends which
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The "only" choice if you have not a care in the world about a budget...as the cheapest configuration for that is currently $3,997.00 USD, and that is with no display, only 1GB of memory, and only 1 HDD...which is certainly out of reach for many of us... A more realistic config approaches $8,000.00 USD. For comparison, my car loan was $9,600.00, and I could sell the car now for probably $5,500...
RE: The "only" choice if
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$8000 is a pretty big exaggeration. Configured with 4gb RAM, it costs $4700.
And it *is* the only way to get the X5365 (3.0 ghz) Xeon processors today. The fastest quad Xeons available elsewhere are the X5355 (2.66 ghz). Once the Intel price cuts come at the end of July, the X5365 will be available to everyone.
Reno, NV Team: SETI.USA
RE: $8000 is a pretty big
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Aye, without any monitor, with non-SLI graphics, with a single HDD, with a single superdrive instead of dual, and 4GB (the V8 review at DriverHeaven is showing 8GB; Francois@IDF was running 16GB, thus my thought is 8GB is the appropriate amount of memory, while 4GB is a "make-do") then yeah, $4700 is list...
In any case, if I'm already in that neighborhood, I might as well keep saving to get:
Specifications
Two 3.0GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
8GB (8 x 1GB)
250GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
500GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
500GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
ATI Radeon X1900 XT 512MB (2 x dual-link DVI)
Apple Cinema Display (20" flat panel)
Apple Cinema Display (20" flat panel)
Two 16x SuperDrives
Apple Keyboard and Mighty Mouse - U.S. English
Mac OS X - U.S. English
$7900
If I had the money...I'd buy it and then smoke your "wimpy" 4GB system... ;-)
Dual-monitors are a must for me for the next system I buy... It is frustrating to have to keep minimizing stuff when I could have a reference document on one monitor while I work on the second monitor.
However: I could probably buy the components for the X5355 system and overclock and still be as fast or faster, for a lot less.
Ahem...we are still talking
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Ahem...we are still talking about a BOINC crunching machine, right? What kind of BOINC projects need that much memory (even if there is one running per core), 20" displays, dual DVD drives, tons of disk space ....
It would be interesting to compute total cost of ownership in relation to credits / hour and compare this for different platforms. I would not be surprised if a modern C2D powered notebook would win in this discipline.
CU
BRM