It runs windows and has dual Xeon 5400 CPUs. I plan to add a Tesla K80 GPU to it. I am not very knowledgeable about computer hardware.


Your thoughts about this machine please.

It runs windows and has dual Xeon 5400 CPUs. I plan to add a Tesla K80 GPU to it. ...

The GPU will currently not be used in this project, you can use it on your SETI account though.

The Xeons are from the same generation as the C2Q 95xx desktop CPUs, more efficient than your Q6600 but less efficient than your i7 laptop.

Even though they are a bit outdated, it's not that bad, they will still do good work for this project ... of course I have to say that because I'm running on a C2Q 95xx myself here ;-)

Isn't the k80 thousands of $$$$? I don't think that that is good value for money for running any project but I might be mistaken - I don't follow the other BOINC projects much.

Each of those xeon 5400 CPUs will be a little bit quicker on Rosetta than your Q6600, if the clock-speeds are the same (the Q6600 is 2.4GHz - the Xeons could be anything from 2-3GHz depending on which model they are).

Of course the value is entirely dependant on the price of the workstation, but I'd expect you'd get better value from a new i7 Skylake CPU which will also run 8 threads but will do so using far less electricity. The dual xeon will get somewhere around 3000-4500 credits per day on Rosetta, whereas an i7 6700k will probably get 5000+, using half the electricity.

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It runs windows and has dual Xeon 5400 CPUs. I plan to add a Tesla K80 GPU to it. I am not very knowledgeable about computer hardware.


Your thoughts about this machine please.

There's no benefit in spending money on a Tesla GPU (unless you have it collecting dust somewhere). You could run GPUGRID with that GPU tho, which is of similar nature to R@H.

These dual Xeons have 8 logical cores in total, 1 core per thread. The Skylake mentioned before me also run 8 threads, but @ 2 threads per core (thanks to HTT). The Skylake is probably more energy efficient, but I'd guess these two Xeons will do more work overall.

Overall, very good machine for Rosetta. About 5000+ RAC maybe? It'll probably use at least 160 [W] @ full load tho (80 [W] per CPU).

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These dual Xeons have 8 logical cores in total, 1 core per thread. The Skylake mentioned before me also run 8 threads, but @ 2 threads per core (thanks to HTT). The Skylake is probably more energy efficient, but I'd guess these two Xeons will do more work overall.

Overall, very good machine for Rosetta. About 5000+ RAC maybe? It'll probably use at least 160 [W] @ full load tho (80 [W] per CPU).

While the Xeon does have 8 physical cores vs the 4 physical/8 logical cores in the i7, I don't think even the fastest wolfdale Xeons will outperform a top end haswell/broadwell/skylake CPU.
I have an E8400 which is half of one of those Xeons (i.e. dual core) at 3GHz and it gets around 1100 credits per day.

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What are you doing with your workstation outside of crunching?

The GTX 980ti is a great card for GPUGRID.net.