Posts by Paydirt

41) Message boards : Number crunching : PS3 preliminary crunching numbers (Message 42181) Posted 14 Jun 2007 by Paydirt Post: When you put it that way, combined with the fact that if Rosetta@Home doesn't like it when CPUs do not have 2MB cache per core... Might not work out for Rosetta@Home and PS3. Maybe down the road, Folding@Home can work more directly with Rosetta@Home, or Rosetta@Home can learn more from Folding@Home's experience. Supposedly, F@H can still use more processor power (the PS3 has leveled out at 600 teraflops, and their total project teraflops are at 900 teraflops), but maybe eventually they can combine or branch off into the type of science that R@H is doing? Rosetta@Home definitely needs more processor power. I will definitely be buying several dedicated Rosetta@Home crunchers in the near future after the July 22nd quad core Intel price drops. I believe a little more in the science that R@H does. I also think F@H will lead to significant advances, if not in medicine then in research and modeling.
42) Message boards : Number crunching : PS3 preliminary crunching numbers (Message 41830) Posted 4 Jun 2007 by Paydirt Post: True, the "red circle of death" is a big problem for Microsoft. Maybe RCoD won't be a problem in a few years or with 360 Elite. The recent past is fraught with such rampant innovation that I will choose to maintain my optimism for the future. :)
43) Message boards : Number crunching : Quad Core Intel Price Drops (Message 41616) Posted 29 May 2007 by Paydirt Post: Good catch Sailor. Sorry about that.
44) Message boards : Number crunching : Quad Core Intel Price Drops (Message 41593) Posted 29 May 2007 by Paydirt Post: Hey Gerry, I've been pricing out systems recently to get a gauge for the total cost of a new system... I didn't see your system "below", did you forget to attach. Anyhow, this is what I would do for you. I'll make one for you since mine has a more expensive motherboard in case I decide to overclock. Mine would also have an expensive graphics card to game with and fold work units from Folding@Home... From newegg.com: VIDEO: EVGA 256-A8-N295-LX GeForce 6200 LE 256MB GDDR2 AGP 4X/8X Video Card - Retail $52 Case & Power Supply: Rosewill R604TBLK-N 120mm Fan ATX Mid Tower Computer Case+450W Power Supply - Retail $60 (plus $15 for shipping) MOBO: EVGA 122-CK-NF66-T1 LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 650i Ultra ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail $109 CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz LGA 775 Processor Model BX80562Q6600 - (PRICE AFTER JULY 22nd) $280 RAM: CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 675 (PC2 5400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model TWIN2X2048-5400c4 - Retail $69.99 HARD DRIVE: Western Digital Caviar SE WD800JD 80GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM $42.99 +CD/DVD ROM: $50 MAX Quad core computer for $664 +shipping +install. If you're really nervous about the install & your local computer shop will do it for $100 or less, not to bad of an option. Installation isn't too hard, just time consuming and sometimes instructions are not descriptive enough. If you self install, post again to this thread and I can give some tips.
45) Message boards : Number crunching : AMD's 65nm CPU's - Any Thoughts? (Message 41592) Posted 29 May 2007 by Paydirt Post: I'm guessing the original poster doesn't want to have to upgrade the motherboard, so it's not just the cost of the processor that they are concerned with... If you can hold off until after July 22nd, or after Barcelona is released, you may want to try that. Maybe you can get a higher speed X2 then? What socket is your motherboard? Then I would check the motherboard to see what processors it can support. Some will support the new CPUs that AMD will be releasing. I tend to check forums at www.anandtech.com and reviews on www.newegg.com. In general 65nm should run cooler & use less power than a 90nm version of the same chip.
46) Message boards : Number crunching : Rosetta v Seti times v credit (Message 41591) Posted 29 May 2007 by Paydirt Post: Mmmm Sausage... Anyhow, I get less credit with Rosetta, and the project inspires me more than SETI, so I crunch Rosetta. I get totally different credit with Folding@Home. I use two graphics cards to crunch for them. One thing that always annoyed me about SETI@Home is that they would use up to 5 computers on one WU. This is an indication they don't really need the horsepower. Whereas, I THINK, Rosetta@Home uses 2 if they return a valid result and the same result.
47) Message boards : Number crunching : Why no R@h work downloading? I also run SETI (Message 41426) Posted 25 May 2007 by Paydirt Post: I don't know if it was down or not. I'm happily crunching WUs on the 25th of May... If you're a moderator and live in the U.S., why not call Baker Lab to see if there is a situation and then post an announcement if there is a temporary outage?
48) Message boards : Number crunching : Quad Core Intel Price Drops (Message 41294) Posted 22 May 2007 by Paydirt Post: I know what I'm buying shortly after July 22nd. ;)
49) Message boards : Number crunching : Coming from SETI and have couple Rosetta questions... (Message 40732) Posted 11 May 2007 by Paydirt Post: Free, I definitely am more inspired by Rosetta@Home as well. If we can use computers to get biology to a predictive science (like chemistry is now), we could make some major advances that will improve people's lives in the near term. I think Rosetta also has more potential than Folding@Home, but I'm no expert. I think they are working to solve different problems. I think SETI@Home has too much power for what they need. Don't they have 4-5 computers crunch the same data? I would think two would be enough unless you get a discrepancy. Maybe their computing need will grow with the new multi-beam receiver; nevertheless I think medicine is more important for now. Just my opinion though.
50) Message boards : Number crunching : PS3 preliminary crunching numbers (Message 40656) Posted 10 May 2007 by Paydirt Post: Thanks for the post. I think we will see some scientific crunching on the Xbox 360, it will be interesting to see which project.
51) Message boards : Number crunching : What am I crunching? (Message 40642) Posted 10 May 2007 by Paydirt Post: I haven't heard the explanation, but I think the long nomenclature (my big word for the day, oh got it in at 7:19am!) is to help the humans file and process the results. ;)
52) Message boards : Number crunching : Quad Core Intel Price Drops (Message 40208) Posted 2 May 2007 by Paydirt Post: They are comparing to a single core. It's true though. I run a dual GPU "folding" (crunching) machine at home. If you use a single ATI/AMD x1950xtx it does about 90 gigaflops. (dual folders are a little less efficient because of bandwidth limitations) A new (single GPU) machine will run you about $750. If you'd like to get one running, I can help you out. It's actually a little tricky. The most user friendly is using a AMD x1950pro (which isn't quite as powerful, but you don't have to fool with clocking the graphics card). We'd probably want to move it to the F@H GPU client forums. Oh, you need a processor core for each GPU because DirectX currently "polls" the CPU. So if you had a dual CPU and single GPU, you could run one instance of Rosetta or Folding and one GPU instance. If you don't dedicate a core to each GPU, then the performance hit makes it not worth it to run the CPU instance. [edit: for my dual GPU folder, I dedicate a dual processor to the GPUs. It is a Pentium D 915 which was the cheapest dual when I bought it, though it isn't the most power efficient. Now an E4300 would make more cents.] I crunch Rosetta with my CPUs and Folding with my GPUs. :) PS. from what I've read, I don't think Intel will be quite ready for a release of their 45nm when AMD comes out with Barcelona. My guess is early 2008.
53) Message boards : Number crunching : Quad Core Intel Price Drops (Message 40167) Posted 1 May 2007 by Paydirt Post: The next step for me is to promote crunching for science to various people in my circles (and expand my circles). I've kinda been waiting for Bakerlab to formalize and release their education cirriculum, and I really shouldn't be waiting for that.
54) Message boards : Number crunching : Quad Core Intel Price Drops (Message 39958) Posted 27 Apr 2007 by Paydirt Post: Actually, why even dream of a quad-core anyway, when the buzz will soon be toward GPUs. Or are you implying GPU machines for crunching and gaming, and quad-core tech for the home PC for everything else? I'm only talking about crunching. Since GPUs aren't where they need to be yet for crunching, it doesn't make sense to shift all of our extra/spare dollars to GPU machines until that happens. What if I only built R600 crunchers and then Rosetta ended up going with nVidia GPUs for its crunching? Even for Folding@Home, the GPUs can only crunch 1/8th of their total WUs, so CPU crunching is still needed. I also think that Rosetta@Home may be more valuable in the long run (my opinion) and they aren't yet using GPUs, so I will make 1-2 CPU crunchers for R@H until they get going on the GPU train, then I would probably make crunchers only for R@H and what I made would depend on what they needed. I am "donating" 8% of my income this year to build dedicated crunching machines. I DO want to put dollars to work every few months so I will make a couple of GPU folders while I wait for those quad-core price drops and then I will make a couple of CPU crunchers (for Rosetta, of course).
55) Message boards : Number crunching : Quad Core Intel Price Drops (Message 39953) Posted 27 Apr 2007 by Paydirt Post: I'm REALLY surprised no one has posted this! Don't jump off and buy an Intel quad-core NOW, WAIT 5 months! From: http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=6488 Model - Q3'07 Pricing QX6800 $999 Q6700 $530 Q6600 $266 THAT makes it kind of hard to get excited about buying a Q6600 TODAY for $530 when you can save your money (earn interest) and buy TWO for the same price that they are retailing ONE for today. 5 months or less. Plus, we can also find out what price Barcelona is unveiled at AND we'll know what its performance will be. (Between now and then I will probably build one or two ATI R600 folders for F@H.)
56) Message boards : Number crunching : 80 cores, not science fiction ... it is real! 1.2 TERA! (Message 39768) Posted 23 Apr 2007 by Paydirt Post: Intel price drops haven't been huge so far, but that just changed. Here's some history for this past week. http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/31621/137/
57) Message boards : Number crunching : 80 cores, not science fiction ... it is real! 1.2 TERA! (Message 39546) Posted 17 Apr 2007 by Paydirt Post: http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/20070416comp_b.htm Lots of news out from Intel today from their Intel Developer Forum... At the bottom of the above article is about STACKING MEMORY ON TOP OF THEIR 80-CORE RESEARCH CHIP. Wow, Intel and IBM are making advances at the same time. Next step for the 80-core, 1-teraflop chip would put memory (RAM) on top of each core?
58) Message boards : Number crunching : BOINC and electricity (Message 39517) Posted 16 Apr 2007 by Paydirt Post: Matt, yeah, I gotta think that the energy used by a sub 1000MHz computer is fairly high compared to the science. Not much of a point to crunch with based on power costs & pollution. Overall, computers save the world FROM pollution and wasted resources. Computers do the work that it used to take 20 people to accomplish (OK, I just made that up). So the freeing up of those resources makes us a lot more productive. Just think... 20 people need 20 desks and 20 light bulbs, etc.
59) Message boards : Number crunching : Rosetta CPU optimization - how ? (Message 39278) Posted 11 Apr 2007 by Paydirt Post: Just be patient. These people lead busy lives outside of their crunching activities. Things have been very busy at Intel and AMD. Stay positive.
60) Message boards : Number crunching : Rosetta CPU optimization - how ? (Message 39231) Posted 10 Apr 2007 by Paydirt Post: It's NOT dead. These things take time.

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