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JONB
Prince
Joined: 18 Feb 2007
Posts: 848
Location: Cranham (Near Reykjavik but not as close as Bedford) UK
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 Posted: Thu Jul 05, 2007 4:40 am Post subject: Quad |
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I know I'm late in the race, but I just ordered a custom built quad core beast of a shrubber. 3 weeks and world domination will be one step closer!! 
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Grizzly
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Joined: 01 Jun 2002
Posts: 3136
Location: Creepy (Crawlley)
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| Posted: Thu Jul 05, 2007 1:04 pm Post subject: Re: Quad |
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| JONB wrote: | | I know I'm late in the race, but I just ordered a custom built quad core beast of a shrubber. 3 weeks and world domination will be one step closer!! |
AMD or Intel ?? - THERE is a difference Sir 
Regds GRizzxly
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JONB
Prince
Joined: 18 Feb 2007
Posts: 848
Location: Cranham (Near Reykjavik but not as close as Bedford) UK
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| Posted: Thu Jul 05, 2007 1:14 pm Post subject: |
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INTEL® Core 2 Quad Q6600 with 2Gb ram and a 1 Tb hard drive. Not too bad for a home PC.
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ohiomike
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Joined: 20 May 2007
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Location: Sometimes
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| Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2007 2:44 pm Post subject: |
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Lots of that going around. UPS should deliver my Mac Pro Quad (2 x Xeon 5150 Core2) tomorrow (13 July). Since I don't have a Mac or anything that runs OSx, this should be an adventure. I'm hoping another 4K a day or so will "perk up" my RAC! 
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mohrorless
Mail Order Goat Bride
Joined: 09 Oct 2006
Posts: 11206
Location: NYC
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| Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2007 5:45 pm Post subject: |
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Crap.
There goes my chance to ever get into the top 100 on the team without spending a ton of money that I don't have. 
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ohiomike
Prince
Joined: 20 May 2007
Posts: 858
Location: Sometimes
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| Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2007 7:12 pm Post subject: |
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| mohrorless wrote: | Crap.
There goes my chance to ever get into the top 100 on the team without spending a ton of money that I don't have. |
The price on these things is dropping like a stone. Show a little patience, and by this time next year you'll be able to pick one up for a song. My choice of the Mac was based on that. When the price on the Xeon Quads drops, the Duals get replaced. Quads Xeons are currently $1000 a copy, I would not be surprised to see $500 by the end of the year.
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JerWA
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Joined: 01 Jan 2007
Posts: 1497
Location: WA, USA
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| Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2007 8:10 pm Post subject: |
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The system I'm using now cost $1,300 last August... you can duplicate it for $700 (refurb from Dell), or ~$600 with your own parts using better stuff even (like the E6420 and an 8800 GTS 320 vid card).
It's better than my g/fs PC at least hehe.
Current plan is to make the XP3k into a file server (NAS) and give this system to my g/f to be replaced by however uber a system I can build in October. It's not looking very promising, so it may only be an E6700 or somesuch.
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ohiomike
Prince
Joined: 20 May 2007
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Location: Sometimes
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| Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2007 8:17 pm Post subject: |
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The ugliest price drop was the first "store bought" PC I ever purchased. I bought a TI "portable" (suite-case) in 83 or 84. Almost $5000, a year later, a similar system (8080 CPU, 2 floppies, no HDD, 32 K RAM) was going for about $400. I should have just bought a disk drive for my S100 system.
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mohrorless
Mail Order Goat Bride
Joined: 09 Oct 2006
Posts: 11206
Location: NYC
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| Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2007 8:30 pm Post subject: |
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Since we just bought the laptop about 3 months ago.....I can say that there will be no more computer purchases here for quite a while....
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ohiomike
Prince
Joined: 20 May 2007
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Location: Sometimes
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| Posted: Sat Jul 14, 2007 7:00 am Post subject: |
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My Quad is finally on line. Mac OS x is a PAIN if you have never used it before. I finally gave up, enabled the root user account and setup the network by hand (the only way to get BoincView to see the box). RAC = 51. That should change shortly!
15-July:
RAC = 300 after one day, pending credits are climbing faster than the RAC however.
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ohiomike
Prince
Joined: 20 May 2007
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Location: Sometimes
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| Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2007 6:27 pm Post subject: |
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Mac went past 10K after 2/12 days of crunching, RAC is still climbing. This machine may work. Added another 1GB of ram just to see if it helps, research shows that Mac Pro's don't like running with less than 2 GB.
RAC now 900+, waiting to see what it will end up at.
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Lloyd M.
Prince
Joined: 02 Mar 2007
Posts: 521
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| Posted: Fri Jul 20, 2007 9:56 pm Post subject: |
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| JONB wrote: | | INTEL® Core 2 Quad Q6600 with 2Gb ram and a 1 Tb hard drive. Not too bad for a home PC. |
..."home PC". That is too funny!
I'm very glad that you are contributing to our team stats with that monster
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Lloyd M.
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Joined: 02 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Fri Jul 20, 2007 9:58 pm Post subject: |
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| ohiomike wrote: | | Quads Xeons are currently $1000 a copy, I would not be surprised to see $500 by the end of the year. |
Hell, they might be $300
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Lloyd M.
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Joined: 02 Mar 2007
Posts: 521
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| Posted: Fri Jul 20, 2007 10:26 pm Post subject: |
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| mohrorless wrote: |
There goes my chance to ever get into the top 100 on the team without spending a ton of money that I don't have. |
I agree with Sir ohiomike about prices dropping. I would add that processor speed and cores/processor counts for a lot, and to some extent you can compensate by simply adding more CPUs by adding more boxes.
This may not be as efficient or sexy as new quad processor boxes, and it can be effective.
I started with one overclocked, single core AMD 3700+ box, running graphics (which I still do, because I like the pretty pictures), which was good for about 300 RAC. For a while I was also running a Celeron 400, but it only ever managed about 25 RAC, so I decided it wasn't worth the heat it generated and the electricity to run it.
So then I added in my son's Sempron 2600+, and an ancient, 4 processor file server I had built to run the NFR copy of Windows Server 2003 I got for attending an IT class. The server overachieves, because I'm running an optimized SETI app on it.
Then I upgraded the Sempron with a real A64 3200+ I got brand new for $40 (including shipping); Followed by an upgrade to the main AMD rig with an Opteron 170 dual-core processor, and I built a dedicated shrubber with cheap and leftover parts, including the single-core processor I swapped for the Opteron.
One comment about the Opteron - since it's a different socket than AMD currently produces, the cost was practically nothing, compared to what it once was. It made sense for me to use one to upgrade my best shrubber. That being said, in a couple of days, for just a few more dollars than I paid for the Opteron, one will be able to get a C2D that would frankly run circles around it.
I also planned to build another dedicated shrubber using the Sempron, and I've had some issues and not gotten it running yet.
I've had some other issues that have lost me production lately, including a catastrophic failure in the file server. I also had some weirdness with CPID that took some time to figure out, which might have been better spent working on the Sempron shrubber.
Still, it appears that my RAC is now in the 1400 range, which is a far cry from the 300 or so I was managing when I first got back into SETI.
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Lloyd M.
Prince
Joined: 02 Mar 2007
Posts: 521
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| Posted: Fri Jul 20, 2007 10:31 pm Post subject: |
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| ohiomike wrote: | | The ugliest price drop was the first "store bought" PC I ever purchased. I bought a TI "portable" (suite-case) in 83 or 84. Almost $5000, a year later, a similar system (8080 CPU, 2 floppies, no HDD, 32 K RAM) was going for about $400. I should have just bought a disk drive for my S100 system. |
All I can say is "wow".
Wow on the price drop and wow that you're an old warrior like me. I never actually owned an S100 system, though I built a single board computer in that era.
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Lloyd M.
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Joined: 02 Mar 2007
Posts: 521
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| Posted: Fri Jul 20, 2007 10:36 pm Post subject: |
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| JerWA wrote: | | The system I'm using now cost $1,300 last August... you can duplicate it for $700 (refurb from Dell), or ~$600 with your own parts using better stuff even (like the E6420 and an 8800 GTS 320 vid card). |
And you could go a lot cheaper than that if you didn't need the king hell, gaming video capability.
My dedicated shrubber uses the built-in video on the cheapo mobo, and Ubuntu Linux I installed from a CD from a library book, so the OS was free (yeah, I know you can download it, and two separate tries on newer, supposedly stable versions wouldn't go past about half way through the boot process - the older version from the library book had the distinct advantage of actually working).
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Lloyd M.
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Joined: 02 Mar 2007
Posts: 521
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| Posted: Fri Jul 20, 2007 10:37 pm Post subject: |
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| ohiomike wrote: | ...
RAC now 900+, waiting to see what it will end up at. |
Should be 1200+, easy.
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JerWA
Prince
Joined: 01 Jan 2007
Posts: 1497
Location: WA, USA
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| Posted: Fri Jul 20, 2007 10:41 pm Post subject: |
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Add in the fact that the same $600 build can now include an E6700 processor, you'd be faster, with better graphics, for less than half of what I paid. Don't you just love the computer industry?
As for shrubbing, I'm not wealthy enough to have a box just for shrubbing. I do, however, play games. My justification, therefor, is my uber gaming rig, and whatever parts I replace go into my girlfriends computer. I'm in a unique position right now in that my girlfriends computer can't be upgraded, so I'm going to yank the graphics card and sound card (just to cut power consumption) and stuff in a RAID controller and lots of drives. But not until I've figured out what to do about this system.
I was thinking about a better processor, but I'm BIOS locked. The upgrade would be fine, but I still couldn't clock it up. So I may just hand this system off to my g/f and build one of those $600 systems I keep talking about hehe. Now if only I had $600. 
Hopefully by the end of the year I'll be able to do it. I may try to build a quad system, since their performance per-core is better than my current chip it would still be an upgrade for gaming. And it would be a huge upgrade for shrubbing hehe.
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Lloyd M.
Prince
Joined: 02 Mar 2007
Posts: 521
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| Posted: Fri Jul 20, 2007 10:41 pm Post subject: |
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| ohiomike wrote: | | My Quad is finally on line. Mac OS x is a PAIN if you have never used it before. I finally gave up, enabled the root user account and setup the network by hand (the only way to get BoincView to see the box. |
Been there - I had to tweak the network configuration my linux box somewhat to get it to connect to the network.
Just curious - were you previously familiar with linux? I'm not being insulting here, I just wonder how much OSX differs from your basic, GNU linux. I've used Macs, but never an OSX Mac, so I don't have a clue what they're like.
I've never even experimented with BoincView. I suppose I should give it a try.
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Lloyd M.
Prince
Joined: 02 Mar 2007
Posts: 521
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| Posted: Fri Jul 20, 2007 10:53 pm Post subject: |
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| JerWA wrote: | | Add in the fact that the same $600 build can now include an E6700 processor, you'd be faster, with better graphics, for less than half of what I paid. Don't you just love the computer industry? |
Yep and yep.
| JerWA wrote: |
As for shrubbing, I'm not wealthy enough to have a box just for shrubbing. |
The dedicated shrubber cost me something like $110 U.S. to build, out of leftover, used and cheap new parts. I've got it hooked up right here on a KVM switch I've had for years, and an old 3Com switch hub.
[edit]I can't remember exactly (especially since I accumulated parts over a moderately long period time), and the IBM Netfinity file server was in the same price range. I started with the basic box with the redundant power supplies, CD, floppy, and almost all of the fans for $5. The outboard Compaq RAID array box (also with redundant supplies) was $10 (I paid no shipping on either, because I got them locally). I suppose I sort of blew the budget on drives, but it does have a total of 13 of them, after all 
I also have a 3.1kva UPS I bought locally for $38.88+ tax, which is waiting for me to get a 20 amp outlet set up for it. [/edit]
What can I say? This kind of thing appeals both to my jones to tinker with things and my Scots sense of thriftiness.
| JerWA wrote: |
I do, however, play games. My justification, therefor, is my uber gaming rig, and whatever parts I replace go into my girlfriends computer. |
Sounds like a plan. For that matter, gaming is one of the main reasons P.C.s are as good (and as cheap) as they are.
Let us also remember that you are the undisputed, Borg KING, with a worldwide network, shrubbing mightily for the good of humankind in general, and the credit totals of KWSN specifically.
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