Server for scientific computing

I'm doing a Ph.D. in electrical engineering right now (almost finished) but i must run hundreds of thousands of simulations and i need some new beasts. As the structure of my programs can be easily distributed, SMP is a great option.
What do you think would be best? A K7D with dual overclocked modded mobiles? or with dual modded XP3200? or simply with dual MP2800 (simpler to assemble and more stable; i don't want to redo a 2 days simulation...)
Or would it be better to get a MSI K8T Master2 with two 240 opterons?

While i'm sure AMD is the best choice for my applications, I am stomped as to know if I should buy old or new material. If the price of a pair of networked systems configured with dual MP2800 CPUs (4 CPU total) would cost the same but perform way better overall than a "single" dual CPU opteron 248, that could be a better solution...

i would advise not going with a K7D and mobiles LOTS of people are having stability issues with them even when severly underclocked.

Well, the Athlon's better math unit will help you.

As for your choices, I think you'd go better with the gigabyte and dual mobiles if you want to build a dual mobile system. You'll just have to pin mod, but you were going to have to do that anyway since the k7d's multiplier options only go up to 12.5x

Dual mobiles volt modded at 2.4ghz or so will smack the crap out of dual opterons. Intensive math apps need more raw mhz.

What gigabyte motherboard exactly? I'm sorry i'm a beginner in SMP Is it the "GA-7DPXDW-P" model?

And also, what is the current highest frequency for mobiles?

well most people get mobiles up to 2.2-2.4 Ghz on air and 2.4-2.7Ghz on water and i am not sure if people getting over 2.7 or not but if you over clock them to 2.6Ghz they are faster than Xeon 3.0Ghz 512 L2 if you need proof look in my sig at my bench mark at 2.6

martindemon said:

What gigabyte motherboard exactly? I'm sorry i'm a beginner in SMP Is it the "GA-7DPXDW-P" model?

And also, what is the current highest frequency for mobiles?

Click to expand...

That model is great for Mobile XP processors. The Tyan 2466N-4M is also great with mobiles. I've got six systems so far modded to 16x (2.13 GHz) running Mobile 2400 CPUs. So far they are all stable at the default voltage of 1.58 - 1.60 volts. They run stable and cool at 16x so I've been happy there. I tried 17x but it required more Vcore, so it ran hotter, and needed faster, noiser fans.

Rpkole said:

well most people get mobiles up to 2.2-2.4 Ghz on air and 2.4-2.7Ghz on water and i am not sure if people getting over 2.7 or not but if you over clock them to 2.6Ghz they are faster than Xeon 3.0Ghz 512 L2 if you need proof look in my sig at my bench mark at 2.6

Click to expand...

Thanks for the info but i think FPU is more important in my case and i see that the mobile is only superior to the xeon for the ALU operations. Perhaps i would be really better with opterons, which i think are better than xeons at FPU, slap me if i'm wrong

(edit)
I see that without taking into account SSE2, your AMD setup actually torch the dual xeon I'll sleep on this and continue to search... Thanks again.

And what do you think about a quad xeon?
http://www.tyan.com/products/html/thundergche_spec.html

This is the "cheapest" recent motherboard i have found to make a quad, but it is rackmount. So i would have to find a regular case that accept 16"x13" motherboards.

Another question also, could i put any 400fsb xeons on that thing? Or is there special chips that are "four way" and that would cost way too much? Quad CPU systems are making me drool

(edit)
Ok i just saw that processors for that thing cost 900$ to 4200$ a piece
Should i understand that it's impossible to make a quad system at a reasonable price and at the same time more efficient than two dual CPU systems for the same price?

(edit #2)
Is there a 4 CPU motherboard for AMD MP/XP/mobile CPUs? That would be cool, if the price is right.

(edit #3)
The mobile CPUs are beginning to look more attracting now I see i will probably configure myself two boxes for the price of one opteron system... Still not sure; i'll seek benchmarks to confirm.

Question: Somebody know of a place where someone ran a FFT (fast pourier transform) on both an opteron dual and on a mobile or MP or XP dual? My code contains lots of FFT and that would give me a real idea about the best choice to do...

We use dual XP's and dual Opterons for our software when designing chips. This software is not easily distributable and does not take advantage of SMP. It uses incredible amounts of ram and swap- 4GB of each on the 32bit CPU's and 8GB ram + 20GB swap on the opteron servers. We run under gentoo and suse linux.

Here is an update on possible choices: (prices in inflated canadian dollars)

Case 1: cheap, efficient, but more risky and noisy
MSI K7D: 250$
2xmobile 2500: 320$
Case+antec true power 430: 180$
2x512Mb RAM DDR333 ECC REG: 400$
Seagate 120Gb, 8Mb: 140$
Total: 1295$ (980$USD)

Case 2: overboard (recent technology), efficient, good memory performance, quiet but expensive
Tyan Tiger K8W: 400$
2x512Mb RAM ECC REG: 400$
Case+PSU(480W Antec): 200$
Seagate 120Gb: 140$
2x Opteron 244: 1100$
Total: 2240$ (1700$USD)

Overclocking would save me over 700$USD for equivalent performance, but sacrificing bragging rights of newness, but getting bragging rights for paying not much for a computing bomb. Now, i could add watercooling to that dual mobile but that would cost me something like 375$USD if i use quality stuff (stiftech only) and i would have quietness and a still less expensive system. Tempting but i might "accept" the noise... I'll sleep on that. Night everyone

may want to look here for up to 4 amd mp cpu's http://www.angstrom.com/products/racer500_quad.htm

this may be over kill up to 84 amd mp CPU's http://www.angstrom.com/products/delta_classic.htm

this is hella over kill up to 260 amd MP CPU's :-0 http://www.angstrom.com/products/superblade.htm

martindemon said:

Here is an update on possible choices: (prices in inflated canadian dollars)

Case 1: cheap, efficient, but more risky and noisy
MSI K7D: 250$
2xmobile 2500: 320$
Case+antec true power 430: 180$
2x512Mb RAM DDR333 ECC REG: 400$
Seagate 120Gb, 8Mb: 140$
Total: 1295$ (980$USD)

Case 2: overboard (recent technology), efficient, good memory performance, quiet but expensive
Tyan Tiger K8W: 400$
2x512Mb RAM ECC REG: 400$
Case+PSU(480W Antec): 200$
Seagate 120Gb: 140$
2x Opteron 244: 1100$
Total: 2240$ (1700$USD)

Overclocking would save me over 700$USD for equivalent performance, but sacrificing bragging rights of newness, but getting bragging rights for paying not much for a computing bomb. Now, i could add watercooling to that dual mobile but that would cost me something like 375$USD if i use quality stuff (stiftech only) and i would have quietness and a still less expensive system. Tempting but i might "accept" the noise... I'll sleep on that. Night everyone

Click to expand...

Well if ya read back you would not have picked the K7D..I would go Fotron on the PSU and save dough and get a better supply.. And I would go Pc2700 ...Savings will be there and the system will run for sure with The GigaByte mainboard.

Rpkole said:

may want to look here for up to 4 amd mp cpu's http://www.angstrom.com/products/racer500_quad.htm

this may be over kill up to 84 amd mp CPU's http://www.angstrom.com/products/delta_classic.htm

this is hella over kill up to 260 amd MP CPU's :-0 http://www.angstrom.com/products/superblade.htm

Click to expand...

Well, i think this would be over 10000$ They don't write the price but that smells expensive (rackmount, people doing really big systems...) I think i'll shoot them an email all the same

diehrd said:

Well if ya read back you would not have picked the K7D..I would go Fotron on the PSU and save dough and get a better supply.. And I would go Pc2700 ...Savings will be there and the system will run for sure with The GigaByte mainboard.

Click to expand...

Well, i live somewhere in Canada where i've never seen a Fortron; they did not have them online where i shop online. You know, lots of online USA store charge 60$-80$ shipping for Canada, no matter what you buy... That severely limits my choices. And i've never had any trouble with Antec PSU (i had a 430W with which i once overclocked a 2.53GHz P4 to 3.2 with lots of periferals... And i don't know if Fortron is as quiet as Antec (that would be very inportant if i watercool for quietness.)

Also, you mean the ordinary memory will run fine with any athlon MP board? That would save me 200$CAD

The reason why i mentioned the MSI is that i can have it for cheap somewhere. The Gigabyte, i did not even find it yet anywhere (anywhere where i can buy with shipping at a reasonable place...)

have you discovered www.2cpu.com yet? ~~~ the ultimate dualie site

teezer said:

have you discovered www.2cpu.com yet? ~~~ the ultimate dualie site

Click to expand...

Of course
But i just lurked there, did not post there yet, i don't know why.

time to come out of the closet ~~~ the knowledge of the members is totally amazing

Now i found somewhere to buy the GA-7DPXDW-P in the USA with reasonable shipping cost

I read in the sticky that i would need ECC registered memory only if i run more than 2 sticks of DDR333. So that means that i'm all right with 2 major brand sticks of 512Mb DDR 333? And what if i buy 2 sticks of DDR400; will they cause a problem? (i would rather buy DDR400 if it's the same price... It's even cheaper sometimes.)

There is only one thing i don't like about the Gigabyte motherboard, it is no longer listed in the Gigabyte site. Meaning that if i must download a driver, i must find a non official source. Same thing if i want the manual...
If i choose the Asus A7M266-D, i won't have this problem. In fact, i often had Asus cards and the only problems i had is with a DOA graphic card and a graphic card i never overclocked that just went dead 3 years after i bought it (it was no longer mine.) But all Asus motherboards i had always worked flawlessly. So i might buy the A7M266-D.

I have an asus A7M266D and would recommend it over anything except the IWILL MPX2 and the K7D (considering it has vcore adjustments in bios)

The only bad thing about the asus board is the lack of vcore adjustments in bios, the jumpers dont always work within a certain range of vcore settings, u can either use default (or more vcore than your L11 bridge sets)

Also revisions earlier than 1.04 on the Asus, adjust vcore for the main cpu only, the second cpu is ignored.

If you can set everything on the chips for vcore and multiplier, then the Asus is a great choice.

Currenlty running 2 x Mobile 2600 Bartons @ 16x150 = 2400 mhz dual on air cooling. Great Mobo, Great cpu/s Great price