Athlon or Duron for folding farm?

[fosheazy]

I'm looking into setting up a folding farm and was wondering if anyone knew what would be more cost effective for performance. I can set up athlon @1700mhz machines for about twice the cost of setting up duron@1ghz machines so would the athlon outfold two of the durons? They both will be running PC2100 and similar hard drives.

[overdoze]

is it really twice the cost? how much? 1700 will fold 1.7 times faster than the duron. Keep that in mind. if it truely twice the cost I would go with the duron.

duron 850 is $30
xp 1600 is $70

but with all the parts of the system I doubt if it is twice the cost.

[fosheazy]

Yea, I can get motherboards to run the durons for 30 bucks and the 1 ghz durons for 30 bucks. The athlons will run at 1.7ghz, but will cost me 70 bucks and the boards will be about 50. I have all the rest of the parts except for the additional hard drives and I know where I can get some for 20 bucks so... I was just wondering if the bigger L2 and the sse or any other enhancements might put me in favor of the athlon machines.

[overdoze]

yup with the same amount of money you can buy 2 1G duron. That will fold faster than the XP@1700 for sure. btw, where can you get mobo that cheap?

[fosheazy]

I have a friend who owns a used computer store and he lets me know anytime people trade in stuff and whenever he gets his hands on stuff he thinks I might want. He has a couple of boards that he just got that he is going to give me for 30 bucks and they have onboard nic's so it should be cheap to setup. I'm planning on buying three or four of them right now and setting them up with small drives and and old cd-roms I have.

[res0r9lm]

thats absurd it takes more that a cpu and motherboard to make a folding rig. my two xp rigs cost around $500 but I already had the cases. so lets say $160 plus cpu to get the same amount of power you would need 3 1gig morgan@1.2 so $160+40=200 multiply that by three and you have $600 but then thats not including cases add in the extra case then the durons would cost you around $150 more plus you will need a lot more space.

[res0r9lm]

Originally posted by res0r9lm
thats absurd it takes more that a cpu and motherboard to make a folding rig. my two xp rigs cost around $500 but I already had the cases. so lets say $160 plus cpu to get the same amount of power you would need 3 1gig morgan@1.2 so $160+40=200 multiply that by three and you have $600 but then thats not including cases add in the extra case then the durons would cost you around $150 more plus you will need a lot more space.

plus another way to look at it is you could add$120 to the $650 you would have spent on morgan boxes and have 3 xps instead

[{PMS}fishy]

Get the Duron. My 1.1 Duron at 1266 avgs 4h10min and my XP1600+ @ 1838mhz avgs 3h9min. The Duron is great if all it is going to do is crunch. For 3D apps and real world performance my XP is much better than the duron.

[fosheazy]

absurd??
Duron 1ghz=$32
Duron Motherboard=$30
1 Hard Drive 6gig=$0
256 Ram=$0 (I have)
CD-rom=$0 (I have)
Floppy=$0 (I have)
Built in NIC, Audio
Monitor=$0 (I have)
Case=$0 (I have)
Total=$62

AthlonXP @1700Mhz=$70
AthlonXP Motherboard=$50
1 Hard Drive 6gig=$0
etc..
etc..
etc..
Total Cost=$120

So... seeing as I have enough spare parts to build the basics for 3 or 4 computers, its going to cost me double to buy the athlons

[fosheazy]

Also I'm planning on just stacking the cases on top of each other. I might add some sort of spacers if I run into a heat issue but I doubt I will with stock durons.

[{PMS}fishy]

How do you figure that a MB that can support a Morgan Duron cannot support an Athlon XP? Why is there a need for a more expensive MB, maybe Im missing something.

[res0r9lm]

Originally posted by fosheazy
absurd??
Duron 1ghz=$32
Duron Motherboard=$30
1 Hard Drive 6gig=$0
256 Ram=$0 (I have)
CD-rom=$0 (I have)
Floppy=$0 (I have)
Built in NIC, Audio
Monitor=$0 (I have)
Case=$0 (I have)
Total=$62

AthlonXP @1700Mhz=$70
AthlonXP Motherboard=$50
1 Hard Drive 6gig=$0
etc..
etc..
etc..
Total Cost=$120

So... seeing as I have enough spare parts to build the basics for 3 or 4 computers, its going to cost me double to buy the athlons

ok then you could build 3 morgans $180 or 2 xps for $240 I'd say build with morgan if thats what your boards take but if you were building from scratch xps would be better over all value.

[res0r9lm]

Originally posted by {PMS}fishy
How do you figure that a MB that can support a Morgan Duron cannot support an Athlon XP? Why is there a need for a more expensive MB, maybe Im missing something.
kt133

[Yobbzz]

Originally posted by fosheazy

So... seeing as I have enough spare parts to build the basics for 3 or 4 computers, its going to cost me double to buy the athlons


I hear what your saying here but if you built 4 xp box's then you would need about 7 duron box's for the same prodution. This would include buying more stuff that you don't have. EG 3 more drives, ram, mb, case ect..

[res0r9lm]

Originally posted by {PMS}fishy
Get the Duron. My 1.1 Duron at 1266 avgs 4h10min and my XP1600+ @ 1838mhz avgs 3h9min. The Duron is great if all it is going to do is crunch. For 3D apps and real world performance my XP is much better than the duron.

hey fishy is that running seti? try folding and see the difference between the two.

[{PMS}fishy]

Originally posted by res0r9lm

kt133

No point in doing that. It would make the duron 30% slower than if it was on DDR and a KT266A chipset board. Durons are super easy to unlock. Then set them at 133FSB and lower the multiplier and you are ready to crunch hard.

[res0r9lm]

why even post this thread if you were planning on using motherboards that were not compatable with XP.:argue:

[res0r9lm]

Originally posted by {PMS}fishy


No point in doing that. It would make the duron 30% slower than if it was on DDR and a KT266A chipset board. Durons are super easy to unlock. Then set them at 133FSB and lower the multiplier and you are ready to crunch hard.

well for folding memory bandwidth isn't important fpu is.

[fosheazy]

So all that matters for folding is purely fpu? Not FSB or enhancements like sse? I thought I had read somewhere that they had updated fah3 to work with sse or sse2 I can't remember. And know that I'm thinking about it, it does seem wiser to get the xps, for resale value (used computers=resale value hah!), and I might want to use them for lan parties later I am thinking. My friends wouldn't have to cart there machines around if they didn't want to.

[Ploaf]

Originally posted by fosheazy
So all that matters for folding is purely fpu? Not FSB or enhancements like sse? I thought I had read somewhere that they had updated fah3 to work with sse or sse2 I can't remember. And know that I'm thinking about it, it does seem wiser to get the xps, for resale value (used computers=resale value hah!), and I might want to use them for lan parties later I am thinking. My friends wouldn't have to cart there machines around if they didn't want to.


This price/performance thing is going to vary as we saw in your case. You have most of what you need already to build the systems save the cpu/mobo.
In my case it would be quite a different story. The two MHz/MHz, total cost, would be pretty much even so it breaks down to which will give me the lowest maintenance cost, including time and effort.

Anyway. Folding is still very much fpu although sse2, if the client is optimized to take advantage of it, could possibly make a difference with the P4's. Rage3d was claiming that they've seen some significant benefits on P4 rigs with the 3.0 client. I'm not sure that they stack up to the fpu of the athlons yet in this venture, but if it's true it could be a big deal in the future.

[JetMech]

Also take into account the need to put two systems on the net as opposed to one. Once you add that second system you need a router so they both have access or something equivalent. You also must learn to use software such as VNC to see the systems with one monitor or add a monitor or KVM switch and the connectors that requires.

[{PMS}fishy]

Originally posted by res0r9lm


well for folding memory bandwidth isn't important fpu is.

Ah, ok then. I still would rather have the kt266a chipset, incase I wanted to use the computer for somethign else.

[res0r9lm]

Originally posted by {PMS}fishy


Ah, ok then. I still would rather have the kt266a chipset, incase I wanted to use the computer for somethign else.

can't argue with that. I recently got an refribushed Epox 8k7a amd761 and it's pretty good too. there really isn't much difference in price so why not get ddr

[gtsimmo]

Here are some frame times comparing my Duron 1 ghz @ 1.33 and my Athlon XP 1600 @ 1.5 ghz. This should really help you in deciding and seeing the performance gap between the two.

Protein...............Avg Frame Time
GNRA hairpin......00:04:02 Duron
GNRA hairpin......00:03:33 AthlonXP

proteinA ............00:09:30 Duron
proteinA ............00:08:21 AthlonXP

Now the time difference on the GNRA hairpin is roughly 50 mins on the entire WU time.

On a protein A it is 115 mins, almost two hours.

I estimate that the weekly production difference between the two CPU is less than 10 pts at best.

I hope some real numbers, helps you in deciding but get what you can afford is my best advice.

[Mulciber]

i built a duron 1ghz for about that price because I had the same components as him.

almost ALL 1ghz morgans can be o/cd to 1.33ghz just by setting the bus to 133. Mines running stable right now at 1.33 in my closet with an old Vantec 6027D, which isnt any kind of great cooler at all.

[res0r9lm]

yep but almost all xp's will overclock to 1700 the better stepping will hit 1800 no problem

[AZN]

are u building systems just for the purpose of folding? Wow i love ur effort. I dont think i can do that, but i will be recruiting 2 more systems with weekend. Keep up the good work every1.

With all the folding that the overclockers and the rest of the world has done. Where can we see the results. I mean i want to see what good we have done. I want to know if we help make a cure. I want to see that we are making a difference.:D

[res0r9lm]

Originally posted by NO1
are u building systems just for the purpose of folding? Wow i love ur effort. I dont think i can do that, but i will be recruiting 2 more systems with weekend. Keep up the good work every1.

With all the folding that the overclockers and the rest of the world has done. Where can we see the results. I mean i want to see what good we have done. I want to know if we help make a cure. I want to see that we are making a difference.:D http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,46982,00.html and http://folding.stanford.edu/results.html

[Mulciber]

Originally posted by res0r9lm
yep but almost all xp's will overclock to 1700 the better stepping will hit 1800 no problem

granted, but that requires either upping the bus past spec, unlocking the chip, or extreme air cooling.

im talking about a standard bus with stock cooling and the durons are fine.
plus the xp is going to put off a lot more heat, which proly isnt good since mine are in the closet