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Upgrading, Q6600 or 9800gx2

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Sephis

Member
Joined
Jun 9, 2004
Location
Bruceton, TN
My rig is showing its age a bit, and I would like to give it an upgrade to pump out a little more RAC. It has a e6600 @3GHz or so, and a vid card that doesn't support CUDA.

There is a q6600 (should clock at least as fast as the duallie, right?) and a bfg 9800gx2 in the classifieds that I have been eying. Now, I don't really care about gaming or desktop performance. The duallie is plenty fast for surfing and listening to pandora, and the only games I play are TF2 and age of empires. Neither of those require powerhouse computers.

My question is, which of these will give me the biggest seti boost. It might be obvious to some, but I've never used the GPU crunching before, so I have no idea.

Edit: I would love to get both, but I don't think my 520W corsair could push them.
 
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Sephis, that Corsair should be able to push both. That is a quality psu and since you are building this as a 24/7 cruncher, I am assuming that you won't push for a max overclock on either cpu or vid card, but rather a good steady overclock that doesn't push the parts to the very limits. After all, you need stability more than the last ounce of speed. And seeing that you are just running your old E6600 at 3 GHz, I am assuming that you operate that way. My old E6600 I used to have would run much faster than that, but would run at 3.0 without even having to bump up vcore. And every Q6600 I have ever messed with would run at 3.0 with stock vcore too. That's an easy overclock; set the fsb to 333 and set the correct memory speed and reboot.
 
Yeah, I usually don't push my everyday parts to their max. The e6600 runs that on stock voltage, so that's how I left it. Its the old B2 though, so it still cranks out some decent wattage.

I used a PSU calculator running both parts and came up with wattages in the 550-680 watt range depending on OC and other options. I know the corsair is a fine unit, but 600+ watts?

Thanks for the reply.
 
That corsair will be fine. The 9800GX2 will provide a much greater boost to your RAC than the q6600 will. I would suggest just crunching CUDA with your new rig though.

http://www.xfxforce.com/en-us/products/graphiccards/9series/9800GX2.aspx#4

That page states 500W single and 600W SLI. Remember, they always quote for systems fully spec'd out with top of the range quads like the QX6700 or QX9650 when quoting power requirements. Your E6600 doesn't draw much power at all in comparison.
 
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Ok, thanks for the help guys. I'll go for the vid card first. If there's any money left from my next check, I'll look into a new processor.
 
I do need to warn you though. The 9800GX2 is the HOTTEST card I've ever owned.

Typical temps were in the high 70s, low 80's with the fan at 100%, caseless in the basement with an ambient of ~15 degrees C.
 
Wow, that's pretty toasty. I bet the dual PCB design makes it hard to find aftermarket coolers for it too.
 
I don't like to double post, but you were right Duner. Mine runs over 100 running multi-gpu furmark. Looks like it'll be CPU crunching only till I can gather up the funds for a water block.
 
Wow, over 100 is a little ridiculous. Have you tried spraying some compressed air through it to move some dust balls? You could also disassemble and re-apply the TIM.

Also, Furmark is quite a bit more stressful than SETI, so those temps would be a little lower.
 
Yep, I've already tore into it and replaced the stock paste. I'm also running it without that big metal case. Both helped a little, but its still over 100. The ambient in here is pretty high though. It stays around 26C in my room most of the time.
 
OK, another double post, but I don't want to start a new thread for this question. I've got the optimizing done, and I'm currently running SETI on the GX2. I have my prefs set to only use one core of the e6600. Should I use both cores? Should I stop doing CPU work all together? I'm new to the CUDA scene, so I'm really not sure.
 
I'd try it with one core at first to see how much it helps. I'm not sure how much experience anybody has with an X2 as opposed to dual cards, it may react much differently. For a baseline a 9800GT with a dedicated core runs ~5k RAC ...
 
Thanks QuietIce. I won't know if the single core is enough for a while. There has been a lot of major flooding here today. They keep cutting the power off so crews can get to people without getting electrocuted. Looks like most of the back roads' bridges are gone too. Prolly gonna be a while before power gets back to normal. :(

This vid was taken about ten miles up the road from here.
http://uservideo.weather.com/video/Flood-In-Camden-TN-May-01-2010

and this is an hour south of me.
http://www.jacksonsun.com/article/2...residents-rescued-in-South-Jackson-dam-breaks

 
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Well, the city limits are a lot higher than the surrounding swampy areas, so I think we'll be OK here. It rained all night, so Hwy 70 that runs through town is flooded just outside the city limits. Our drinking water actually comes from a deep well in the center of town. We also have a ridiculously overpowered water treatment plant from the days when there was a garment factory here. As long as they keep the generators running there, water should be fine. Food OTOH, might be a problem. Nobody expected the highway to get covered, and there aren't any places in town to buy food.

I'll see if I can get some pics of the Hwy. later this afternoon.

Well, the TDOT had the a lot of the roads blocked, and wouldn't let me take pics of the highway. By the time they left, it was dark.

EDIT: added pics below. These are about 600 yards behind my house. The road I was parked on was under a foot and a half of water last night, and somebody got swept off of the road. The first two pics are of what should be cornfields. The water is about two feet deep now. The third pic is of a road that runs behind my house. The road is on the right side of the pic and is about 4 feet underwater.
 

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