Looking to build the ULTIMATE SETI chuncher!!!

Here's the scoop fellow SETI crunchers...

I just added my 5th rig, an older tbird 1000 thats now running 166X8.5

I now have 1 Dolly barton, 3 tbred b's also plugging away...

Having 5 machines up 24/7 is not light on the pocketbook so I'm interested in cutting back to 3-4 machines within the next 2-3 months.. 3 would be ideal but i'm willing to keep 4...

I'm debating on whether to build a P4 system with hyperthreading and overclock it with 512mb of Excellent ram and good thermalright cooling, or going DUAL AMD...

I have NOT ever built a P4 or dual system before and am asking for your advice....

The MAIN issue here is maximum SETi units !!!

The OS will be Xp pro...

Cooling is limited to AIR, no water or phase change

You want max units build a dual xeon system. You can either get a pair of 3 gig xeons, or some slower ones and overclock with that Iwill DP533 board. You can run 4 seti clients and pop out 4 units about every 3 hours, or about 32 units per day. A guy in my office building runs a video editing firm and he has just such a box. On weekends when he's not doing anything else with it he can get anywhere from 30-35 units out of it. Too bad he's not on our team

If you want only one machine then the p4c is a good solution. Dual AMD k7 chips are not really optimal, the motherboards are outdated and slow. If you have the money an dual Intel Xeon system would be great... but you could probably get cheaper and faster from an dual AMD k8 system (Opteron). There is also the possibilty of just building two AMD k7 systems. The price of that should be comprable (probably a bit more expensive in most cases) to a single p4c but those together should outproduce it by ~35%
There are a great many factors to consider in that scenario though. Your power bill will probably be something like 5 dollars more from having a second computer... but hey... a second computer!

Those are really all the viable solutions for us SETI enthusiasts that I can think of.

[edit] by cheaper and faster I mean better price/speed ratio. I am really not sure though, I don't know a whole lot about opteron/xeon systems.

I'd say go for the P4c route becuase from my experience my 2.4c (STOCK) puts out 14+ wu's a day. I have yet seen a single AMD cpu even extremely overclocked that can do that.

I liked the idea of the dual Xeon's but man the Iwill motherboard is like $450 plus another $1000 for the 2 -3.0 gig processors, a bit too much...

I guesss were down to an overclocked P4 with hyperthread or perhaps a single or Dual operon..

I'll have to look up the specs on the opteron and see how much the systems cost to make and how they run with SETi, any more help on the Opterons would be appreciated...

I already know the GOOD P4c's can crank out 23-25 Wu's /day
and thats why I'm thinking about Intel...

I am running AMD, but I feel you can do well with a (newer) P4 system. 2.4c(8?) or better. The Northwood seem's good.
I SWEAR by the SLK-800 for an air H/S. (that's for AMD)
But, if money isn't an option, go Zeon dually. Corsair for RAM.
build a few while your at it!

The top of the line 1.8GHz Opty costs about $600 last time I checked, and if you can get the Asus board it's about $340 - not exactly cheap - in fact we're talking more like Xeon prices. The 1.8 Opty will OC to about 1.95 at best. My guess is the best performance would be to load 64 bit linux. Personally I think the Opteron is best left alone for now. It's really sort of like the P4 willy core was when it first came out. Lots of potential but not until it hit a higher speed with a smaller fab process.

Hughhefner said:

I already know the GOOD P4c's can crank out 23-25 Wu's /day
and thats why I'm thinking about Intel...

Click to expand...

Only when all the planets align and you get a slew of high AR work units... or something. Like Burning Phoenix said... you are looking at more like 14-16 on air(possibly something like 18 with a really nice overclock)... vs. 22-24 a day with 2 overclocked AMD 1700+ systems.

[edit] oh yeah about the opteron... it doesn't seem like such a good solution

Ditto - that figure is too high for average AR's. You might get 25-30 if they were all 10+ but on a typical day it's more like 18.