Fastest "old" cpu for folding? Pentium III 800 Mhz, or Celeron 900-1000 Mhz?

soundfx4 · May 20, 2006

Fastest "old" cpu for folding? Pentium III 800 Mhz, or Celeron 900-1000 Mhz?

I found a guy that has old systems that he sells for what seams like a really good price, and I was thinking about buying a couple of these old computers and getting them folding at other peoples houses! It would be sort of like borging, only it would be easier to get them to say yes since it wouldn't actually be their computer! Anyway, the guy said he has a lot of these old computers. He mentioned a Pentium III 800 Mhz system, and said he was selling it for $40, and he also said he had about 35 Celeron 900-1000 Mhz systems for $50. First of all, does that sound like a good deal? Second, which would be faster for folding? I know Pentium III's are faster then celerons, but I think I remembered reading something about more Mhz = faster folding. Is that true? I just want to check before I buy anything from him. It seams like a good deal, and if it is, I'd be very happy to set them up as folding rigs

Thanks!

David · May 20, 2006

soundfx4 said:
I found a guy that has old systems that he sells for what seams like a really good price, and I was thinking about buying a couple of these old computers and getting them folding at other peoples houses! It would be sort of like borging, only it would be easier to get them to say yes since it wouldn't actually be their computer! Anyway, the guy said he has a lot of these old computers. He mentioned a Pentium III 800 Mhz system, and said he was selling it for $40, and he also said he had about 35 Celeron 900-1000 Mhz systems for $50. First of all, does that sound like a good deal? Second, which would be faster for folding? I know Pentium III's are faster then celerons, but I think I remembered reading something about more Mhz = faster folding. Is that true? I just want to check before I buy anything from him. It seams like a good deal, and if it is, I'd be very happy to set them up as folding rigs

Thanks!

The effects of cache, memory bandwidth and FSB vary from work unit to work unit although my gut feeling is that a P3/800 should be the best. Although really compared to modern CPUs it isnt worth the power running a P3 rig unless power is cheap or free.

I have a dual P3 system and it doesnt fold very fast.

muddocktor · May 20, 2006

But if he isn't paying the power bill on them (spreading them out to other people's houses), then over the long haul they will actually do some useful work.

As far as the comp's go, if the Celly machines are Tualatin Celerons (256k L2 cache), then definitely go with them. If they are Coppermine based Celly's (128k L2 cache), then I think it's pretty much a tossup since the Celly's are faster but have less cache to work with, slowing down production a bit to offset the faster clock speed.

soundfx4 · May 20, 2006

hmmm...well I'm not sure if he would know what type of celeron they are. I could ask him if he knows. But either way is that a good price for an entire system that is about 5-6 years old? I think it's a pretty good deal, but what do I know? :beer:

Shelnutt2 · May 20, 2006

Coppermines = no IHS
Tualatin = IHS

soundfx4 · May 20, 2006

Shelnutt2 said:
Coppermines = no IHS
Tualatin = IHS

Thanks! That makes it easier to identify. Btw, until recently I didn't even know what an IHS was :beer:

(well I knew about them, but I didn't know what they were called)

AlabamaCajun · May 21, 2006

soundfx4 said:
~ Btw, until recently I didn't even know what an IHS was (well I knew about them, but I didn't know what they were called)

Integrated Heat "Shield" LOL.
_____________________________
IMO I would take the $s and buy 4 layers of Sempron 3100 or Celly-Ds.

robertm · May 21, 2006

If nothing else put them on timeless units if you need to. I just wish I could get the one guy at work to remember to leave his system on in the evening. I have been thinking about getting together with a local computer store I know about getting some old boards and CPUs and setting up diskless farm but money is real tight right now.

soundfx4 · May 21, 2006

robertm said:
If nothing else put them on timeless units if you need to. I just wish I could get the one guy at work to remember to leave his system on in the evening. I have been thinking about getting together with a local computer store I know about getting some old boards and CPUs and setting up diskless farm but money is real tight right now.

that's what I'd probably have to do, but from my xbox folding experience, I think these systems would do just fine. My xbox is crunching away rather quickly. Doesn't take it too much longer then my other faster rigs, but it still takes some time. But the system I have running that is absolutely horrible, and is almost not worth running is an old K6 450 Mhz system. It takes it so fricken long, and on top of that, it hasn't been finishing work units. I checked the log, and not one WU that it worked on was finished. It's working on one right now, and if it screws up on this one, I'll just take it down. There is no point in running a system if it is too unstable to finish a WU.

dwschoon · May 21, 2006

soundfx4 said:
that's what I'd probably have to do, but from my xbox folding experience, I think these systems would do just fine. My xbox is crunching away rather quickly. Doesn't take it too much longer then my other faster rigs, but it still takes some time. But the system I have running that is absolutely horrible, and is almost not worth running is an old K6 450 Mhz system. It takes it so fricken long, and on top of that, it hasn't been finishing work units. I checked the log, and not one WU that it worked on was finished. It's working on one right now, and if it screws up on this one, I'll just take it down. There is no point in running a system if it is too unstable to finish a WU.

I used to fold with a k62-450. It would take about 30% longer per frame than a p2-400. They really suck for folding. I think that the cach doesnt affect it too much if you have it fold tinkers. I have a couple of celeron 667's and 1 celeron 733. They get anywhere from 35-38ppd on tinkers which is about 50ppd/ghz. My duallie p3 800@896(which fried on me) was getting 50ppd/core which is about 55ppd/ghz. Celerons do take a hit, but not too much if you fold tinkers. Since the celeron's are on a 66mhz fsb, then you might be able to o/c them even if the system has cheap pc100 ram.

soundfx4 · May 21, 2006

dwschoon said:
I used to fold with a k62-450. It would take about 30% longer per frame than a p2-400. They really suck for folding. I think that the cach doesnt affect it too much if you have it fold tinkers. I have a couple of celeron 667's and 1 celeron 733. They get anywhere from 35-38ppd on tinkers which is about 50ppd/ghz. My duallie p3 800@896(which fried on me) was getting 50ppd/core which is about 55ppd/ghz. Celerons do take a hit, but not too much if you fold tinkers. Since the celeron's are on a 66mhz fsb, then you might be able to o/c them even if the system has cheap pc100 ram.

well I don't know about o/cing them. They are more then likely OEM computers, and those hardly ever have options for overclocking. At least AFAIK OEM computers don't have o/cing options

pscout · May 21, 2006

soundfx4 said:
well I don't know about o/cing them. They are more then likely OEM computers, and those hardly ever have options for overclocking. At least AFAIK OEM computers don't have o/cing options

Yeah ,... if they are name brands, OC'ing is doubtful. You might be able to get a bit with clockgen if it supports them, but without a pci lock you won't get very far.

If they are all the same and you can easily get a bit of OC then it might be worth it.
But if they are all different, finding the OC for each would not be worth a few ppd, especially when you consider ongoing maintenance.

JDXNC · May 21, 2006

I fold on my dual P3 server (733's) and they fold pretty decently, no trouble at all meeting deadlines.

Many OEM computers can be OC'ed via software such as CPUFSB.

soundfx4 · May 21, 2006

JDXNC said:
I fold on my dual P3 server (733's) and they fold pretty decently, no trouble at all meeting deadlines.

Many OEM computers can be OC'ed via software such as CPUFSB.

oh yeah, I didn't think about the software method...

RoadWarrior · May 25, 2006

Coppermine celerons really lag behind coppermine P3s for anything at all intensive. The difference in performance is around 33% Therefore for a cu-celly to be faster than a PIII it has to have a third more clock. So to beat a PIII-800 with a cu-celly, it needs to be running at 1.2G or better. Tualatin celerons will be marginally faster than coppermine PIII clock for clock, and marginally slower than tualatin PIII. Katmai PIII aren't so great, you might outfold a 500Mhz Katmai with a mendocino celeron. However, I think they're still just about better than coppermine celerons. Low speed coppermine celerons might get beaten by mendocinos too despite SSE, but since the low speed ones are 66Mhz and usually easily modded to, and capable of 100Mhz, one shouldn't really run into that dilemma.

ChasR · May 25, 2006

I happen to have a 800 MHz coppermine P3 which averages 40ppd as a dedicated folder. It does 43 ppd on Tinkers. A 933 MHz P3 coppermine makes 50 ppd on Tinkers. Linear scaling. A 733 MHz Coppermine Celeron makes 38 ppd on Tinkers, which is awful close to linear scaling (1 ppd less than). I'd think the 933 MHz Celeron would outperform the 800 MHz P3 handily and certainly so on Tinkers.

soundfx4 · May 25, 2006

so many opinions, so much information. Well, I'll just have to ask him what cores they are. BUT! Currently I can't buy anything from him, even if they are only 40-50 dollars. The reason for that is because I just bought a Dell dual core P4 820 in the classifieds. By the way, how many PPD can that get?

RoadWarrior · May 25, 2006

ChasR said:
I happen to have a 800 MHz coppermine P3 which averages 40ppd as a dedicated folder. It does 43 ppd on Tinkers. A 933 MHz P3 coppermine makes 50 ppd on Tinkers. Linear scaling. A 733 MHz Coppermine Celeron makes 38 ppd on Tinkers, which is awful close to linear scaling (1 ppd less than). I'd think the 933 MHz Celeron would outperform the 800 MHz P3 handily and certainly so on Tinkers.

Yeah, Tinkers barely bat an eyelid at cache size.

GigaHertzAddict · May 26, 2006

Buying a PC for $50 bucks my be temping, but I rather save the $$ and buy a cheap dual core PC. Think about it, how many of these cheap pcs will it take to lets say match a Pentium D 805 stock?

soundfx4 · May 26, 2006

GigaHertzAddict said:
Buying a PC for $50 bucks my be temping, but I rather save the $$ and buy a cheap dual core PC. Think about it, how many of these cheap pcs will it take to lets say match a Pentium D 805 stock?

I don't know, but I do know that if Price of equivalent PPD P3 systems is less than or equal to Price of one equivalent PPD Pentium D then I may as well buy the 50 dollar PCs and scatter them.

Fastest "old" cpu for folding? Pentium III 800 Mhz, or Celeron 900-1000 Mhz?

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