New Xeon Cruncher

TC · Mar 4, 2002

I finally got a power supply for my Supermicro Xeon mobo and got XP installed this evening. Hyper threading is pretty cool. There are two physical processors, but XP's task manager shows 4 processors. I started up Seti Driver and by default it wants to run 4 instances of the client, so it also thinks there are 4 processors. I haven't had time to benchmark it, but I did run Sandra. It has scores comparable to an older 8 cpu xeon system! This is looking like one fast box.

LandShark · Mar 4, 2002

WOW!!

can't wait to see how it does a WU??!!

now i SEE how u trim ur farm, TC!!

a single box equal up to 4 boxes!!

btw, what kinda Xeon r u talking 'bout?? not the old PIII base, right?

crunch on, my friend!

lonewolf1983 · Mar 4, 2002

i believe tims talking about the nice new shiny P4 Xeon he got his dirty little mitts on.
they still run 512k of cache i think

from what ive seen on the web the hyperthreading doesnt seem to provide much of a performance boost
but it sure is cool

Yodums · Mar 4, 2002

Bah, I'm drooling!

Happy crunching.

Morpheus · Mar 4, 2002

Nice... I mean... NICE Tim...

So I gotta ask... does it OC?

Cy · Mar 4, 2002

Sounds like some really hot stuff TC!

Hyperthreading can give a large boost to performance but it depends on the task and the programming. I'm sure they will be fast at crunching and could prolly run some services at the same time without undue impact.

Cy

TC · Mar 4, 2002

The setup is a Supermicro P4DCE+ with dual 2GHz P4 Xeon - prestonia cores (basically the northwood version of the xeon with SMT) I've been tinkering with it for a couple of hours. I let Seti driver run 4 instances of the client and it was looking like 5 hours flat per client - which isn't bad considering what it's really doing is running 2 clients per cpu. I've tried that before on a single cpu system and it usually tripled or quadrupled the completion time of each work unit. It looks like this is not quite double the time per unit. I need to install photoshop and get some screen shots. Th benchmarks are pretty sweet. Unfortunately it doesn't overclock though. Seeing how well a regular northwood overclocks I'm sure these would if the board had fsb options. Xeon boards have never had much if anything in the way of overclocking options. This is strictly a server oriented board.

Lonely Raven · Mar 4, 2002

Hmmm, I wonder if he can focus all 4 (virtual) processors on
one WU and get it completed in under 1 hour...hmm....ideas...

TC · Mar 4, 2002

Lonely Raven said:
Hmmm, I wonder if he can focus all 4 (virtual) processors on
one WU and get it completed in under 1 hour...hmm....ideas...

Unfortunately no - Seti is not coded for multithreading. Here are some benchmarks.

vodka314 · Mar 5, 2002

Thats crazy!

bobt17 · Mar 5, 2002

TC do u need to run 4 clients to make full use of both processors or could u just run 2 and have it work right?

TC · Mar 5, 2002

bobt17 said:
TC do u need to run 4 clients to make full use of both processors or could u just run 2 and have it work right?

Well I think 2 clients would work fine as well. I did try that for a little while and task manager was showing the cpu load at 50%. I'm not really 100% sure how this works yet. XP supposedly sees 2 processors, but treats them as 4 logical processors.

flagreen · Mar 5, 2002

Congrats TC! Glad to see you got her up and running! I have found that Xmpeg and TMPEng both use 100% of all four CPUs. TMPEng also shows four processors as being installed. As you say, SETI is not multi-threaded unfortunately. I've also tried RC5 which is also not multi-threaded. Hopefully they'll wise up and and make both SMP eventually. Enjoy!

Basher · Mar 5, 2002

flagreen said:
Congrats TC! Glad to see you got her up and running! I have found that Xmpeg and TMPEng both use 100% of all four CPUs. TMPEng also shows four processors as being installed. As you say, SETI is not multi-threaded unfortunately. I've also tried RC5 which is also not multi-threaded. Hopefully they'll wise up and and make both SMP eventually. Enjoy!

Do you run seti? Are you on our team? Nickname does not sound familiar.

Basher · Mar 5, 2002

Sweet setup TC.

flagreen · Mar 5, 2002

Do you run seti? Are you on our team? Nickname does not sound familiar.

Nope. I've never got into Seti or RC5 much. Just did some some testing for friends in another forum. My PC is a bit too noisy to leave on all the time.

I have been a member for many years. But I forgot my user name when I went to re-register after the software / Format change. My real name is Bill Green. I was a Senior member in the old forum. I drove Dan nuts over moving folks posts around just before the change. He probably hasn't missed me much!

TC · Mar 5, 2002

flagreen said:
Congrats TC! Glad to see you got her up and running! I have found that Xmpeg and TMPEng both use 100% of all four CPUs. TMPEng also shows four processors as being installed. As you say, SETI is not multi-threaded unfortunately. I've also tried RC5 which is also not multi-threaded. Hopefully they'll wise up and and make both SMP eventually. Enjoy!

Thanks again for the help

You really should join our Seti team and put those extra cycles to good use

zouo · Mar 5, 2002

I think the Iwill Xeon board overclocks but I've not seen it for sale anywhere but I haven't really been looking anyway.

I'd like to see Linux installed on this. From my limited experience the Linux client fares better on a dual cpu system time wise than it does on a uni processor system vs. the windows client. And Linux just loves multiple processors.

flagreen · Mar 5, 2002

I think the Iwill Xeon board overclocks but I've not seen it for sale anywhere but I haven't really been looking anyway.

The Iwill board's BIOS auto-senses whether the cpu requires a 100mhz or 133mhz FSB (400 or 533mhz). But apparently there is no way to override the "auto-sense" feature. At least that's what a friend who has one has said. It does ensure future compatibility with the 133mhz Xeons which will be out later this year.

Rumour has it the Supermicro board's clock generator can be mod'd to support 133mhz FSB but it involves soldering. I don't know anyone who has had the courage yet to try it. I know I don't.

Mictlan · Mar 5, 2002

That is one of a hell machine!!!!! Tim you could have waited for the larger cache version of the Prestonia core to show up.....Imagine what a boost 1 Mb of L3 cache could do to that processors

*****drool*****

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