SickBoy's Dual P4 Xeon 1.8 experiment

[SickBoy]

Hey, guess what?

I got the QA Lab admin to approve running FAH this weekend on one of our new beasts.... a dual 1.8 GHz P4 Xeon system!!!

This will be a neat experiment... Hyperthreading is enabled and so far I've started up 2 processes of FAH and it's sitting at only about 50% CPU utilization (according to W2k task manager), so I'll need to run 4 processes to gain full utilization on this box....

Gawd I'm so happy...

This should be useful info for anyone on the team thinking about a duallie P4 Xeon box - with Hyperthreading enabled you'll need to run 4 processes of Folding. I can only imagine how fast this thing would return a WU if SMP was enabled for FAH2 like it was supposed to be. (Though it's probably not any faster than a Dual XP 2100 system)

I'll try to post some Schweet screenshots... not to mention maybe talking our network admin into turning our QA lab (30+ machines) into a weekend cruncher for OC.com. On a side note, is there a Solaris version of FAH2 yet?

If you're interested in this box's output, it's folding under the name "SickBoyExperiment" without the quotes.

Rock On!!! I'm back with a vengeance....

SB

 

[SickBoy]

Oh, and another sweet thing.... my parents are out of town for a week, so that means their Dell is going to be folding...

 

[Wedo]

Sweet SickBoy... very cool and although I'm new, welcome back!

Wedo

 

[SickBoy]

Okay, couldn't attach a doc file, try downloading it from here:

http://www.mnu.edu/~akruse/Xeon_Experiment.doc

sb

 

[Ebola]

sweet. it will be interesting to see how hyperthreading works for folding.

 

[Jeff Bolton]

yowza! now that is one intel rig that i would definitely NOT mind having! :makes tim allen manly noise: i'm interested to see how fast that monster cranks out frames...btw...any idea how much that thing costs?

jeff

 

[SickBoy]

Neighborhood of seven grand...... but to tell you the truth, I could probably build a more powerful machine (read: dual AthlonMP or dual TBred MP in the next few months) for less than half that.

I'm gonna go check statsman to see if we'll see our first WU'age on that account....

**EDIT** nothing yet. Been crunching five hours..... my guess is that hyperthreading doesn't do a whole lot of gain... kinda like running 2 processes of folding on a single CPU machine. They probably just split actual CPU time from each other. Should be seeing four completed work units about simultaneously when they do get done, though.

**ANOTHER EDIT**
Just realized that the last update to Statsman was at 8pm. They'd only been crunching almost two hours at that point.

It'd be so great to get our QA lab crunching... even if just weekends. That lab is chock full with dual and quad xeon systems... potential coming out the ears, albeit they're Intel systems. We only have two of these new Dual P4 Xeon 1.8 boxes - after that we have 3 dual 1 GHz P3 systems and everything else is pretty much 550 MHz Xeons like my box in my cubicle.... but man, the sheer numbers..... there are probably 50 CPU's in that lab that sit idle for about 14 hours a day and a minimum of 48 solid hours on the weekends.....

Don't even get me started on our Sun and HPUX systems.....

 

[SickBoy]

Well, I finally cracked that stats..... 8 WU in 24 hours, not bad but mildly disappointing. I'm pretty sure a dual Athlon XP 1800 rig would spank on that.....

 

[belorsch]

Well, I finally cracked that stats..... 8 WU in 24 hours, not bad but mildly disappointing. I'm pretty sure a dual Athlon XP 1800 rig would spank on that.....

We're not complaining. We'll take anyway we can get'em

 

[SickBoy]

We're not complaining. We'll take anyway we can get'em

True.... any way we can get them, we get them. I made that comment mostly to reflect my intent to build a dual XP 1800+ system soon....

In fact, the video card came Friday. I want to wait to build this thing until I have all the new parts - I don't want to adulterate my new box with any of the parts from my old one, so it gives me incentive to order up the rest of it, he he.... **SickBoy thinks to self, "How much do I have left to buy?" "Well, so far I've got the video card, hard drive, network card, and RAM...."**



sb

 

[KFB]

sickboy, that dual p4 xeon system is definitely sick! keep us informed. maybe you could experiment with 2 processes (hyperthread enabled & disbaled) vs. 4 (hyperthread enabled).

 

[SickBoy]

I'm not allowed to toy with enabling/disabling hyperthreading, unfortunately. I'm not even allowed to reboot the machine.

As of 8AM monday it's done folding... got a total score of 9.6 for folding from Friday 6PM to monday 8AM. Not bad, but it got almost equaled by my [email protected] GHz. Pretty crappy for a $7,000 machine. (9.4 for the same time period) It did have 4 folding processes at about 65% when I killed it - unfortunately I had to, though. So 9.6 is a little bit low - probably an accurate estimation would be more around 12 or 13 but still.... a single 1 GHz CPU should be way behind, in theory.

But just wait until I get my duallie running. (Ordered the case today, hee hee )

So here's the verdict: Don't buy dual Prestonias simply for the purpose of folding. Overpriced and underperforming.

I'll keep working on getting the lab folding though.....

 

[belorsch]

What case are you getting SB?

 

[SickBoy]

I ordered an Antec SX1040 clone from Cyberpower. Comes with a 425 watt PSU of some sort,. that I will replace if need be.

It's silver.

I just wish someone would come out with a decent MPX board now....

 

[belorsch]

I ordered an Antec SX1040 clone from Cyberpower. Comes with a 425 watt PSU of some sort,. that I will replace if need be.

It's silver.

I just wish someone would come out with a decent MPX board now....

I saw them and the price on pricewatch after I read your post. I was thinking about it until I looked them up on reseller ratings. Ouch! I hope they treat you right SB. I think I might go with an SX840 from EMS. I like the easy access to cdrom and such. I only want for the extra size just in case I decide to sneak a dually in at a later time

 

[robertm]

I ordered an Antec SX1040 clone from Cyberpower. Comes with a 425 watt PSU of some sort,. that I will replace if need be.

It's silver.

I just wish someone would come out with a decent MPX board now....

I had have had good luck with my A7M266-D board but I know some have had problem. Seem one of the main things is a very good PS memory and anything but GEforce3 cards seems they overload the AGP.

I would hold on for a little bit I have heard new boards will be coming with fixed Southbridges soon.

 

[Crash893]

is this something you can do everyweekend or was this a one time shot?

 

[diehrd]

Hey guys I am runniong 2 instances of folding on my Dual XP 1800

I see sickboy has like time results or overall scores of some kind where do i get them how do I get them and how many hours do I need to run to compair my results with that INTELL 7000.00 system ??

 

[KFB]

Hey guys I am runniong 2 instances of folding on my Dual XP 1800

I see sickboy has like time results or overall scores of some kind where do i get them how do I get them and how many hours do I need to run to compair my results with that INTELL 7000.00 system ??

there is no comparison! your amd rig will outfold 2 of those $7K systems! it will beat-up on a 4-cpu xeon cluster like biff on mcfly!

 

[diehrd]

there is no comparison! your amd rig will outfold 2 of those $7K systems! it will beat-up on a 4-cpu xeon cluster like biff on mcfly!

Well ok lol but rather than spred rederick lets actually see the results..How do I get the results he lists after what I can see is 38 hours of folding ?

Can any one help me on this ?? I am folding in the name of diehrd team 32 .