Overclock.net banner

what will have the best possable performance for a pure folding server?

  • for a folding server, four 12 core AMD Opterons have the best possable performance

    Votes: 22 100.0%
  • for a folding server, two 8 core Intel Xeons have the best possable performance

    Votes: 0 0.0%

exterem folding- 48 bulldozers against 16 sandy bridges

9K views 144 replies 40 participants last post by  fishy0689 
#1 ·
Ok, my friend wants me to help him build the most over the top folding rig ever seen. So far ive looked to the server market ith dual/quad socket boards

On the intel side, two 8core sb-e xeons

On the amd side, four 12 core bulldozers

These are the maximum cores for each platform. Amd is cheaper by alot, but lets put that aside for now. These are folding servers, doing nothing but folding all day long. Each will have four 590s (no gaming, sli dosnt matter) and the minium amount of ram to have all channals running all will be on supermicro boards. For the propose of this we will be useing the 3.1ghz procs and powerusage dosnt matter for now. Overclocking does. This is A PURE FOLDING SERVER. NO FANBOYISM HERE. NO DISSING BD. NO DISSING INTEL. WILL NOT RESPOND
 
#4 ·
I'm sticking with intel on this one.
- chmodlabs
 
#7 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by driftkidd2323 View Post

wait, you guys are saying core for core, SB is 3x faster? 48 cores of AMD vs 16 cores of xeons?
proof.gif
I believe so, I've read before that Intel>AMD in folding. I don't have any citation for this. It's all just in memory. Like nVidia>AMD in folding is locked up in there too
 
#8 ·
Two 8-core Xeons = 32 threads, so its closer than 48 vs 16. Quad 12-core opterons can put up a ton of points though. Forget the 590s though, you will use way too much power and probably end up with only a slightly higher output since the CPU folding will be slower.
 
#9 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by jrl1357 View Post

Ok, my friend wants me to help him build the most over the top folding rig ever seen. So far ive looked to the server market ith dual/quad socket boards
On the intel side, two 8core sb-e xeons
On the amd side, four 12 core bulldozers
These are the maximum cores for each platform. Amd is cheaper by alot, but lets put that aside for now. These are folding servers, doing nothing but folding all day long. Each will have four 590s (no gaming, sli dosnt matter) and the minium amount of ram to have all channals running all will be on supermicro boards. For the propose of this we will be useing the 3.1ghz procs and powerusage dosnt matter for now. Overclocking does. This is A PURE FOLDING SERVER. NO FANBOYISM HERE. NO DISSING BD. NO DISSING INTEL. WILL NOT RESPOND
If you want extreme.... Look at
Intel Xeon X75xx (Nehalem microarchitecture) are 8-cores that support 8 sockets.
Intel Xeon X88xx (Westmere microarchitecture) are 8/10-cores that support 8 sockets.

Build a sever based on 8x Xeon E7-8870. The CPUs alone will costs $37K... I'm guess a fully equiped server should cost around $100K. That would be 80 cores/160 threads at 2.4GHz.

If you want to overclock... then stop it. You options for multi-socket overclocking are very limited. There are less than a dozen motherboard capable of overclocking a recent Xeons/Opeterons. Get a list of those boards first... EVGA SR-2, SR-X, modified Supermicro server AMD boards....

If you are not willing to spend over $30K, then you are not building the "most over the top folding rig ever seen"...
 
#10 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Scorpion49 View Post

Two 8-core Xeons = 32 threads, so its closer than 48 vs 16. Quad 12-core opterons can put up a ton of points though. Forget the 590s though, you will use way too much power and probably end up with only a slightly higher output since the CPU folding will be slower.
For the perpose of this power useage dosnt matter (my friend will have to figure that out himself) but how wouldnt we get higher scores with four 590? The cpu will be slower but i didnt think the cpu could hold back a gpu in folding s:/ ??
 
#11 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by DuckieHo View Post

If you want extreme.... Look at
Intel Xeon X75xx (Nehalem microarchitecture) are 8-cores that support 8 sockets.
Intel Xeon X88xx (Westmere microarchitecture) are 8/10-cores that support 8 sockets.
Build a sever based on 8x Xeon E7-8870. The CPUs alone will costs $37K... I'm guess a fully equiped server should cost around $100K. That would be 80 cores/160 threads at 2.4GHz.
Holy s*** thats out the budget, witch i thought was massive. Again, holy s***
 
#14 ·
If you really wanted overkill, look into Intel socket 1567. 10 cores, reportedly 32 socket support but good luck finding that. Link for wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGA_1567

8 sockets mobo, 8x 10 cores CPU, 80 cores total (160 threaded cores)

The only issue with socket 1567 is that they aren't normally sold at customer level. A 10 core CPU is around $5,000 a pop.

EDIT: seems someone else above had the same idea at the same time I was typing this.
tongue.gif
 
#15 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by jrl1357 View Post

Holy s*** thats out the budget, witch i thought was massive. Again, holy s***
People have Folded with massive servers before.... a guy for EVGA was Folding with a few $100K worth of servers that were not yet ready for deployment.
 
#17 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by jrl1357 View Post

For the perpose of this power useage dosnt matter (my friend will have to figure that out himself) but how wouldnt we get higher scores with four 590? The cpu will be slower but i didnt think the cpu could hold back a gpu in folding s:/ ??
No. for extreme PPD, use lots of powerful CPUs, not GPUs. you can make a 4p servers that will get way more PPD than 4 590s. Plus it will use way less power and probably cost less too.
 
#20 ·
I did the math. Bd SHOULD be faster. It has %50 great the threads so sbe would have to be %50 better as i and others have pointed out- but its not. I did se reserch and at best it is %25 better. Also (-the gpus, witch were going to ditch) we can build a fully working machien for just over $3000 before tax and shipping, but JUST THE CPUS cost more then that for sbe. We will be using a tyan board since its the only one on newegg.ca (were in canada) and 16 1gb ram dimms. A rack server case, 4 coolermaster hyper 212 evos, and a 800watt power supply. It will have no drive, linux debian and f@h will run off a usb stick.
 
#21 ·
Just want to point out that you are going in a good direction, but NEVER compare different CPUs cores vs cores or clock vs clock. The G34 AMDs have more actual cores, but that doesn't make them faster.

Also to reply to your first of three posts, NO. adding GPUs to the 4p rig WILL NOT HELP. It takes power from the CPUs to run GPUs, unless they are running advanced methods (the GPU) which take less CPU power, but still, the PPD from the GPUs wont actually help since you are getting less PPD from the CPUs.

I folded with a i7 870, which got me 25K ppd, folding with my 470 which got around 15K, but when it folded, I only got between 9K and 12K, so in the end the increase was slight, but power usage was three times more than CPU only. NOT worth it. I assume this would be similar with even more powerful CPUs. Basically the way things are now, its better to get more powerful CPUs than powerful GPUs since it will be cheaper to run, as well as get you more PPD.
 
#22 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by jrl1357 View Post

But wouldnt gpus still help?
When you start looking at 4x GPUs especially in the price point of the GTX 590s your talking about the money would be much better to spend on an upgraded CPU setup or an additional CPU setup. When folding big adv and the bonus points kick in its hard for GPUs to even compete with CPUs $$ for $$ and Im not even considering power consumption and heat output.

GTX 590s from a quick search make ~26,000 PPD. They are going to be hard to find but well assume a price of $600.00+ youll also need a power supply to handle them and a quick search shows they can pull ~500W each so youll need 2000+ watts of PSU which is not cheap at all.

26,000 * 4 = 104,000 PPD for $2400.00+

For about the same price you can buy a 4P board with 2 6274s and pull down well over 200,000 PPD closer to 300,000 with the a good WU. Also the power draw is going to be 1/3 if not 1/4 of what the GPUs draw.

As someone else said take a look at the thread below, prices and PPD are listed.
http://www.overclock.net/t/1212613/guide-building-a-2p-4p-from-start-to-finish-along-with-ppd-benchmarks-gallery
 
#24 ·
SR-2 actually overclocks nicely if you can get both CPU to play nice at the same time. With Turbo enabled, I can do 3.6Ghz/4GHz on dual X5650.

Overclocking multi-CPU is usually trickier than a bowl of jello because not all CPU are created equal. AFAIK no AMD board offer easy overclocking like EVGA does for Intel Xeon 1366

The information about multi CPU vs multi GPU were very useful. Looks like I may not get 580's for my new dual Xeon rig. I may instead put the money toward quad AMD rig.
 
#25 ·
4 bulldozers it is! No 590s. Sigh. I really wish this were my my rig, but its a friends. If i ever get te money.... I wonder if piledriver will support four way 16core? Theyd need a new chipset thou, i heard the reason 4 way 12 core was the max was cause the chip didnt have the bandwidth. Any way, 48 cores should get him some great scores!
 
#26 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by jrl1357 View Post

4 bulldozers it is! No 590s. Sigh. I really wish this were my my rig, but its a friends. If i ever get te money.... I wonder if piledriver will support four way 16core? Theyd need a new chipset thou, i heard the reason 4 way 12 core was the max was cause the chip didnt have the bandwidth. Any way, 48 cores should get him some great scores!
So..you put in a poll that you aren't going to follow?
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top