Which Mobo Assy to Which System?

[jedihobbit]

Wasn't a "General Computing" area so.......

Looking for some thoughts on a potential major systems components swap.

Systems & Function:

YsSMN = backup / gamer / LAN SYS / folding
BHrDx = file & printer server / folding
Kermit = dedicated SMP folder (Ubunto)

Available Mobo Assemblies:

Foxconn A74MX-K / Brisbane 4000+ @ ~3.0GHz
Biostar 939-6100 / Opty 170 @ 2.7GHz
Abit NF-M2 nView / Opty 1210 @ 2.7GHz or higher

So……….. match assembly with system!

[oldbrave]

YsSMN = backup / gamer / LAN SYS / folding = Abit NF-M2 nView / Opty 1210 @ 2.7GHz or higher

BHrDx = file & printer server / folding = Biostar 939-6100 / Opty 170 @ 2.7GHz

Kermit = dedicated SMP folder (Ubunto) = Foxconn A74MX-K / Brisbane 4000+ @ ~3.0GHz

Just my opinion!

[mr_raider]

1. Move the Opteron 1210 into the AMD 740 chipset board:
Best clocking potential, and the 2x1MB cache will benefit SMP folding the most. Furthermore, the 740 is the only board that could potentially accomodate a Phenom upgrade.

2. socket 939 board: no further upgrades possible. Opteron will do reasonably well with 2x single core clients. Use as file server

3. Brisbane + Abit 6150 board. Gaming, probably. highest core speed.

[jedihobbit]

A little background may be in order here. This whole thing came about from having some spare parts lying around (dangerous!). Found the Foxconn A74MX-K at the egg and the price was “close to right”. Not one to leave stuff alone I started oc’ing it. Now I have a mobo assembly without a home and decided to “justify” it to the wife by selling the Biostar / Sandy in BHrDx. Originally had thought about just doing a direct swap as it would give me two cores along with the 3870. That way I could gpu fold and still have processor room for server work. Part of this reasoning is the ATI’s drivers still seem to require a lot of cpu time for folding as opposed to nvidia.

As y'all are the only ones so far to give suggestions............

oldbrave, thanks! That is a vitiation I hadn’t thought about.

mr_raider thanks also! I was looking for the "simple" route to avoid the downtime as it has been nice having two years of projects actually running at the same time!

1. Move the Opteron 1210 into the AMD 740 chipset board:
Best clocking potential, and the 2x1MB cache will benefit SMP folding the most. Furthermore, the 740 is the only board that could potentially accommodate a Phenom upgrade.

This would mean Kermit the Folder....... the 2x1MB is the reason I used the 1210 over the Brisbane in the first place. Are you saying the 740 chipset will make the Opty "more efficient" for SMP? The foxconn as a board that supposedly would upgrade to a Phenom was not part of the original equation. However a nice option.

2. socket 939 board: no further upgrades possible. Opteron will do reasonably well with 2x single core clients. Use as file server

BluHaz reDux……as the original intent had been to do gpu folding, run as a server, and with a possible single standard client. What would be required to run two standard clients, gpu fold, and function as a server?

3. Brisbane + Abit 6150 board. Gaming, probably. highest core speed.

Yoda’s Size Matters Not…… the nView / Brisbane combo started out with DreamCatcher and the oc’ing surprisingly is about equal to the foxconn’s.

[mr_raider]

This would mean Kermit the Folder....... the 2x1MB is the reason I used the 1210 over the Brisbane in the first place. Are you saying the 740 chipset will make the Opty "more efficient" for SMP? The foxconn as a board that supposedly would upgrade to a Phenom was not part of the original equation. However a nice option.

The Foxconn board will not fold better. You should put 1210 in the board that has the best OCIng potential, and run Ubuntu for SMP folding on that. The reason being that folding benefits most from CPU speed and L2 cache. You know better than me whcih one OCs better.

BluHaz reDux……as the original intent had been to do gpu folding, run as a server, and with a possible single standard client. What would be required to run two standard clients, gpu fold, and function as a server?

If you want to run GPU folding, I suggest leaving it alone. Running SMP + GPU is not feasible without a tri or quad core. On a dual core you can run a single CPU client and a GPU client (under windows) but you have to see if the GPU client degrades in performance due to CPU. That's simple enough though. You can install the GPU client in systray at startup, and the CPU client as a service. File serving is not CPU intensive.

Yoda’s Size Matters Not…… the nView / Brisbane combo started out with DreamCatcher and the oc’ing surprisingly is about equal to the foxconn’s.

Gaming responds best to high clock speed, not cache or multiple cores. hence the suggestion.


However, the permutations a I suggested are of minimal benefit in the grand scheme of things. At the end of the day, you have three K8 cores running at roughly the same speed. My selection of what to do would be based on board features and other non-performance factores.

[Poci]

phenomII and dfi board for the gaming rig

[jedihobbit]

m_r your input is greatly apprecialted! However I now need to deal with another issue as the 600W Liberty in DC just popped and "ozoned"!

[jedihobbit]

phenomII and dfi board for the gaming rig

Okay missed your entry!! Sorry only existing stuff (which I've already blown!)

The "blowup" of my psu has opended a big can of worms as I try to analyze what happened (http://forums.pcper.com/showthread.php?t=461341). It appears to be heat related so started moving a whole lot of things around and getting a bunch of "wild hairs". As it turns out a DFI 790 jr with Phenom II might have been cheaper!

The mobo assemblies are moving but so are a lot of other things.....stay tuned!