Do we need more CPU power?

[rgathright]

I can upgrade all my AMD boxes with at least double cpu power for about $1500 now.

The question is, do we need more cpu power as SETI.USA?

Thinking of just leaving the possibility open and wait another year for decent AMD cpus. :(

[Slicker]

I rack up around 215K per day on DiRT with CPUs although it takes 86 total cores to get that. In comparison, I rack up 800K per day on 5 GPUs (two really old HD 3870's, an HD 4830, a 9800 GTX, and an HD 6970). If I had 1.5K to spend on computer hardware, it would be to replace the old GPUs. A PCI GPU for $70 can earn more than a quad CPU per day and doesn't even need a fan. Sic is #1 in overall credits because all their top crunchers are GPU crunchers, not because they have so many CPUs. We have a couple thousand team members crunching with CPUs and produce have the credits per day as Sic.

[DrPop]

Hi R, good to see you on here! :) Well, to be honest, I'm not real hot on the available CPU power for the money these days when we're talking upgrades on our AMD rigs. Ah...the latest i7 rendition from Intel leaves them so much in the dust...I don't know what to think.
Hmmm - anyone else have a thought on this?

[Slicker]

Hi R, good to see you on here! :) Well, to be honest, I'm not real hot on the available CPU power for the money these days when we're talking upgrades on our AMD rigs. Ah...the latest i7 rendition from Intel leaves them so much in the dust...I don't know what to think.
Hmmm - anyone else have a thought on this?

For desktops, I'd agree. For servers though, my 24 core @ 2.1 Ghz AMD Opteron is faster than my 24 core @ 2.8Ghz Intel Xeon by 11% (67K/day verses 60K/day on DiRT respectively).

[Beerdrinker]

Depends,

If in need of more cores to do actual work (photoshop, rendering or whatever) on your computer, buy CPU power. If crunching, and crunching only....GPU all the way.

[zombie67]

For desktops, I'd agree. For servers though, my 24 core @ 2.1 Ghz AMD Opteron is faster than my 24 core @ 2.8Ghz Intel Xeon by 11% (67K/day verses 60K/day on DiRT respectively).

Which version of chips for each?

[Mad Matt]

I rack up around 215K per day on DiRT with CPUs although it takes 86 total cores to get that. In comparison, I rack up 800K per day on 5 GPUs (two really old HD 3870's, an HD 4830, a 9800 GTX, and an HD 6970). If I had 1.5K to spend on computer hardware, it would be to replace the old GPUs. A PCI GPU for $70 can earn more than a quad CPU per day and doesn't even need a fan. Sic is #1 in overall credits because all their top crunchers are GPU crunchers, not because they have so many CPUs. We have a couple thousand team members crunching with CPUs and produce have the credits per day as Sic.

Subscribe to that. Even more so since today you don't have to crack hashes or calculate primes under any circumstances to get a good output on your GPUs. Just, what if the thousands of members one day at least occasionally start using their GPUs? ;)

[rgathright]

Thanks team.

The era of the CPU is really over then.

Looking at those GTX 670's right now and I know I have plenty of boxen to put them in. \m/

@DrPop, I've been here but staying low since I'm wasting time on Einstein. :-s

[kmanley57]

Would it be more "Do you need more CPU power to improve the GPU performance you add."?

After all they are HUNGRY heat-breathing Crunch Monsters sometimes! I myself need to double my
AMD cores to feed the 2 GPU's I already have in one machine.

[Mike029]

Looking at the price of the 670, it is comparable to the 7970. With that $1500 you could get 3 with some spare change. 2 Cuda 1 AMD and pull down about a million per card. 3 million + for $1200. Mixing the GPUs gives you more projects to choose from. I'm just waiting to see the numbers on the 7990. They pushed back the release date to end of Aug. Here is the article.

http://www.legitreviews.com/news/13720/

[rgathright]

Would it be more "Do you need more CPU power to improve the GPU performance you add."?

After all they are HUNGRY heat-breathing Crunch Monsters sometimes! I myself need to double my
AMD cores to feed the 2 GPU's I already have in one machine.

I leave four cpu cores free on my AMD Opteron box just to feed two NVIDIA GTX 550 Ti's.