Hi all,

Just signed up for R@H.

I'm using a few PC's that I can't mess with settings on as there my work systems, but I've a few others I'd like some advice on.

I've 5 HP w6000's - dual 1.8 or 2.0GHz 603Xeons with 0.5 or 1GB of RD800 Ram & 9GB 10K SCSI disks.
4 are running XP Pro with all all service packs & updates, 5th is a Linux box with Ubuntu Heron.

First off, the 5 W6000's are only used for R@H.

All the XP Pro machines are set to 'Classic' appearance, and Visual Effects set to 'Best Performance' - under Advanced Tab - should Processor Scheduling be set to Progs or Background Services, and Memory Usage be set to Progs or System Cache?

Should I alter or turn off Virtual Mem? (768MB)

Should Hyper Threading stay on?

Due to the disk size, R@H has 1GB HD limit set. It was moaning about lack of space overnight when set to 512MB.

I feel more RAM or bigger HDs would be a waste of £'s, so there not getting upgraded as they are.

However, the Compaq boxes are good, can take up to EATX board and have a decent 460W PSU (24 + 4 pin).

If I was to upgrade the Mobo/CPU/Ram, what would set up should I be looking at with a budget of £150 /$220 a box?
For this amount of cash per box should I leave them as they are, using the money to build a better system at a later date?
I've not over-clocked before either.

All advice greatly appreciated.
Cheers,

Rich

Machine List
HP XW8400 - 2x5160 (3GHz HT off/ 3GBRam/XPPro)
AMD (2.2GHZ/1GBRam/XPPro)
MacBook (Dualcore 2GHz/2GBRam/OSX10.4.9)
4 x Compaq w6000 (2x1.8/2.0GHz HT on/ 0.5/1GBRam/XPPro)
Compaq w6000 (2x1.8/0.5GBRam/Linux)

Hi Rich

Welcome to Rosie ;)

Rosetta can use more than 250MB RAM per task, although it hasn't for a while, so if your OS is running relatively light then 512MB on a dual core machine should run without excessive swapping, although if you could add any more RAM (even another 256MB) it will get used.

I don't believe changing the scheduling will make a difference as Rosetta only gets spare cycles and is effectively an infinitely running program - it makes no nett difference whether a foreground program (which will have a finite requirement for CPU time) runs quickly or slowly as it'll still use the same number of cycles to run before it's complete, and the cycles are returned to Rosetta.

I'm not sure whether you're better off with or without hyperthreading, but you definitely only want one Rosetta thread running per physical CPU. I would guess leaving HT on would be beneficial because with hyperthreading turned on it will allow other processes to make use of the virtual CPU, thereby keeping them out of the way of Rosetta to a greater extent. This will show in Task Manager as only 50% CPU utilisation but that's not an accurate reflection of the CPU use so don't go by that.

I would expect any financial investment to be better placed on new systems, and I would expect the best value to almost certainly be a Core2 Quad machine. The Q6600 is probably still a good choice, although the penryn based quads will probably overclock better and have lower running costs.

We definitely need a processor cost/value comparison. I posted a basic one in excel around a month ago - i'll dig the post out later.

Regards
Danny

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Thanks for the info Danny!

I think I'll leave the W6000s be for the moment. They're not doing bad, though my little Macbook dualcore is getting more credit :-) and my dual dual core workstation is doing better than all of em put together!

I need a another workstation for myself. By the time I've built or bought that, the w6000's can get upgraded on at a time, stuffed with a Q6600/4GBRam. There's a few deals on ebay etc that should drop in price, with on-board graphics to keep the cost down. I may go 16GB CF card on the IDE/SATA port for heat and noise reduction.

Then it's really the OS to think of. All the w6000's have valid genuine XP licences, but they're only 32bit versions. Do I need 64bit versions to make the best of the Q6600 (or like) for R@H work?

Cheers,
Rich

Thanks for the info Danny!

I think I'll leave the W6000s be for the moment. They're not doing bad, though my little Macbook dualcore is getting more credit :-) and my dual dual core workstation is doing better than all of em put together!

I need a another workstation for myself. By the time I've built or bought that, the w6000's can get upgraded on at a time, stuffed with a Q6600/4GBRam. There's a few deals on ebay etc that should drop in price, with on-board graphics to keep the cost down. I may go 16GB CF card on the IDE/SATA port for heat and noise reduction.

Then it's really the OS to think of. All the w6000's have valid genuine XP licences, but they're only 32bit versions. Do I need 64bit versions to make the best of the Q6600 (or like) for R@H work?

Cheers,
Rich

if they're just running rosetta i tend to use a fast 1GB or 2GB CF card - you can get XP down to ~350MB with nlite and xplite, and linux can be much smaller... My mum's media centre (MCE2005) runs on a 2GB CF card with Rosetta running on a USB drive (motherboard only has 1 IDE socket for CF and DVD), and my Vista media centre will hopefully be running on a 2x2GB RAID0 compactflash array very soon... :-D

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if they're just running rosetta i tend to use a fast 1GB or 2GB CF card - you can get XP down to ~350MB with nlite and xplite, and linux can be much smaller... My mum's media centre (MCE2005) runs on a 2GB CF card with Rosetta running on a USB drive (motherboard only has 1 IDE socket for CF and DVD), and my Vista media centre will hopefully be running on a 2x2GB RAID0 compactflash array very soon... :-D

Thanks for that! May do that asap, got to have a lower heat output than the 9GB SCSI's that are in the w6000's

Another option, if these are dedicated Boinc machines, and which may be cheaper in the long run, is to add more memory and network boot the machines. You could set one of them up as the master, and the additional machines as diskless slaves. If it's a toss up between memory and CF/USB drives, I think this would be the smarter way to go, but that's just my opinion :)

http://www.faqs.org/docs/Linux-HOWTO/Diskless-HOWTO.html

I'm hoping to finish the remodel of my house before Christmas, and after this I'm going to set up a diskless stack in the closet (which now has adequate air flow) and put some of the older machines I have laying around to work in just this way.

BTW: Welcome aboard !

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"Every passing hour brings the Solar System forty-three thousand miles closer to Globular Cluster M13 in Hercules -- and still there are some misfits who insist that there is no such thing as progress." - Kurt Vonnegut

Another option, if these are dedicated Boinc machines, and which may be cheaper in the long run, is to add more memory and network boot the machines. You could set one of them up as the master, and the additional machines as diskless slaves. If it's a toss up between memory and CF/USB drives, I think this would be the smarter way to go, but that's just my opinion :)

http://www.faqs.org/docs/Linux-HOWTO/Diskless-HOWTO.html

I'm hoping to finish the remodel of my house before Christmas, and after this I'm going to set up a diskless stack in the closet (which now has adequate air flow) and put some of the older machines I have laying around to work in just this way.

BTW: Welcome aboard !

BitSpit at XPC has a diskless linux cluster, but it's a lot more demanding to set up than CF, and it's also quite picky about the LAN chipset/BIOS I believe. Very elegant solution though...

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BitSpit at XPC has a diskless linux cluster, but it's a lot more demanding to set up than CF, and it's also quite picky about the LAN chipset/BIOS I believe. Very elegant solution though...

Definitely not a "simple fix", most semi-modern network adapters and BIOS support the options, however configuration can be a bit difficult at times.

wanted to add one more link that has a lot of useful info, and links to other detailed how-to's.

http://www.kegel.com/linux/pxe.html

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"Every passing hour brings the Solar System forty-three thousand miles closer to Globular Cluster M13 in Hercules -- and still there are some misfits who insist that there is no such thing as progress." - Kurt Vonnegut

BitSpit at XPC has a diskless linux cluster, but it's a lot more demanding to set up than CF, and it's also quite picky about the LAN chipset/BIOS I believe. Very elegant solution though...

Definitely not a "simple fix", most semi-modern network adapters and BIOS support the options, however configuration can be a bit difficult at times.

wanted to add one more link that has a lot of useful info, and links to other detailed how-to's.

http://www.kegel.com/linux/pxe.html

I have released Dotsch/UX 1.0. - Dotsch/UX is a Linux distribution for BOINC which easily installs and boot from a USB stick, hard disk and from diskless clients and also has some interfaces to setup the diskless server and the clients automatically.

For more informations have a look at http://www.dotsch.de/Dotsch_UX

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