I have the opportunity to invest in either of the 2 following dedicated crunching setups and am after some feedback on what you guys think will be the faster/better crunchers.

Option 1
1 x Quad Proc Opteron 885 Dual Core Server - 4 Dual Core 2.6Ghz (O/C @ 2.8Ghz) Processors each with 2x1MB L2 Cache.

Option 2
2 x Single Proc Intel Q6600 Quad Core Workstations - 1 Q6600 2.44 (O/C @ 3.0Ghz) with 2x4MB L2 Cache per workstation.

So each setup will have a total of 8cores, the fact the option 2 is actually 2 machines is irrelevant; power, space, o/s licenses do not matter.

What does everyone think? The thought of a Quad Dual Core Server is quite attractive however the Opteron 885 procs are 1st generation and probably can't compete with the latest Quad Core Intels.

Thoughts, reccomendations?

so that's either (1x4x2=)8 Opteron cores or (2x1x4=)8 Conroe cores?

(Unfortunately) I'm fairly sure the intel kentsfield's will be substantially quicker than the Opterons, at least on Rosetta code.

Either way it'll be a nice addition to your fleet!

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Intel Q6600's.

My understanding is that Rosie's code likes a lot of L2 cache.

Core 2 spanks Opteron. In fact, just one Q6600 may be able to beat the opteron machine you describe.

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Reno, NV
Team: SETI.USA

I wondered what kind of a difference going replacing my 3.2GHz Prescott with a Q6600 in my "fleet", (fleet - hehe, lol). My weekly credit has gone from ~14000 to ~23500, and with the nice big Zalman on it, I've not seen it reach 50C yet.

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Wave upon wave of demented avengers march cheerfully out of obscurity into the dream.

If you were building a serious, mission critical application server, I would go with Opterons. If you're just building a Rosetta cruncher/game box/home computer, I'd go with the Q6600 chips. Opterons are throttled back a little with the goal to be very reliable server processors. The Intel Q line is designed to be fast and competitive, so you're going to get better performance with the Intel's especially doing fast calculations within L2 cache. Rosetta will definitely run faster with the Intel chips.

I'll have to agree with the others, go for the Core 2 Quads.

Thanks for crunching important science :)

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My Q6600 is running at 3.2GHz (overclock a little) and I am getting RAC of over 2,000 on that unit.

I don't know what to expect from the Opteron but 2,000 RAC appears to be very high.

Good luck with your decision. I hope to build a faster system in Feb. 2008 with the new intel Q9000 series processor.

Paul

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Thx!

Paul

Thanks for the input everyone, you all confirmed what I thought. Looks like I'll be going for Intel Q6600 boxes.

For what it is worth, I run two 285 Opterons (4 cores each at 2.6 GHz).
When I was running just Rosetta on one of them I was getting 1,500 to 1,600 RAC.
So doubling that with 8 cores you should expect 3,000 to 3,200 RAC.

I do not overclock and as stated in a post further back, the Opterons are very reliable. My office offen gets to well over 30 degrees Celcius and has hit 38 degrees in Summer, but the Opterons keep on going. No idea how hot they get, I run Linux on them.

Good luck with your choice.

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For what it is worth, I run two 285 Opterons (4 cores each at 2.6 GHz).

Opteron 285 is two cores each.

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Reno, NV
Team: SETI.USA

For what it is worth, I run two 285 Opterons (4 cores each at 2.6 GHz).

Opteron 285 is two cores each.

You misunderstand. Each of my 2 computers has two CPUs and each is dual core, so that equals 4 cores for each computer.

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