New folding rig - what motherboard?

[preolt]

it's the other way around

LGA2011 (Ivy bridge) will be the new 1366 (i.e. enthusiast) platform. Bulldozer will probably be more of a budget system like sandy bridge is. Or atleast that is what I understand to be preolt's statement.

Thats what I was trying to say, hmm might need to reread what I tried to tell him. Any way your completely right. AMD has always been the budget cpu company marketed towards low end builds or gamers who dont care about raw cpu horse power. Now this doesnt mean that you cant achieve some torque from their cpu line up but even then it tends to be from their "mid range" models. Really hexa core is all fine and dandy sounding but until companies start putting out main stream software the supports the 6 core hardware then they are not needed.

Most would say go AMD on a budget but if you can afford intel then you shouldnt even be asking about AMD. I have built AMD rigs in the past and they are solid pc's. But they can never seem to compete with that of intel and SB just drives that home. SB sort of stole part of AMD's customer base because intel has chips now like some of the i3s and the i5s that are as fast or faster then amd's top level offering (i5-2500k) faster then any thing AMD has to date in any thing) Bulldozer might change this but I am a bit doubtful. I was astounded by intels SB jump in speed. But I also believe that is do to the fact that they screwed some thing up on the lga 1156 and lga 1366 socket cpu/mobos, I find 1 year hard to believe from a business economic stand point unless there is a design flaw in your product..

Done ranting and weaving my thoughts into that ha. Any way, Ivy bridge is basically intels new high end offering. It will be replacing chips like the bloomfield and up (i7-950+) they will range probably from 500-1000 dollars in price I would think, but thats just an estimate. Now is an awesome time to build though because the i5-2500k and i7-2600k are faster then intels current extreme edition for the 1366 socket. Btw just a quick note 1366 was never a "main stream" socket, it was and still is considered the higher end gamer enthusiast choice for people with larger budgets. i5 is king when it comes to enthusiast level products.

 

[siravarice]

If you can afford one 560, surely two 460's would be better and almost a similar price? Thinking PPD here.

 

[yuri04]

The new bulldozer line up should outperform the 990x as it will have better hyperthreading (possibly 22nm too?). How many cores will probably depend on the model

Do you have any links/confirmation on this? last thing I heard was, no hyperthreading, but a module type of architecture (not sure on how these are different, should actually look that up

) and speeds which are roughly around the i7 950, which would make it a competitor to the i5 2500K.

btw, we are going quite off-topic here

 

[dugdiamond]

it not about how much PPD the CPU can deliver, but how much the mobo can deliver.

so, a quad PCIE nvidia mobo is in need. it doesn't even have to be a new one.

get one that is about a year old (cheap) and bang four 8800 GPUs (or similar) on there.

it doesn't even matter if it is AMD or intel, as long as it's a nvidia chipset.

bang it all in a cheapo case with a PSU powerful enough for it all, and fold away

IT'S A FOLDING RIG - nothing else!!!

 

[SmoulderingCircuits]

Do you have any links/confirmation on this? last thing I heard was, no hyperthreading, but a module type of architecture (not sure on how these are different, should actually look that up

) and speeds which are roughly around the i7 950, which would make it a competitor to the i5 2500K.

btw, we are going quite off-topic here

All i know is what i've read around on this forum, which isn't a novel but it's a fair amount. IIRC the hyperthreading is more of a physical cpu within the cpu, like a bunch of dual cores working together.

And yes i am going off topic, it's a Fodr thing

 

[hmmblah]

If you can afford one 560, surely two 460's would be better and almost a similar price? Thinking PPD here.

Either way I'd start with one card with the possibility of adding a second later.

it not about how much PPD the CPU can deliver, but how much the mobo can deliver.

so, a quad PCIE nvidia mobo is in need. it doesn't even have to be a new one.

get one that is about a year old (cheap) and bang four 8800 GPUs (or similar) on there.

it doesn't even matter if it is AMD or intel, as long as it's a nvidia chipset.

bang it all in a cheapo case with a PSU powerful enough for it all, and fold away

IT'S A FOLDING RIG - nothing else!!!

It's my wife's rig lol. I'll be folding on it for sure, but it's to get her away from using my rig. She'll be using it for photography (she has about 25GB of photos right now and getting more into it) and other general use.

An 8800 doesn't even get 5k PPD IIRC, whereas a 560 is looking at an average of 13k to 15k. Also, folding a 2600k above 4GHz doing bigadv should net some decent PPD, 30k to 40k.

 

[Fez]

go for the Gigabyte GA-P67A-UD4 its a good board for simple work

 

[preolt]

Start out with one card for sure. Every one talks about sli/crossifre like every average user should do it. In my past experiences though sli might bring added performance but it also brings the headaches of having 2 pieces of hardware to sync and tweak.

As for mobos right now I am personally really liking what I am hearing about the UD5. I also love the black boards that gigabyte is putting out now. But to each their own.

 

[dugdiamond]

the cards do not have to be crossfire/SLI'd.

the FAH GPU Tracker can issue one WU per card

 

[SmoulderingCircuits]

Start out with one card for sure. Every one talks about sli/crossifre like every average user should do it. In my past experiences though sli might bring added performance but it also brings the headaches of having 2 pieces of hardware to sync and tweak.

As for mobos right now I am personally really liking what I am hearing about the UD5. I also love the black boards that gigabyte is putting out now. But to each their own.

*blidalading* 1Up

 

[hmmblah]

Start out with one card for sure. Every one talks about sli/crossifre like every average user should do it. In my past experiences though sli might bring added performance but it also brings the headaches of having 2 pieces of hardware to sync and tweak.

As for mobos right now I am personally really liking what I am hearing about the UD5. I also love the black boards that gigabyte is putting out now. But to each their own.

I've been running SLI now for months without issue. Not afraid of SLI

.

What's the difference between the UD4 and UD5?

the cards do not have to be crossfire/SLI'd.

the FAH GPU Tracker can issue one WU per card

That's the only way folding works. SLI doesn't make the cards fold together at all with the normal clients or GPU tracker. Even with SLI enabled, the cards still fold individually on their own WUs.

 

[yuri04]

According to the Gigabyte site:

The UD5 has an extra PCI-E slot which operates at x4,

- 8 USB 3.0 ports (4 on the I/O, 4 internal) instead of 4 (2 I/O, 2 via the headers)

- 3 Firewire Port (2 on I/O)

- 20 Phase power instead of 12

- Upgraded heatsink design

 

[hmmblah]

It's about $80 more too, I dont think the extra cost would be worth it in my case.

 

[yuri04]

I agree, 12 phase power should be enough for the overclocking, and for the other features, meh

People who would actually use all of em would probably get an UD7.

 

[preolt]

The new bulldozer line up should outperform the 990x as it will have better hyperthreading (possibly 22nm too?). How many cores will probably depend on the model

I would love it if that happened. But I have a hard time lulling myself into a state where I will believe that to be true. For them to put out a processor that will outperform the i7-990x extreme edition they will need to quadruple that of their current top end cpu (1100T BE)

I was extremely surprised when SB had a 1.5x increase over that of its predecessors, but more then 4x seems rather unlikely...

I dont want to eat my own words though so I will leave it at this. I hope that they surprise me and blow my mind with their new Bulldozer set.

 

[hmmblah]

Ordered a few parts as I had some gift cards to use up, more to come.

Noctua NH-D14

Mushkin Blackline 1600 DDR3 4GB

LG DVD Burner

Edit: And no, that's not my Dell. Snapped a quick shot at work.

 

[preolt]

Looking good mate, happy to know you know your way around sli. It is an awesome feature and has gives a grea performance boost when you add another gpu. I just didnt know your skill level, I usually refer first time or fairly new builders to a single gpu set up so that they dont have to trouble shoot an extra item in their rig if some thing isnt working.

The parts look good though, Isee you got the massive NH-D14. You will have to tell me how you like it, I am on the hunt for a new heatsink as of late and have been hearing its amazing just a little massive for my taste.

 

[Luger718]

did you gte a mobo yet? if not look at the new z68 motherboards!

 

[preolt]

The Z68 are rather worthless in my mind. They just dont have features that make them worth the extra price tag boost in my mind. SSD caching is nice yea, if it actually worked the way it is advertised. You are better off loading programs yourself onto the SSD like you OS and major applications.

The integrated graphics are worthless because most people who spend the extra money for this board will already be shelling out the doe for a discrete graphics card.

Also from the forums and sites I have been looking at it seems the Z68 boards are getting .5-3 fps less then p67 boards. This is within the margin of error, but still why would you buy a board that slowed your fps?

 

[Luger718]

The Z68 are rather worthless in my mind. They just dont have features that make them worth the extra price tag boost in my mind. SSD caching is nice yea, if it actually worked the way it is advertised. You are better off loading programs yourself onto the SSD like you OS and major applications.

The integrated graphics are worthless because most people who spend the extra money for this board will already be shelling out the doe for a discrete graphics card.

Also from the forums and sites I have been looking at it seems the Z68 boards are getting .5-3 fps less then p67 boards. This is within the margin of error, but still why would you buy a board that slowed your fps?

its not all that big of a price boost the p8z68 pro-z is 209.99 her ein the states and its the class equivalent of the pro/evo/sabertooth

ssd caching does work ive seen numerous reviews prove it....and you cant load EVERY program into a a small ssd alot of people cant afford higher GB ssds

as you said .3-5 fps is within margin of error and thats only in a certain mode (i think its called iGPU, when you have your monitor connected to the mobo and it can switch between the 2 gpus for power saving)