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Thread:  Join "MyOnlineTeam" Today - Chapter 38 |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 499
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NiceMedTexMD
Veteran Cruncher United States Joined: Aug 17, 2006 Post Count: 929 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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how much do the i7 860's cost? i've only seen one website with them..
----------------------------------------can you run 8 threads on one? Dr. Mike..   |
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RT
Master Cruncher USA - Texas - DFW Joined: Dec 22, 2004 Post Count: 2636 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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how much do the i7 860's cost? i've only seen one website with them.. can you run 8 threads on one? Dr. Mike.. They are costing about $300 now. It should come down in price marginally within a month or so. Yes, You can run 8 Work Units on one of them. I currently run 8 WUs on my I7-920 without any issues. You will, of course, need a compatible MotherBoard. |
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keithhenry
Ace Cruncher Senile old farts of the world ....uh.....uh..... nevermind Joined: Nov 18, 2004 Post Count: 18667 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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I just did a quick review of the Intel processors. The I5 processors are I7 processors without the hyper-threading. You can run 4 threads on an I5 and 8 on an I7. Now as Intel is quick to point out, the I7 is not an 8 core processor but rather allows you to fill in empty processor time in each core with another thread. Please note that this is not the hyperthreading of previous processors...this is far more effective as in the I7-920. I think the I7 is far better for crunching. Now looking at price performance, I would look for an I7-860 at this point anyway; It looks to be in the "sweet spot". And it looks like a real cruncher at a reasonable price (at least at this point in it's life cycle). OK, I can understand that a core would have idle time that allows processing of a second thread given normal use but with crunching, the idea is to use all the idle time to begin with. Just how much time is there on a core during crunching when it's really idle? I guess that could occur when it's waiting on disk i/o, swaping memory, paging or the like but, during crunching, how can there be that substantial more time available? Do you see the 5th-8th WU's racking up CPU time at the same rate as the 1st-4th? Too bad I cannot be very specific. Yes, if I run 8 processes they all accumulate significant amounts of CPU time - all the time. If I cut my I7-920 to 4 WUs, I see about 30% idle on all 4 cores. The only way that I can make all 4 cores run at 100% is by running 8 Work Units. Now looking at the charts that some of the testers show, up to 25% of the cores will be wasted if you are running but one task per core. I know that is not the kind of specificity that you want but that is all I have and I can see in terms of completed WUs, it makes a real difference in WCG throughput. Actually, that makes a good bit of sense. It would appear to be something specific to the i7 chip architecture. When you run just 4 WUs, the 30% idle is probably the time spent waiting on disk i/o and such. With 8 WUs, when a WU is waiting, rather than be idle, that core works on the other WU until it has to wait for it at which point it switches back to the original WU. Each core alternates between the two WUs which probably appears as fairly steady progress on both. I suspect that you may see slightly different behavior on other projects where the WU's don't checkpoint as often for example. |
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keithhenry
Ace Cruncher Senile old farts of the world ....uh.....uh..... nevermind Joined: Nov 18, 2004 Post Count: 18667 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Mike, I checked Dell's web site and it was a bit interesting. They seem to be downplaying the i7s. Their gaming machines, which are usually the high end stuff, were high speed (2.66+ GHz) quads. They didn't have the i7 850 that RT mentioned. I tried to keep the system simple since it would be a cruncher and doesn't need a lot of the extras they prefer to push (I did upgrade the video from the 220 to the 240). I did come up with this for $1298 (after 279 instant savings):
----------------------------------------Catalog Number / Description Product Code Qty SKU Id Processors: Intel® Core™ i7-920 processor(8MB L3 Cache, 2.66GHz) MI7920 1 [317-0067] 2 Operating System: Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium Edition SP1, 64-Bit VHP61E 1 [330-3184][420-6436][420-8873][420-8874][420-9691][421-0084][421-0092][421-0323][421-0427][421-1183][463-2282] 11 Office Productivity Software (Pre-Installed): No Productivity software pre-installed MSONO 1 [412-1397] 22 Hardware Support Services: 3Yr Ltd Hardware Warranty, InHome Service after Remote Diagnosis SQ3OS 1 [412-0359][950-3339][960-3642][960-8700][992-2472][992-6070][993-5438][993-5447] 29 Security Software: Norton Internet Security™ 2009 Edition 15-months NIS915M 1 [410-2156] 25 Memory: 4GB Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1066MHz - 4 DIMMs 4G1064D 1 [317-0072] 3 Hard Drives: 1TB 7200 RPM SATA Hard Drive 1TBS 1 [341-8519] 8 Optical Drives: Single Drive: 16X CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW) w/double layer write capability 16DVDRW 1 [313-7425][420-8149][421-0997] 16 Monitor: No Monitor N 1 [320-7810] 5 Video Card: nVidia GeForce GTS 240 1024MB GTS240 1 [320-0907] 6 Sound Card: Integrated 7.1 Channel Audio IS 1 [313-7186] 17 Speaker: No speakers (Speakers are required to hear audio from your system) N 1 [313-4514] 18 Keyboard: Dell Studio Consumer Multimedia Keyboard SMMK 1 [330-3828] 4 Mouse: Dell Studio Optical Mouse SOM 1 [330-3826] 12 Modem: No Modem Option N 1 [313-3607] 14 Network: Dell 1505 WLAN PCIe card with11n mini-Card & external antenna DW1505 1 [430-3430] 19 Studio XPS 9000: Studio XPS 9000 435TH 1 [224-4399] 1 Adobe Software: Adobe® Acrobat® Reader 9.0 Multi-Language AAREAD 1 [410-1867] 15 LABELS: Windows Vista™ Premium VPD 1 [310-8626] 750 Entertainment and Editing Software: Adobe® Premier® Elements ADBEML 1 [410-1958] 195 Datasafe: Dell Online Backup 2GB for 1 year DOB2GB 1 [420-9518][988-0099][988-7707] 34 Dell Remote Access: Dell Remote Access, free basic service DRAFB 1 [420-9800][993-1919] 813 ---------------------------------------- [Edit 1 times, last edit by keithhenry at Sep 11, 2009 12:21:55 AM] |
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keithhenry
Ace Cruncher Senile old farts of the world ....uh.....uh..... nevermind Joined: Nov 18, 2004 Post Count: 18667 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Mike, checked Lenovo and couldn't find any i7s. They're a bit less pushy with their configuring - I could skip the mouse and keyboard (use a switch or existing ones). The nVidia wasn't the same. This also got Vista Business instead of Home Premium (I think Business is better). It's $1228:
----------------------------------------ThinkCentre M58e Serie Tower- On-site Warranty 3 Years Parts / 3 Year Labor Edit 7298CTO $1,199.00 1 $1,199.00 Processor: Intel® Core™ 2 Quad Q9400 Processor (2.66GHz 1333MHz 6MBL2) 1 Operating system: Genuine Windows Vista Business 1 Operating system language: Genuine Windows Vista Business - English 1 Recovery DVD: Genuine Windows Vista Business 32 Recovery DVD English 1 Form factor: Mechanical Package Tower 4x5 1 Memory speed: PC2 6400 800MHz Memory 1 Total memory: 4GB PC2-6400 SDRAM (2 DIMMs) 1 Video adapter: NVIDIA GeForce 9500 GT 512M Full Height (DVI-I+DisplayPort) 1 Display support: DVI-I to VGA Dongle 1 Audio adapter: Integrated High Definition Audio 1 Hard Drive: 500GB, 8M Cache, 7200RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 1 Networking: Intergraded Enet 10 -1000 Intel G41 1 Keyboards: No Keyboard Selected 1 Power cord: Line Cord - US 1 Language Pack: Pub US English - US- AP- ASEAN - UK - U - L- A - M - T - H - R - W - G - Q - Models 1 Accessories and options: 3 Yr Priority Support - 3 yr Onsite NBD 45J9088 $29.00 1 $29.00 ---------------------------------------- [Edit 1 times, last edit by keithhenry at Sep 11, 2009 12:41:08 AM] |
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keithhenry
Ace Cruncher Senile old farts of the world ....uh.....uh..... nevermind Joined: Nov 18, 2004 Post Count: 18667 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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As for Tiger Direct, here's a link to what may be a nice machine:
----------------------------------------http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/Searc...=4517071&sku=SYX-1014 It's an i7 920 2.66GHz, 12GB memory, 1TB hard drive, TWO nVidia 9800GTs and Vista Home Premuim 64 bit. $1599 |
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darth_vader
Veteran Cruncher A galaxy far, far away... Joined: Jul 13, 2005 Post Count: 514 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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I just did a quick review of the Intel processors. The I5 processors are I7 processors without the hyper-threading. You can run 4 threads on an I5 and 8 on an I7. Now as Intel is quick to point out, the I7 is not an 8 core processor but rather allows you to fill in empty processor time in each core with another thread. Please note that this is not the hyperthreading of previous processors...this is far more effective as in the I7-920. I think the I7 is far better for crunching. Now looking at price performance, I would look for an I7-860 at this point anyway; It looks to be in the "sweet spot". And it looks like a real cruncher at a reasonable price (at least at this point in it's life cycle). OK, I can understand that a core would have idle time that allows processing of a second thread given normal use but with crunching, the idea is to use all the idle time to begin with. Just how much time is there on a core during crunching when it's really idle? I guess that could occur when it's waiting on disk i/o, swaping memory, paging or the like but, during crunching, how can there be that substantial more time available? Do you see the 5th-8th WU's racking up CPU time at the same rate as the 1st-4th? Too bad I cannot be very specific. Yes, if I run 8 processes they all accumulate significant amounts of CPU time - all the time. If I cut my I7-920 to 4 WUs, I see about 30% idle on all 4 cores. The only way that I can make all 4 cores run at 100% is by running 8 Work Units. Now looking at the charts that some of the testers show, up to 25% of the cores will be wasted if you are running but one task per core. I know that is not the kind of specificity that you want but that is all I have and I can see in terms of completed WUs, it makes a real difference in WCG throughput. Actually, that makes a good bit of sense. It would appear to be something specific to the i7 chip architecture. When you run just 4 WUs, the 30% idle is probably the time spent waiting on disk i/o and such. With 8 WUs, when a WU is waiting, rather than be idle, that core works on the other WU until it has to wait for it at which point it switches back to the original WU. Each core alternates between the two WUs which probably appears as fairly steady progress on both. I suspect that you may see slightly different behavior on other projects where the WU's don't checkpoint as often for example. I was going to snip some of the above, but it was taking too much time. (Honestly, I'm not trying to start another "how deep can we nest quotes" experiment. )Hyper-threading was designed to give the processor something to do while it's waiting for memory access. Waiting for I/O takes so long (to the processor) that the operating system simply task switches if possible. On today's processors, the time it takes the processor to fetch from or store to memory past the on-chip cache is much greater than the time to access the cache. To give the processor something to do besides just wait for a response from the memory controller, the processor will dispatch another instruction stream. This would be very difficult for the operating system to do, so the the processor chip reports that it has more processors than it really does to simplify things for the operating system. The hyperthreading implementation on the i7 is much better than on the older pentium processors. I have a Pentium D on one of my systems and HT for two WUs only shows about at 15% gain compared to running just a single WU.... but the processor runs much hotter and uses much more power so I've limited BOINC to just a single WU on that system. I've seen numbers around 30% improvement in total throughput for the i7 hyperthreading implementation and some have claimed to see even more. That certainly could be the case for something that had a large working set in memory. I would expect that hyperthreading would also lead to over-claiming credits because more CPU time is accumulated for a thread when it may not really be running. I definitely saw that with my limited experiments. So getting back to the original point, as far as BOINC type crunching is concerned a comparable speed i7 is probably a better deal than an i5 when you add up the costs. i5 processors can be thought of as new and improved core 2 quads. - D (fixed typo) [Edit 1 times, last edit by darth_vader at Sep 11, 2009 2:24:56 AM] |
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keithhenry
Ace Cruncher Senile old farts of the world ....uh.....uh..... nevermind Joined: Nov 18, 2004 Post Count: 18667 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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MyOnlineTeam Daily Statistics for 09/10 - All Members:
----------------------------------------Team rank movement report =========================
Points milestones report ======================== No points milestones found.  Runtime milestones report ========================= No runtime milestones found. Results returned milestones report ================================== No results returned milestones found. New members report ================== No new members found. Retired members report ====================== AStafford retired from the team.  For the week as a team: Statistics Total Run Time Points Results Team Records: Results Returned: 12/19/2007 2,522 Points: 05/06/2009 518,871 Runtime: 01/25/2006 1:123:00:53:34 Good crunching folks!!!! |
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keithhenry
Ace Cruncher Senile old farts of the world ....uh.....uh..... nevermind Joined: Nov 18, 2004 Post Count: 18667 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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MyOnlineTeam Daily Statistics for 09/10 - Active Members
----------------------------------------Active team members report ==========================
Note: Active members are those who earned points in the prior 30 days. Top Twenty active members returning points today: 01: RT - 72,145 points 02: Coingames - 57,807 points 03: marysduby - 48,623 points 04: brown chris - 25,295 points 05: NiceMedTexMD - 21,502 points 06: parmesian - 18,710 points 07: Dave Bell - 17,229 points 08: keithhenry - 13,603 points 09: Blueprint - 11,193 points 10: sulcata - 9,115 points 11: kkelson - 8,930 points 12: Esteban69 - 7,774 points 13: Vuj - 7,057 points 14: harry_i_c - 4,332 points 15: darth_vader - 2,829 points 16: PohSoon - 2,646 points 17: frans6nl - 2,614 points 18: johng - 2,072 points 19: smcclarigan - 1,796 points 20: imin - 1,687 points Total points returned today: 347,304 Active members returning points today: 34 Average points per member active today: 10,214.8235 |
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keithhenry
Ace Cruncher Senile old farts of the world ....uh.....uh..... nevermind Joined: Nov 18, 2004 Post Count: 18667 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Retired members report ====================== AStafford retired from the team. AStafford joined WCG on 11/16/04, MOT on 3/17/05. With over a million points with us, we're grateful for the time spent with us. With no new results returned in about two weeks, my guess is something brought an end to their crunching. We're always sad to see anyone leave but we'll leave a light on and a hearty welcome back anytime. |
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