@kateiacy - I am confused what screen/data you wanted me to show. There are so many different things to show. Reply with what report and I'll post it later today after work.

@utp216, thanks for the picture. Your points sure are increasing!

I'd love to see the CPU benchmarks run by your BOINC manager, and an excerpt from your Results status/Return time on the WCG web page. Thanks!

This is what I could come up with tonight. The first CPU is my original rig that I haven't updated since 2007/2008.

AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4200+
Tue 22 Nov 2011 02:22:23 AM EST Number of CPUs: 2
Tue 22 Nov 2011 02:22:23 AM EST 1828 floating point MIPS (Whetstone) per CPU
Tue 22 Nov 2011 02:22:23 AM EST 8390 integer MIPS (Dhrystone) per CPU

AMD FX(tm)-4100 Quad-Core Processor
Tue 22 Nov 2011 02:14:17 AM EST Number of CPUs: 4
Tue 22 Nov 2011 02:14:17 AM EST 2408 floating point MIPS (Whetstone) per CPU
Tue 22 Nov 2011 02:14:17 AM EST 11145 integer MIPS (Dhrystone) per CPU

I was looking at one of the Phenom CPU's before I got this. I couldn't pass this deal up though. I got the CPU and a ASRock Deluxe5 motherboard for $200 cash from my nephew who went Intel. And he tossed in the 8GB of RAM for buying the CPU and board.

I am also running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. If that matters.

Wow, you did get a deal! Let me know if your nephew is selling any more hardware .

Thank you for the benchmarks, and for mentioning that you ran them under Linux. There seems to be some difference in how BOINC does benchmarks under Linux versus Windows.

I can't afford to have a dedicated PC for BOINC/WCG, and I have only one desktop for everything, whose idle CPU time is used by BOINC. However, since I depend on it for my work, I try to keep it fairly up-to-date as much as I can. It has an AMD Phenom II X6 1090T processor with 8 GB Kingston DDR3-1333 RAM (4 x 2 GB), running 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium. (It also has an HD6850 video card that I bought chiefly to have APP/OpenCL support, as I'm not a gamer, so otherwise it's overkill for me. And I'm frustrated by WCG's current lack of significant GPU processing support. )

I keep all six cores busy with WCG crunching and allow BOINC to use up to 95% CPU time, conditioned however to less than 20% non-BOINC CPU usage. (You bet I have a good aftermarket CPU cooler, too.) The BOINC client yields priority efficiently as needed, and I rarely have any noticeable slow-down in my other activities. If eventually I need to do something heavier, like running VMware or converting a video (neither of which is a routine task), I suspend the client temporarily and resume processing after the job is done.

Results have been good so far. I am just now returning to BOINC after a 3-year gap, because my old PC (which I had until late 2010), a vintage Athlon 64 3800+ from 2005, had processor overheating problems and BOINC worsened that problem, so I had to give up. I don't remember the scores I used to have back then, but I do remember jobs taking whole days or more than one day to complete.

Of course there is no comparison between a 2.4-GHz single-core processor from six years ago and a 3.2-GHz hexa-core processor that is also two (and arguably a half) architecture generations newer. Most jobs here are completed in significantly less time than estimated - jobs scheduled for 10 hours finish in 6-7 hours, 6-hour jobs finish in 4:30 hours, and so on. I've been achieving a 1,100+ point a day average (though this is likely to fall in January, as I will have to go back to work at the office and for safety reasons - lightning strikes and such - I won't be able to leave my PC on 24/7 as I do now).

Considering the disappointing results that Zambezis have been showing in nearly all tests, I'd say that Thubans like mine (which can still be found for sale) are probably still the sweet spot of optimal price/performance ratio when it comes to AMD processors - probably even more so now, as prices have fallen. My processor is not overclocked because so far I've felt no need for that, but it's a Black Edition model and that could easily be done, adding even more value to it.

Also, at least at stock speeds, Thubans have superb thermal efficiency and barely heat at all if they have a good cooling system (AMD's stock cooler is definitely not indicated for a PC that is going to do heavy crunching). What do you think of a six-core processor running at 100% usage most of the time that still hovers in the 32-36ºC range (90-97ºF) as the Southern Hemisphere summer approaches and days are already often hot here, with no a/c in the room?

True that an 8-core FX-8120 or FX-8150 would have two additional cores to crunch data, but they cost much more and results probably wouldn't be better enough to justify that expense. There are maniacs who use Opterons on desktops, but that's probably the worst price/performance ratio possible. And if one REALLY wants performance, at this moment the crown remains with Intel and its Sandy Bridge processors (the Extreme Core i7s are so expensive that they hardly count). That could change with Piledrivers (second-generation Bulldozers) in 2012, but I'm not holding my breath.

As for RAM, jeez, 16 GB are an INSANE amount of memory! I gave the BOINC client freedom to use almost all it pleased, but I still only go over the 4-GB barrier when I use VMware - otherwise, memory usage is usually between 3 and 3.5 GB here, multitasking a lot and with BOINC running. In fact, VMware was the only reason why I put 8 GB here, otherwise 4 GB would have been more than enough - as they certainly are for 99.99% of all users. Even with VMware, I'm yet to see memory usage go over 7 GB. More than 8 GB are justified only if you have, say, a professional high-end graphics or video workstation or a powerful multiserver machine running many server VMs. Otherwise, all that RAM will most certainly be idle and wasted 99.9999% of the time.

So, think well. I'd advise the original poster to stick to the current configuration and be happy.
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