@ Beyond,

What's a "road grading app"?

Is it anything like a pepsicost?

The newer Bulldozers are getting better reviews. The latest models are the Vishera lineup (the 8xxx series I think) and according to the test 'n review sites they keep up with Ivy Bridge on sheer computing power in the suite of apps used.

And they're priced substantially lower than Intel performance equivalents.

Unfortunately they consume considerably more power than equivalent Intel models so one has to look at TCO (total cost of ownership). After doing the math related to power consumption it looks to me like the benefit of AMD's lower purchase price is gone after 1.8 years of 24/7 BOINCing. In other words at 1.8 years the cost of Intel plus the juice it consumes equals the cost of AMD plus the juice it consumes. After that AMD starts to cost more than Intel due to its higher power consumption. ( I didn't show my TCO math but can if requested)

I guess it makes a difference if one replaces all his old tech with new tech every year. One could conceivably buy the more expensive to operate AMD and replace it before the 1.8 year point with tech that is much cheaper to run but the question is... will that happen? There has to be a limit somewhere to how small they can make the transistors which is what determines power consumption (given the same doping/substrates/etc). On the other hand 5 years ago few believed we would see 32 nm SOI chips yet they are on the shelves today and they're talking 22 nm. Amazing.

I dunno, I tend to hang on to decent CPUs for a long while. I've been leaning toward AMD and Vishera initially tipped the scales further in AMD's favor until I worked out the TCO. I could go with the more-expensive-in-the-long-run Visheras if I knew they had a performance edge over Intel in the BOINC arena especially since they have the buy now pay later appeal tugging at my empty wallet's heart strings.

For some reason, I'm not seeing any credit for the Astroid Tasks my system has done since joining yesterday. (Dell Win7 x64, Core i7, SSD)

My Milkyway and Rosetta are reporting ok.

If you're looking for your credits at the stats sites then realize this project doesn't export stats as frquesntly as other projects. They export stats only once per day so it could take some time before you see them on other sites.

Thanks, I see it on here now.

The newer Bulldozers are getting better reviews. The latest models are the Vishera lineup (the 8xxx series I think) and according to the test 'n review sites they keep up with Ivy Bridge on sheer computing power in the suite of apps used.

And they're priced substantially lower than Intel performance equivalents.

Unfortunately they consume considerably more power than equivalent Intel models so one has to look at TCO (total cost of ownership). After doing the math related to power consumption it looks to me like the benefit of AMD's lower purchase price is gone after 1.8 years of 24/7 BOINCing. In other words at 1.8 years the cost of Intel plus the juice it consumes equals the cost of AMD plus the juice it consumes. After that AMD starts to cost more than Intel due to its higher power consumption. ( I didn't show my TCO math but can if requested)

I guess it makes a difference if one replaces all his old tech with new tech every year. One could conceivably buy the more expensive to operate AMD and replace it before the 1.8 year point with tech that is much cheaper to run but the question is... will that happen? There has to be a limit somewhere to how small they can make the transistors which is what determines power consumption (given the same doping/substrates/etc). On the other hand 5 years ago few believed we would see 32 nm SOI chips yet they are on the shelves today and they're talking 22 nm. Amazing.

I dunno, I tend to hang on to decent CPUs for a long while. I've been leaning toward AMD and Vishera initially tipped the scales further in AMD's favor until I worked out the TCO. I could go with the more-expensive-in-the-long-run Visheras if I knew they had a performance edge over Intel in the BOINC arena especially since they have the buy now pay later appeal tugging at my empty wallet's heart strings.

The newer Bulldozers are slightly better than their predecessors, but I think we are talking about a 15% improvement (ballpark). This is positive but something you would expect with maturation. I expect AMD will keep improving and narrow the mid-high end CPU performance gap. It's not like Intel have been bothered with high end CPU's for almost 3 years (there hasn't been a significant improvement since the i7-980x). Perhaps 22nm refreshes will actually bring some benefits, but Intel's step down from 32nm to 22nm didn't produce any clock for clock improvement for crunchers. Even the 'reduced' power isn't that great. 18W sounds good but when you overclock it declines and vanishes around 4.5GHz. When you consider the overall systems power reduction, 18W from a 450W system is 4% - it would take years to pay for itself at normal clocks, and who buys a K or X model without OC'ing?

AMD's market is still primarily in low to mid range desktop business models and laptops where their CPU-integrated GPU's deliver excellent performance over Intel's wanton efforts.

Your calculations match mine, but at the lower end of the market AMD systems stay better; around 2.5 to 3years - which is approaching their life-expectancy anyway. With lighter use I would extend that past 3years.

For a long time I hung in with AMD CPU's, upgrading and selling the older CPU's on after 6 to 12 months. This was a convenient approach for me, as I liked to have reasonably high end CPU's, but wasn't keen on the price tags of the flagship Intel models (and I'm still not). When AMD started to lose significant performance ground, and perhaps more importantly the power requirements of the Intel models dropped I moved to reasonably high end Intel models. For anyone crunching on GPUs, it makes sense to not be pushing out another 30 to 50W of heat into the case. So forking out for a power efficient PSU and CPU makes sense.

I think it's always best to choose your project(s) and build accordingly. On some projects AMD's perform very well, while on others they struggle. It's not as clear as AMD vs NVidia and Intel's probably perform better for most project, but I think it's worth looking into before taking the plunge on a new CPU/system. Generally an 8/12thread Intel CPU will outperform a high end AMD by ~50% but if you're not prepared to fork out for a high end Intel then the AMD's are competitive and worth considering, on a project basis.

---

.

As I told before, I own a FX-4100 [Family 21 Model 1 Stepping 2].
I'm not an explizit "fan" of Intel, because i don't like monopolists (or "near-as-monopolists") anyhow.

But this FX-4100 consumed very much power and was (compared to an Intel I3) two-three times slower.

@cykodennis,

Yes, I read your earlier comments on your experience with FX-4100 and it was enough to cause me to postpone buying an AMD, thanks for the tip. I almost bought an i7-3960K because of your advice. In fact I was already in the checkout line at the online store and would have bought it had there not been a glitch which resulted in my card being refused. (The online store reports my address to my bank with the city, province and country all on 1 line and my overly fastidious bank wants the country on a separate line so it declines the transaction, believe it or not)

Now the AMD 8000 series, Vishera, looks to be a big improvement performance-wise so now I am thinking AMD again.

Buying from monopolies has never bothered me if they provide the product I want at the lowest price. The Microsoft monopoly, for example, has never offered anything but garbage so I booted them long ago. They give away better operating systems for free and so I have one of those. Except on my notebook, lol! And the only reason it has Windows is because it doesn't have a DVD drive into which I can slip a Linux install disk and won't boot from a USB thumb drive.

@skgiven

The problem with dumping unnecessary heat into the case has never been a problem here because the first thing I do with a crunch box is remove the sides of the case and put it in the path of a big (12" or better) fan powered by the mains power. Last year I put my rigs outside on a shelf outside my window to keep them cool and avoid spilling heat into the room. This winter I have them back inside but in a custom built cabinet (nothing fancy, $20 worth of used plywood and insulation I salvaged from scrap piles) that draws air in from the outside, passes it through a HEPA filter and exhausts the air to the outside or, in colder months, pushes the air into the furnace air intake where it helps heat the rest of the house rather than overheating the room in which they are located. A humongous battery backup and power conditioner (self-built) is in the cabinet too. The plan is to not buy anymore cases, just mobos, power supplies and CPUs. I'll make racks out of scrap metal and mount them in the cabinet. CPUs and GPUs are running around the 20 Celsius mark with this method, I have 3 hours primary battery backup plus huge backup off the batteries in my solar-wind system. Plus an 8.5 KW gasoline/propane/natural gas powered emergency generator. But I'm straying off my main point.

My new strategy is damn the CPUs, GPUs rule! I think I'm going to buy just enough CPU to drive a gaggle of GPUs. GPUgrid's recent paper and breakthrough emphasize just how enormous are the computations required to get anywhere in any reasonable amount of time. So inexpensive CPUs on inexpensive mobos feeding awesome GPUs, that's my strategy for the future for maximizing crunching power per dollar. I'm also looking into building one massive power supply, say 4 KW, that will power several mobo-GPU units. The bigger they are the more efficient they can become is what I hear but then a whole new scheme for system power check and power up is necessary too, just starting to work on that.

Hi,
are You sure the problem is with the bank? or is it that the account is empty? Buying without money is not easy... Joking apart: banks are crap; they've shown it recently all around the world.

Your idea of the DC-centre at home. Will search a blog of a man who built a super DC-center in the garage. Not even 1 cage, just mobos and GPU's; liquid refrigeration with a big tank, a pool pump and a car refigeration grid (or something like that). Really amazing seeing how he had done it. He needed a special power line to feed all the mobos and GPUs.
Don't even want to imagine the total amount of $ he spent on the project. If I find it I'll post it.

The immortal Robert Burns wrote, "Getting and spending we lay waste our power".

I avoid spending money on things I can make and spend that instead on tools to make the things I want. I can spend $200 on 1 table or I can spend $200 on a saw and other tools and get a bit of wood and make 5 tables. Or 1 table and a house. I avoid spending my time on frivolities and spend it instead on learning how to make things. People buy and throw away things at an alarming rate. It's madness. I take things people have thrown away and craft them into new things. And so the guy with the super DC center you spoke of probably got most of his parts from a junkpile and built his super center from it for very little. Like me he can't avoid the cost of the mobos, CPUs and GPUs but the rest is likely cast off items. Search for Skip's Junk and/or Skip Da Shuu. There's a right inventor-handyman-cruncher.

IIRC you've written about your DIY things in another forum before, right?
It's a pity that i can't understand your language in all details, i would be very curious about your works.
Did you ever thougt about a blog or something like that, with some pictures?
:-)

What kind of tables are you making that the wood from 4 of them will build an entire house?

Big tables, obviously.

IIRC you've written about your DIY things in another forum before, right?
It's a pity that i can't understand your language in all details, i would be very curious about your works.
Did you ever thougt about a blog or something like that, with some pictures?
:-)

Yes I have posted on my DIY things in various places. I am working on pics but a lot of this stuff is built from junk and it doesn't look very nice, lol! It's hard to get people interested in trying some of my ideas for their own use when my inventions look ugly. I have been busy painting and making things look nice and will put up pics soon :-)