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ploy

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May 31, 2006
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I'm looking to build a Linux box (using Red Hat Enterprise) to run some very large apps... can anyone reccomend high end hardware for this? Dual processor seems to be the way to go (after looking at the tamshardware comparison of dual processor vs dual core :D ) and obviously AMD-based systems will be slightly faster, but are there any compatibility issues with that? hellllpppp!!! thanks :)
 
linux_0

linux_0

Splendid
Dec 18, 2005
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I'm looking to build a Linux box (using Red Hat Enterprise) to run some very large apps... can anyone reccomend high end hardware for this? Dual processor seems to be the way to go (after looking at the tamshardware comparison of dual processor vs dual core :D ) and obviously AMD-based systems will be slightly faster, but are there any compatibility issues with that? hellllpppp!!! thanks :)
Click to expand...



I would strongly recommend a 2/4/8way Opteron with a Tyan, Iwill or Supermicro motherboard and the nForce Professional or AMD 81xx chipset.

https://secure.newegg.com/NewVersion/Wishlist/PublicWishDetail.asp?WishListNumber=1903166


What do you plan to use these for? If you cannot say publicly we can discuss this privately.
 
MU_Engineer

MU_Engineer

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Feb 18, 2006
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I suggest a 2P Opteron board with two dual-core Opterons in it. I'd also get at least 2x1GB RAM for each socket, so 4GB RAM in total. You likely want a 64-bit OS, and that consumes a lot of RAM relative to a 32-bit machine, especially when you're doing heavy math, that's why >=4GB RAM. Such a setup will not be cheap, but those components can be had for roughly $2000, and that's not bad for the power they get. Stay away from the Xeons as they run quite hot and have pretty rotten floating-point performance. I know presonally as I built such a machine (dual 2.8GHz/90nm/2MB L2 "Irwindale" single-core Xeons) and it is very hot, noisy, and slower than a regular desktop Pentium D 930 despite costing a lot more.

As for the rest of the machine, just use the onboard video on the motherboard and get a reasonable hard drive. If your math is pretty much just CPU-intensive and you don't need a lot of space on the hard drive, get a smaller and cheaper SATA HDD. Don't worry about SCSI or anything unless your program makes a LOT of calls to the hard drive and the speed of the hard drive limits the calculations (this would be more of a database setup, but I am not sure exactly what you're doing.)
 
linux_0

linux_0

Splendid
Dec 18, 2005
5,314
0
25,860
I suggest a 2P Opteron board with two dual-core Opterons in it. I'd also get at least 2x1GB RAM for each socket, so 4GB RAM in total. You likely want a 64-bit OS, and that consumes a lot of RAM relative to a 32-bit machine, especially when you're doing heavy math, that's why >=4GB RAM. Such a setup will not be cheap, but those components can be had for roughly $2000, and that's not bad for the power they get. Stay away from the Xeons as they run quite hot and have pretty rotten floating-point performance. I know personally as I built such a machine (dual 2.8GHz/90nm/2MB L2 "Irwindale" single-core Xeons) and it is very hot, noisy, and slower than a regular desktop Pentium D 930 despite costing a lot more.

As for the rest of the machine, just use the onboard video on the motherboard and get a reasonable hard drive. If your math is pretty much just CPU-intensive and you don't need a lot of space on the hard drive, get a smaller and cheaper SATA HDD. Don't worry about SCSI or anything unless your program makes a LOT of calls to the hard drive and the speed of the hard drive limits the calculations (this would be more of a database setup, but I am not sure exactly what you're doing.)
Click to expand...



Indeed :-D

I agree. Opterons run 25-75% faster than P4 Xeons in 64bit mode have good Integer and great FP performance.

And absolutely unmatched memory and IO bandwidth -- since your memory and IO bandwidth scales linearly as you add CPUs.

As you said they also run cool and consume less energy.
 
bmouring

bmouring

Distinguished
May 6, 2006
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Indeed and yuppers, my system annihilated a dataset that my prof had been chewing on for many an hour (literally, he was on hour 15) on a single P4 w/ 512. I loaded 'er up on to a removable hdd I carry around with me called my laptop, unfurled it onto my "desktop machine", cracked up MATLAB, and 2.5 hours later I had the results he was looking for. He subsequently got me a beer. Good times, good times.

My suggestions:

Dual or (if you have the money/funding) quad Tyan board.

Dual Cores (waiting for them to drop down in price, it's going to happen, before I upgrade mine)

4 gigs. if you are serious, this is where you start

If you want some pretty stuff, I back nVidia over ATI based on the closed-source driver support. ATI's is not good at all (at least for anthing past a 9200, I believe that's the cutoff point for openGL support in the opensource driver)

If the datasets are large, look into a RAID array. If you'll be dual-booting or you need awesome performance and reliability, go with a hardware array. Otherwise, the software-based stuff also rocks out loud.

Enjoy the power... THE POWERRRRR! ahem...
 
linux_0

linux_0

Splendid
Dec 18, 2005
5,314
0
25,860
Indeed and yuppers, my system annihilated a dataset that my prof had been chewing on for many an hour (literally, he was on hour 15) on a single P4 w/ 512. I loaded 'er up on to a removable hdd I carry around with me called my laptop, unfurled it onto my "desktop machine", cracked up MATLAB, and 2.5 hours later I had the results he was looking for. He subsequently got me a beer. Good times, good times.

My suggestions:

Dual or (if you have the money/funding) quad Tyan board.

Dual Cores (waiting for them to drop down in price, it's going to happen, before I upgrade mine)

4 gigs. if you are serious, this is where you start

If you want some pretty stuff, I back nVidia over ATI based on the closed-source driver support. ATI's is not good at all (at least for anthing past a 9200, I believe that's the cutoff point for openGL support in the opensource driver)

If the datasets are large, look into a RAID array. If you'll be dual-booting or you need awesome performance and reliability, go with a hardware array. Otherwise, the software-based stuff also rocks out loud.

Enjoy the power... THE POWERRRRR! ahem...
Click to expand...



Excellent suggestions.

AMD is very strong in the 2 CPU space and unmatched in the 4 and 8 CPU space. :-D
 
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