Floating Point Calculations, AMD or Intel?

[flakcannon714]

Hi guys

I've been asked by my company to build a simulator PC which needs to have the best processor for floating point calculations. Price is not really a barrier here so does Intel or AMD come top?

What's needed for Floating point calcs?

Thanks

 

[Timop]

For floating point calculation, GPU-based GPGPUs are the way to go (like the Nvidia Tesla and AMD FireStream) IIRC.

It depends on the program though.

 

[flakcannon714]

The program is Ansoft HFSS v11 (think they may be updating soon though) and Agilent ADS

Thanks

 

[jsc]

If the program that you are using cannot offload the calculations to the GPU, probably Intel.

 

[sarwar_r87]

to measure the the FPU strength, SPECapc is a good toolyou can get, i think;
here are the latest results i could get:

intel seems to be quite a bit ahead.

POV-Ray is also a better tool for FPU:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3674/amds-sixcore-phenom-ii-x6-1090t-1055t-reviewed/7

 

[BadTrip]

Intel

 

[flakcannon714]

Thanks for all the replies

So the GPU is better than the CPU when it comes down to "number crunching"?

Looks like the 980X is quite good then but are there server CPU's which can do an even better job?

thanks

 

[warmon6]

Thanks for all the replies

So the GPU is better than the CPU when it comes down to "number crunching"?

Looks like the 980X is quite good then but are there server CPU's which can do an even better job?

thanks

Yes gpu's are better at Number crunching than cpu's.

As for sever cpu's, It can be depending on number of cores/thread the program can use and the cpu speed but gpu would still be better.

 

[hollett]

If money really is no object, then you can get intel X7560 server chips (8 cores, 16 thread) and fit 8 of them into a single server.

This would give you 64 cors 128 threads and can support up to 2Tb of ram.

As for price you will have to ask the likes of HP for their Prolient DL980 G7 servers. But given the CPU's are over £3,000 @ $4,500 each, and each of the 128 16Gb DDR3 Rdimms cost £800 @ $1,200. I would say LOTS!!!

 

[Alfred_i]

here is a benchmark for FPU:
http://www.guru3d.com/article/phenom-ii-x6-1055t-1090t-review/12
core i7 980 is the best!!!with a noticeable difference.and amd 1055t is better than i7 870 and it shows for clock per clock amd is better here.also 1055t beat 930 but difference is not noticeable!!
anyway,if you want better cpu you can wait for bulldozer which each core of it has two fpu 128bit and it has 8 core.

 

[sonoran]

The program is Ansoft HFSS v11 (think they may be updating soon though) and Agilent ADS

Thanks

Why not contact them and see what they recommend?

 

[flakcannon714]

Thanks for all the help