Time for some new hardware

[chriscambridge]

[Woodles]

Very nice, just don't set it to Game mode!

Mark

[chriscambridge]

Its set to Creative mode by default and I have no plans to change anything. Thanks for the heads up though.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/11726/re ... erformance

[Woodles]

I couldn't see the point of disabling half the chip. Sure, turning off hyperthreading might improve individual core performance but you lose half the cores and still have hyperthreading?!

Have fun building it

Mark

[chriscambridge]

The article says it was done because most games could not handle 8+ cores so they needed a way to constrain the CPU, without just turning off HT. eg 8 cores, 16 threads, rather than 16 cores, 16 threads.

I don't know if you have seen the way Thread Ripper CPUs are installed, its completely different to the way Intel does it. Personally I think its a much better installation system/design.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0IbxYyN1Dg

[chriscambridge]

One Thread Ripper built!

[Woodles]

Hi Chris,

Very colourful, you'll need a case with windows for it next

Mark

[chriscambridge]

To be honest it was the cheapest TR mobo I could find; I'm not really a fan of colourful LEDS. I will probably stick it in a windowless rack case!

[UBT - Timbo]

Hi Chris

Having seen the video and then looked at the above image, i can see that AMD have spent a small fortune on a massive set of packaging, for a CPU chip + torque nutdriver that could fit inside a small jiffy bag !!

Maybe they are taking a lead from Apple who also seem to spend lots on flash packaging for their products ?

regards
Tim

[chriscambridge]

To be honest the CPU packaging is stupid and a complete waste of time not to mention a bad design in terms of functionality.

The torque screwdriver, which is meant to click so you know you have untighten/tightened the CPU in place, doesn't actually work, so that was pointless.

And the Ryzen Master software (which seems to be all about OC) makes little sense and is pretty useless as (a) you have to sign a disclaimer in BIG RED LETTERS every time you run it saying OC can damage your CPU, and (b) with such as low TjMax (68c) it means you cannot really OC without some serious liquid cooling solution.

In truth AMD seem to be a bit confused as to who their target market is for TR CPUs; the last time I checked (see reply to Marks post) most games cannot use this amount of cores, and even if they could it would make no difference as most of the gaming work is done on the GPU, and hence OC is pointless, and not actually practical due to the points above.

However in terms of CPU crunching it is somewhat of a monster, easily outpacing my i7's and Xeons, both in frequency and total output (across threads).

[UBT - Timbo]

Hi Chris

I think that AMD are just trying to play Intel at the numbers game - in this case with the number of cores !

However, I can see that having so many cores could actually be helpful in the productivity side of the PC business as (in theory) one could run any number of virtual environments concurrently.

Or you just dedicate it to BOINC and generate lots of credits

It'll be interesting to see what sort of impact this has on your BOINC totals (if you see fit to use it this way)...please keep us informed

regards
Tim

[chriscambridge]

All the machines/racks are only used for data processing, be it BOINC or Folding@home; I stopped with the crypto mining as that was no longer profitable.

At the moment it is hard to quantify just how much more credit this TR CPU is doing in WCG, mainly because when you add a new host a very large amount of its WUs go into pending validation. In the last 24 hours or so, WCG has put 325 WUs into pending validation, most of which are from the new host.

In time I will run only WCG on the i7s, V3 Xeons, V4 Xeon, and TR under WCG and then report back on the RAC which should give some indication of how much more credit the TR does compared to the other Intel CPUs.

[chriscambridge]

Decided it was time to get a 2nd AMD TR 1950x, as I couldn't let that Woodles bloke have all the CPUs

[Woodles]

Decided it was time to get a 2nd AMD TR 1950x, as I couldn't let that Woodles bloke have all the CPUs

It's not the quantity, it's the quality

You didn't fancy a 2990WX then?

Mark

[chriscambridge]

I did take a look at the 2990WX but they seem overpriced and underspecd on frequency.

Although saying this, the £800 V4 Xeon I bought are now selling for over £2K on Ebay so who knows

[Woodles]

Same as the 9900K or the 2000 series GPU cards. Unless you want the absolute top device and money isn't an issue there's better choices to be made.

Have you thought about selling the Xeons?

[chriscambridge]

I am in 2 minds as:

1) They are expensive single items and that would run the risk of someone damaging them and trying to return it. I have heard a few horror stories about selling on Ebay.

2) I have never sold on Ebay and therefore would have zero selling rating, and I am not sure if anyone would spend £2K on a single item from this type of seller.

.. And its quite nice to have a single CPU which retailers for over £4K!

Although if I could sell them locally I would sell them straight away.

[bigsinky]

got all my stuff up and running chaps. i9 is working a treat and yesterday i managed to get the i3 transferred into its new home. lovely cable management so things look a lot better now. no bending welded in drive bays to get gfx cards to fit, though the massive alpenfhon Broken 3 cooler is slightly too big for one side of the case fit back on. oh and another 1080ti on the way. it will be for the i9 system so is it better to SLI them together or leave separately. don't plan to game on the i9?

[UBT - Timbo]

got all my stuff up and running chaps. i9 is working a treat and yesterday i managed to get the i3 transferred into its new home. lovely cable management so things look a lot better now. no bending welded in drive bays to get gfx cards to fit, though the massive alpenfhon Broken 3 cooler is slightly too big for one side of the case fit back on. oh and another 1080ti on the way. it will be for the i9 system so is it better to SLI them together or leave separately. don't plan to game on the i9?

Hi Neil

Nice one.

Re: SLI
As far as I know, BOINC doesn't support SLI, so you'd be better off running 2 GPU tasks concurrently, one on each GPU. However, I seem to recall one or two projects can run ONE task across 2 GPUs (though I can't recall which projects right now someone else might know ).

regards
Tim

[Woodles]

Hi both,

True, Boinc doesn't use SLI so nothing to be gained there.

Moo can run one CUDA task on multiple GPUs but its best not to, more efficient running one task per GPU. It does need a bit of setting up though or only run the Nvidia tasks (which pay better anyway)

Mark

[bigsinky]

Ok i have collatz running separate WU on separate gfx cards. Aborted all the WUs before i put the new card in, downloaded some more collatz WUs and hey presto both cards processing 1 WU each in just under 4 minutes.

[Woodles]

Very nice Neil, now to watch the credits roll in

[bigsinky]

yep just have to wait a while. the 1 billion mark about half way through december

[UBT - Timbo]

Ok i have collatz running separate WU on separate gfx cards. Aborted all the WUs before i put the new card in, downloaded some more collatz WUs and hey presto both cards processing 1 WU each in just under 4 minutes.

Well done Neil...

Can't wait to see your credits acrue more speedily

regards
Tim