What CPU to use with Albert@Home, and why
The Project
Albert@Home is a test project ran by the Einstein@Home team. You are welcome to join if you want to help us test features or fixes that may later be transferred to Einstein@Home.
However please keep in mind that this is a test project: Most of the time Albert@Home will have no work to run at all, and when it has, the applications are experimental, might be unstable, unreliable and may even damage your computer. Validation might be unreliable and we may cancel workunits without prior notice. If you care about credit, this project is certainly not the right one for you. For short: Don't expect ANYTHING to work here.
Well, don't say they didn't warn you...
The Applications
Gravitational Wave S6 LineVeto search:
- Linux/x86 1.11 (SSE2)
- Windows/x86 1.11 (SSE2)
- MacOSX on PPC 1.10 (ALTIVEC)
- MacOSX on Intel 1.10 (SSE2)
Binary Radio Pulsar Search
- Linux/x86 1.22 (atiOpenCL)
- Linux/x86 1.22 (BRP3cuda32nv270)
- Windows/x86 1.22 (atiOpenCL)
- Windows/x86 1.22 (BRP3cuda32)
- MacOSX on Intel 1.22 (BRP3cuda32OSX)
This looks a bit niftier than ABC@Home, but remember it is all experimental. It might be a new version of Einstein soon though.
The OpenCL needs to be OpenCL 1.1, and they claim Ati HD 4xxx's to be too slow anyway.
The Stats
Intel multi cores/threads rule here:
Top-5 recent average credit:
- Xeon E5-2660 (8 cores, 16 threads)
- i7 875K (4 cores, 8 threads)
- i7 2600K (4 cores, 8 threads)
- C2Q Q9400 (4 cores/threads)
- i7 920 (4 cores, 8 threads)
Top-5 all-time credit:
- C2Q Q9400 (4 cores/threads)
- i7 875K (4 cores, 8 threads)
- C2Q Q8200 (4 cores/threads)
- C2D E8400 (2 cores/threads)
- Xeon E5-2660 (8 cores, 16 threads)
Makes you go green with envy (Athlon-wise), or red with anger (Llano and Bulldozer)
What does WUProp say? We concentrate on the CPU-only application, Gravitational Wave S6 LineVeto search (SSE2)
Fastest CPU is (again) the i5-2500K, best AMD CPUs are Phenom IIs X4 965 and X6 1090T, while the FX-8150 follows closely.
Most amazing result is for the Pentium III-1133 Tualatin, that manages to beat the later Pentium M, Pentium 4 and Pentium D lines (especially the Pentium 4, that takes more than 20 minutes to complete an Albert WU against 6 for a PIII-1133. It beating the M came as a surprise to me)
Bulldozer does not shine here, but is not a bad performer either. Some Intel CPUs do good here, but not all.
Pentium 4 and close relative Pentium D get clobbered here by every other CPU in the field.
