Crunching hardware for Einstein

[Steve Lux]

If size isn't an issue, does anyone have a recommended GPU for crunching Einstein? I have a half-built Asus KGPE-D16 12-core (Expandable to 24-core) motherboard with 4 PCIE 2.0 x16 slots and 1 PCIE x8 and 1 PCI slot. I figure some folks out there know a good bit more than I do about specing out GPU cards. I'm also wanting to go with a SS drive.

- Thanks

[Dirk Broer]

If Einstein is your thing, you need the best nVidia card you can buy, the GTX590. If you can set them in SLI, do it (interresting question: will it work -4 Fermi GPUs at once in one system-.If it does: big credits just ahead. Further still: expensive power bill. Two GTX560s might be a cheaper and almost as good a solution

[velociraptor]

I just got me two ASUS ENGTX 560 Ti Top( on an ASUS Crosshair II Formula/Phenom II X4 940 BE)..
would try them on Einstein for a reference value, if it wasn´t for the heat.
The cards stay in a acceptable temperature range, but their heat kills my southbridge for my average room temperature is a little bit high (30-35°, and no chance for a proper cooling of the room...). Maby i should give water cooling a try.
At Primegrid they easily managed an astonishing output untill i turned them of during the day...
All in all i am very satisfied with their performance and the only thing i can think about is that the summer is already lasting too long ;).

[Dirk Broer]

30-35°, now in Vienna? What will it be in July-August? Try relocating to the Alps....
(Have a room without window(s) but with an airco might do as well)

[velociraptor]

, no it is not 30-35° in vienna, but in my room. i am still living in a home for students.

now it cooled down to 25° outside, and with the window wide open it has still 29° due to the fact that i am living in the highest floor and the sun heats the roof up. This heat has nothing better to do than to give me a visit (bad to no isolation) and finally i am not allowed to install an air conditioning (for i shall not make holes in the walls).
So all in all i have to live with about 5° more than outside.
So i just hope that it will not have 30° outside for too long for living in a 35° room isn´t a pleasant thing (imho).
You can´t imagine how i am already looking forward to the summer to fire up my to gtx 560´s, for now there is no budget for a proper water cooling so i will have to wait...

[Dirk Broer]

Yes, I understood that it was just your room, and not the whole of Vienna...
So do not make holes in the walls, just hang it out off, or set it for an open window, depending on the model
My son, studying in Amsterdam, lives in a converted sea-container in pretty much the same conditions (living on the top level floor and chrunching on my account)
He has to have his balcony door open almost all the time to keep temperature below 30°C (and that's about 100°F)

[Dirk Broer]

I have a half-built Asus KGPE-D16 12-core (Expandable to 24-core) motherboard with 4 PCIE 2.0 x16 slots and 1 PCIE x8 and 1 PCI slot.

DROOL

Cheapest 12-core CPU (Opteron 6168) comes at a little more than 600 EUR, Mobo is 380 EUR, and then you want at least 2 Gb of RAM per core=24 Gb with one CPU, and double that when you have two CPUs. But you have 2x8=16 slots for RAM, so filling it for now with 8 4Gb modules is just fine. You will soon be the team's fastest climber, provided that you have a good nVidia (ATI/AMD does not yet support Einstein) card. Money seems to be no objection, ever thought of a Tesla installation?

[Steve Lux]

Oh, money is an issue. I was getting good overtime and bought the case, board, power supply and one 12-core CPU. I was spec-ing the ram, SSD and video when my overtime at work went away, so put the project on hold. I'm getting a bit more overtime again and I hate to see a potential 30k/day box just sitting there, so I want to see if I can finish building this monster before the summer and overtime run out. Seems the most important factor for Einstein productivity is the GPUs.

Are you sure 2gb per cpu is required? I'm, running Einstein on 4 cores on my home system and only using 2.16 gb (Along with Norton's and several small applications) on Windoz 7 home premium. I'm not exactly an expert at building systems, but my understanding is that the more ram you have the more latency from addressing all that ram. Now, I don't want a system that is only capable of running Einstein, but I also don't want to slow down my system with too much ram.

Tesla? Only in my dreams.

[NeoGen]

I maxed out my X3 with 16Gb of RAM to be able to crunch the biggest and baddest BURP workunits that have been out this year.
I have no way to really measure it, but I don't think I am getting any higher latency because of the higher amount of RAM.
I do know that an application like BURP that allocates gigs of RAM at a time does spend a little time filling it all up and/or emptying it. I have done some experiments in the past in programming, trying to allocate really big arrays of random numbers into RAM and Windows does take some time to fill it all up before starting to work on it, it's not a thing that happens instantly, and can easily be seen on the Task manager as the used memory graph grows. That might be what you mean about latency?

But so far I have not noticed any normal apps lagging or any latency issues, since I put 16Gb of RAM I even disabled the page file so I believe I am running 100% from the RAM, and it's doing great. 2Gb/core would be the "ideal" value but hardly any DC projects out there use 2Gb per running instance. Right now you would probably do great with 1Gb/core. But if you can, try to use higher capacity chips to leave memory slots open for future expansion.

[Dirk Broer]

I run into problems (freezing up) running 4 Malaria WUs at a time with 4 Gb on a quad, so that's why I advise at least 2Gb per core. I do however also maintain a big pagefile.
Einstein might be able to run on less, but you might want to use your system for more than just Einstein, while you do want to let it run, no matter what you are doing.