Re: 64-bit Workstation Configuration Help Needed
- From: "uC" <uC@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 8 Oct 2006 12:37:46 +0200
"John S" <john_shaeffer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:kreUg.9163$UG4.1305@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
64 Bit Workstation Configuration Help Needed
You are going to do exactly what I have just done for my wireless network and electromagnetism simulations ;-) !
Cost should be less than $10k (hopefully)
So, for a 64-bit workstation, what is the collective ng opinion for:
Processor: AMD Opteron (dual core) vs INTEL;
At the moment Intel proc. are faster in level 3 BLAS than AMD ones however you must make analysis of bottlenecks in your current setup as well as to make prediction of possible bottlenecks in your future system (which might be very different). It may turn out that your proc speed doesn't mean anything in case of slow I/O (both RAM and disks).
As for processors AMD will have its new architecture with real quad-cores this time next year which seems to be really fast in level 3 BLAS.
A motherboard with two processors, each with two cores.
Any professional one (workstation or server version depending on your needs for making it your PC) from Iwill, Tyan, Intel, Arima, Supermicro etc. I have Tyan Thunder K8WE and it is great... when it works properly. Sometimes it doesn't work (check www.k8we.com , probably the best forum on the net about professional workstation boards and problems people can have it this kind of rigs, not only Tyan).
Memory: 16 GB of DDR 3200 or DDR2
Well, it is only up to your funding. New AMD motherboards can easily have 32 GB of DDR2 RAM (Socket F) going to 64 GB in near future I suppose. Generally speaking DDR2 allows you to put more memory than DDR. You will find motherboards with up to 16 memory slots for dual socket Opterons, both Socket 940 (DDR) and Socket F (DDR2).
As for Intel you can have comparable amount of memory as for AMD Socket F but remember FB-DIMMS used in the newest Xeon 5100 are expensive, slow at read in this generation of chipsets and really slow at write compared to non-FB DDR2.
Scratch Disks (four in RAID 0):
SCSI 320, 15k rpm; or
SATA II 7.5k rpm; or
SATA I Western Digital Raptors, 10k rpm.
Cost: Are 4 15k rpm SCSI's disks worth the cost over 4 10k rpm Raptors (in RAID 0)
I have thought for a long time how to solve this problem in my system (I have 12 GB of DDR400 RAM and need ~80 GB for pagefile). Finally I have chosen 4 x Seagate Cheetah 15k.4 SCSI 36 GB drives in Raid0. Be careful with proper SCSI controller because it can have low bandwidth due to slow I/O processor onboard of it as in my case. I made a mistake and bought LSI MegaRaid 320-1 card which is slow in stream read/write in any Raid which I will replace to 320-2x. Go for anything faster (LSI, Adaptec etc) and more expensive.
As for drives the fastest continuous read is offered by the latest generation of Cheetah 15k.5 which can achieve >130 MB/s per single drive but they are expensive and min. 73 GB. You can also take fast Maxtor Atlas II but I am not sure about their reliability (I just don't know). BTW, now I think SCSI U320 will die very soon so better go to SAS - more expensive ;(.
There is another option with SATA drives. Check forum at www.2cpu.com in storage threads. There are some guys who build ultra fast systems for continuous high-res/speed video recording with number of SATA drives achieving almost 1 GB/s of disk throughput! All depends on the type of your reads from the disks. If you make just stream read of several GB having SATA based system makes more sense (even Raptors, comparable speed can be achieved with much lower costs). If you plan to read your data in "unknown" small portions and make a lot of them SCSI/SAS is unbeatable. Before you buy anything read as much as you can about those issues.
The fastest SATA card on the market is the new series of Areca ARC-12.. but those with 800 MHz Intel 30341 processor including 24 port monster ARC-1280.
PCI BUS: PCI-X 64 bit vs PCI-e ? (for RAID 0 hardware adaptor card)
In both cases you can have great performance if your card is real PCI-X (not PCI64/66 MHz). Check how many lanes have your potential PCIe controller, because some of them are PCIe x8 and dont want to work in PCI x16 slot and your motherboar may only have PCIe x4 and x16 slots.
O/S: Linux or Win_64? If Linux, SUSE 64 bit vs RedHat?
Fortran: Intel IVF 9.1
Math Kernel Library:
Intel Math Kernel Library 8.1;
or if AMD Opteron what blas/lapack library is recommended?
I use WinXP x64 with Matlab 64 bit but don't get suggested.
Good luck!
--
uC
www.ultracode.eu
.
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