Welcome Back SpeedRaider!

[tim]

Guru, were they overclocked much? The only stability issues I've had with prime95 client were hardware related. But I don't overclock either (don't slap me too hard).

Thanks for posting the comparisons of cpus. I noticed i5-4690K didn't have any data, did it not appear properly in the post? My rookie interpretation of the posted data makes me think on a per core basis the i7-4770K and the E5-2697V2 are roughly the same in production. Is that how you read it?

I appreciate you taking the time to hash this out. I hope it's not affecting your day job.

[guru]

Nope these systems are in 1U racks and used only as computing systems. 24/7 stability vs high performance. Many of my AVX systems have the same motherboards and very similar memory. It is possible it is not related directly to the CPU. I have noticed turning off Turbo helps. I will do more testing with a few specific trouble systems and try to isolate the issue.

I don't have a 4690K for testing so I just put the specs to compare it to what i have. If someone else has one that can provide the data that would be good. I have more results to share and I may just put it into a spreadsheet and upload it.

My rookie interpretation of the posted data makes me think on a per core basis the i7-4770K and the E5-2697V2 are roughly the same in production.

It depends on the FFT size. The 4770K is faster at 1024K FFT size but most of what I have seen running are 2560K which puts the 2697V2 about 45% faster than the 4770K

This doesn't directly relate to my day job but everything I learn from it does apply. Knowledge like this doesn't come in a book or a lecture.

[pinhodecarlos]

Can I suggest running SRBASE project instead of SOB? With such power on SOB with such errors it will cost SOB more doublecheck effort in the future.
http://srbase.myfirewall.org/sr5/index.php

The invitation code for creating new accounts is pillepalle

[guru]

Can I suggest running SRBASE project instead of SOB? With such power on SOB with such errors it will cost SOB more doublecheck effort in the future.
http://srbase.myfirewall.org/sr5/index.php

The invitation code for creating new accounts is pillepalle

Does it support proxy, Linux, and command line?

[pinhodecarlos]

Does it support proxy, Linux, and command line?

I don't know if BOINC supports proxy server as dnet but it runs under linux, GUI or command line.

About your calculations, you need to determine the specific energy consumption using the same batch of candidates, you can't compare watts to watts.

Specific energy consumption=(Watt per hour) / (candidates tested per day)

[guru]

Watts are watts! What you are talking about is watts/work unit or efficiency. Yes the 4770K is more efficient than the 2700K but not by a lot.

Getting back to the two 2700K vs single 4770K output. That is 258 watts vs 142 watts. With power at $.064 a KW here that comes to $63.91 a year extra in power but it also outputs more units. The added bonus is the two 2700K's will crush the 4770k in other work. SOB is one of the few workloads that has a big advantage on the 4th generation core processors.

[pinhodecarlos]

Watts are watts! What you are talking about is watts/work unit or efficiency. Yes the 4770K is more efficient than the 2700K but not by a lot.

Efficiency is one thing, specific energy consumption is another thing.
When you are on a site you look at a efficiency of a boiler but for a production line you look at the specific energy consumption. The latter is what you need to be use to compare your computers. Your computer is a production line where you feed with energy (electricity) and it produces X candidates per day. The efficiency is measured on the power supply (consumed/feed)_energy.

Also that unit KW doesn't exist because the K (capitalize letter) is Kelvin, for absolute temperature, what you mean is kW, where k is a SI prefix and it is named kilo. Second you pay energy (kWh) not power (kW). Third you need to consider the overall investment for each case, you can't only compare the energy you pay, you need to determine the ROI (return of the investment). This is what you do in the real world.

[guru]

Here are the power number comparing the 2700K to the 4770K. Both are very similar and basic systems.

2700K
850W power supply
Intel SSD
2 x 4GB 1600 Memory
DVD
Intel DZ68BC motherboard
OpenSuse 13.1
HT off
4 Cores
Turbo disabled

4770K
610W power supply
Intel SSD
2 x 4 1600 Memory
DVD
Asus Z87-Expert motherboard
Windows 8
HT off
4 Cores
Turbo disabled

             Idle   SOB   TT small      TT blend       TT large      OGR   RC5
2700k        42     129   124           122            129           104   104
4770K        66     142   142           129            140           97     95

Take away: 4770K with avx2 is faster but requires more power to do it(nothing for free). I suspect the extra power is the stress on the memory system due to the increased throughput. FFM3 instructions use more power than AVX. Makes sense given the larger registers.

99% sure the difference in idle power has to do with the c-states in the bios. I believe they are disabled on the 4770K(something we normally do for testing) but enabled on the 2700K after the last bios update. This would not affect the power usage under load.

[tim]

Thanks for clarifying that. Electricity isn't as big a concern for me, we have plentiful hydroelectric power in the Pacific Northwest. But the dollars remain one.

Looking at http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...Size=30&Page=5 just daydreaming. I'm thinking I'm better off sticking with multiple quad core boxes, since I'm clueless about server maintenance, costs and requirements. A quick google search on "servers vs quad core distributed computing" and nothing looked pertinent. There was a thread from a guy in England considering getting some for his flat; seems like he found more problems than he could take on. I've built home machines, but it looks like servers are a whole different thing. Is it hard to jump from building my own boxes to mounting, powering and maintaining servers?

[guru]

You must not be far from where I am. I get 80% of my power from the Columbia River. Desktops are much cheaper than a server. The servers advantage is power density and large memory. I use the waste heat from my systems to keep my shop warm during the winter. HT doesn't help with SOB but the i7's usually have 8MB cache vs the i5 with 6MB. I haven't done a comparison to see how much it affects performance of SOB. I suspect as the FFT size goes up there is a cutoff where the 6MB cache performance drops off. Having high speed memory becomes more important at that point.

[tim]

I'm in eastern WA near Moses Lake. I heat my basement too, but less so than years ago. Back in the days of SETI classic, I used to have stacks of mobos booted from linux off floppies. I learned some about scripting and the command line. It was fun. When it went to boinc is when I changed to SOB. So I'll keep my eyes open for i5 or i7 with large cache and pair it with fast, low latency memory.