Processor List - Best for which projects?

[IronBits]

I'm looking for a full listing of 'current' processors one might use in Distributed Computing.
This is in the vein of "which processor is best for which project"
Here's what I have so far and so I can show you where I'm going with this.
Of course, if it has already been done, show me the link ;)
the Processor then project is not accurate for this 'draft' ...

Apple G4 (PPC) RC5, OGR
Apple G5 (PPC) SOB, OGR
AMD Sempron F@H, D20L
AMD Opteron
AMD Duron
AMD Athlon PEC-700
AMD Athlon 64 FX 55 F@H, (stay away from math projects)
AMD Athlon 64 FX 53
AMD Athlon 64 FX 53 939
AMD Athlon 64 FX 51
AMD Athlon 64 4000
AMD Athlon XP 3200
AMD Athlon MP 2800
AMD Athlon 266fsb
AMD Athlon 200fsb
Intel Itanium
Intel Xeon ??? SOB17, DPAD
Intel Pentium III
Intel Pentium III Xeon (any math project)
Intel Pentium II Xeon
Intel Pentium 4
Intel Pentium 4 Prescott
Intel Pentium 4 Extreme
Intel Pentium 4 Northwood
Intel Celeron
Via C3
Open to ideas, additions, and if anyone has the energy, desire, time and would like to develop this into something useful for beginners and old pharts alike, I would appreciate it :D

[QIbHom]

Excellent idea, IB. I used the processor list when I was deciding which projects to try after DF suspended.

I've got a Barton and a Thunderbird. Needless to say, I found this very confusing, because they are both Athlon XP-somethings. So, a pointer to where people might figure out which chip they have would be very useful.

Also, when using terms like Barton and T-bird, a quick translation table to what would be on the box could help.

And don't forget the older chips. I finally retired my K6-2, but other people may not have.

[alpha]

Originally posted by QIbHom
I finally retired my K6-2, but other people may not have.

K6-2's belong on OGR. I still have several K6-2's crunching these days.

IB, don't Ars already have a list like this?

[IronBits]

They have something along those line, however, in the process of making it more accurate, they have fallen into disagreement and it's getting ugly...
I liked kb9skw's idea - and I think we can get the job done without all the negativity ;)


Originally posted by kb9skw:
For example, D2OL would be listed as such...

1 Athlon 64
2 Athlon XP
3 Pentium 4 Northwood HT

SoB on the other hand would be...

1 Pentium 4 Prescott
2 Pentium 4 Northwood HT
3 Athlon 64

SoB Second Pass...

1 Athlon XP
2 Athlon
3 Pentium III

Those are as far as I can tell in order for the best CPU for said project.
So I was hoping we could get enough interest to just come up with a simple list that could be easily updated over time.

[FoBoT]

that CPUEZ program that IB posted up last year is very good to identify your CPU

[em99010pepe]

I have at my disposal four computers:

AMD Athlon 1100Mhz
AMD XP 2200+
AMD 64 3000+
INTEL P4 HT 3.0Ghz
INTEL P3 800Mhz (not anymore)

And this is my experience:

Looking for prime numbers

AMD processors are good for sieving and INTEL machines for testing numbers (PRP)
P3 is also good at sieving

Dnet

AMD processors are good at RC-72
INTEL P4 processors good at OGR-P2
Athlons beats P3's

eOn

No difference. Maybe the AMD 64 is a little faster, 15 %.

SOB

Intel machines rocks

DPAD

Intel machine is also good here. The P4 3.0 Ghz beats by ~10% an AMD 64 3000+
Athlon 1100 Mhz almost 60% faster when compared to a P3 800Mhz

D2OL and TSC

AMD 64/AMD XP beat the INTEL machine even when the latter runs 2 instances

DHEP

Performance is the same between the AMD 64 and the INTEL P4 (2 instances)


Hope this helps,

Carlos

[IronBits]

Originally posted by FoBoT
that CPUEZ program that IB posted up last year is very good to identify your CPU http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php :thumbs:

[PCZ]

No surprise they are not in agreement.

Kb9skw has the P4 HT as 3rd in D2OL when it is infact the best CPU for the Job.

[IronBits]

:thumbs: Keep it coming... we'll have a list up soon :rotfl:

[QIbHom]

CPUEZ is quite good, I'm sure. It is Windows only. There is probably some equivelent for Linux and Mac, I'll look later for Linux if no one posts one.

Which brings us to another problem. Many of the DC projects are Windows only. Not useful to those of us who refuse to run it.

[IronBits]

Good point! Once we get the procs/projs listed, we'll add another two columns or three maybe

Project CPUs(3) OS proxy/cache/modem
Some of it's already listed on the frontpage, on the projects button across the top, or
http://www.free-dc.org/projects.php
:thumbs:

[QIbHom]

Yeah, I knew the OS info was already around, so it wouldn't be horribly difficult to add it. Or, possibly, to do another list.

If I were better at coding, I'd suggest a "how to decide which dc projects are good for you" series, where you put in what chip, which OS on the next page, online, offline or both on the next, and got a nice list with links to the Free-DC forum on that project and the project home page. But, I suck, and couldn't do this, so I won't suggest it <g>.

[rshepard]

Under Linux you can look at the /proc/cpuinfo file --
I think that may have what you are looking for as far as identifying the CPU.

[IronBits]

Indeed - that worked :thumbs:

$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 15
model : 4
model name : Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU 3.60GHz
stepping : 1
cpu MHz : 3591.159
cache size : 1024 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 2
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 5
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov
pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm syscall nx lm pni monitor
ds_cpl est tm2 cid cx16 xtpr
bogomips : 7094.27
clflush size : 64
cache_alignment : 128
address sizes : 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
-------------------------------------------------------------
processor : 1 (identical to above)
processor : 2 (identical to above)
processor : 3 (identical to above)
:D

[Scoofy12]

also on linux is a program called cpuid, which gives even more info than /proc/cpuinfo. i apt-get'ed it so im not sure exactly where it originates, but im sure its not hard to find. Intel and AMD processors have slightly different info, as shown below.

also lspci can tell you about what your chipset might be.


heres my desktop, an Athlon XP 2100:

$ cpuid
eax in eax ebx ecx edx
00000000 00000001 68747541 444d4163 69746e65
00000001 00000662 00000000 00000000 0383f9ff
80000000 80000008 68747541 444d4163 69746e65
80000001 00000762 00000000 00000000 c1c3f9ff
80000002 20444d41 6c687441 74286e6f 5820296d
80000003 31322050 002b3030 00000000 00000000
80000004 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
80000005 0408ff08 ff20ff10 40020140 40020140
80000006 00000000 41004100 01008140 00000000
80000007 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000001
80000008 00002022 00000000 00000000 00000000

Vendor ID: "AuthenticAMD"; CPUID level 1

AMD-specific functions
Version 00000662:
Family: 6 Model: 6 [Athlon MP/Mobile Athlon model 6]

Standard feature flags 0383f9ff:
Floating Point Unit
Virtual Mode Extensions
Debugging Extensions
Page Size Extensions
Time Stamp Counter (with RDTSC and CR4 disable bit)
Model Specific Registers with RDMSR & WRMSR
PAE - Page Address Extensions
Machine Check Exception
COMPXCHG8B Instruction
SYSCALL/SYSRET or SYSENTER/SYSEXIT instructions
MTRR - Memory Type Range Registers
Global paging extension
Machine Check Architecture
Conditional Move Instruction
PAT - Page Attribute Table
PSE-36 - Page Size Extensions
MMX instructions
FXSAVE/FXRSTOR
25 - reserved
Generation: 7 Model: 6
Extended feature flags c1c3f9ff:
Floating Point Unit
Virtual Mode Extensions
Debugging Extensions
Page Size Extensions
Time Stamp Counter (with RDTSC and CR4 disable bit)
Model Specific Registers with RDMSR & WRMSR
PAE - Page Address Extensions
Machine Check Exception
COMPXCHG8B Instruction
SYSCALL/SYSRET or SYSENTER/SYSEXIT instructions
MTRR - Memory Type Range Registers
Global paging extension
Machine Check Architecture
Conditional Move Instruction
PAT - Page Attribute Table
PSE-36 - Page Size Extensions
AMD MMX Instruction Extensions
MMX instructions
FXSAVE/FXRSTOR
3DNow! Instruction Extensions
3DNow instructions

Processor name string: AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2100+
L1 Cache Information:
2/4-MB Pages:
Data TLB: associativity 4-way #entries 8
Instruction TLB: associativity 255-way #entries 8
4-KB Pages:
Data TLB: associativity 255-way #entries 32
Instruction TLB: associativity 255-way #entries 16
L1 Data cache:
size 64 KB associativity 2-way lines per tag 1 line size 64
L1 Instruction cache:
size 64 KB associativity 2-way lines per tag 1 line size 64

L2 Cache Information:
2/4-MB Pages:
Data TLB: associativity L2 off #entries 0
Instruction TLB: associativity L2 off #entries 0
4-KB Pages:
Data TLB: associativity Direct mapped #entries 0
Instruction TLB: associativity Direct mapped #entries 0
size 1 KB associativity L2 off lines per tag 129 line size 64

Advanced Power Management Feature Flags
Has temperature sensing diode
Maximum linear address: 32; maximum phys address 34


here's a machine from school, a P4 3000:
cpuid
eax in eax ebx ecx edx
00000000 00000002 756e6547 6c65746e 49656e69
00000001 00000f29 00010809 00004400 bfebfbff
00000002 665b5101 00000000 00000000 007b7040
80000000 80000004 00000000 00000000 00000000
80000001 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
80000002 20202020 20202020 20202020 6e492020
80000003 286c6574 50202952 69746e65 52286d75
80000004 20342029 20555043 30302e33 007a4847

Vendor ID: "GenuineIntel"; CPUID level 2

Intel-specific functions:
Version 00000f29:
Type 0 - Original OEM
Family 15 - Pentium 4
Extended family 0
Model 2 -
Stepping 9
Reserved 0

Brand index: 9 [not in table]
Extended brand string: " Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00GHz"
CLFLUSH instruction cache line size: 8
Hyper threading siblings: 1

Feature flags bfebfbff:
FPU Floating Point Unit
VME Virtual 8086 Mode Enhancements
DE Debugging Extensions
PSE Page Size Extensions
TSC Time Stamp Counter
MSR Model Specific Registers
PAE Physical Address Extension
MCE Machine Check Exception
CX8 COMPXCHG8B Instruction
APIC On-chip Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller present and enabled
SEP Fast System Call
MTRR Memory Type Range Registers
PGE PTE Global Flag
MCA Machine Check Architecture
CMOV Conditional Move and Compare Instructions
FGPAT Page Attribute Table
PSE-36 36-bit Page Size Extension
CLFSH CFLUSH instruction
DS Debug store
ACPI Thermal Monitor and Clock Ctrl
MMX MMX instruction set
FXSR Fast FP/MMX Streaming SIMD Extensions save/restore
SSE Streaming SIMD Extensions instruction set
SSE2 SSE2 extensions
SS Self Snoop
HT Hyper Threading
TM Thermal monitor
31 reserved

TLB and cache info:
51: Instruction TLB: 4KB and 2MB or 4MB pages, 128 entries
5b: Data TLB: 4KB and 4MB pages, 64 entries
66: 1st-level data cache: 8KB, 4-way set assoc, 64 byte line size
40: No 2nd-level cache, or if 2nd-level cache exists, no 3rd-level cache
70: Trace cache: 12K-micro-op, 4-way set assoc
7b: 2nd-level cache: 512KB, 8-way set assoc, sectored, 64 byte line size

[QIbHom]

Thanks, rshepard and Scoofy12. I knew I'd done that before, couldn't remember where.

There are ways to get things besides apt-get? <g>

[Scoofy12]

heh... another i seem to do a lot is wget <something>; tar -xvzf <something>; cd <somewhere>; less README (maybe); ./configure; make; make install

[IronBits]

make clean :bonk: :rotfl:
Must be Friday, we're all having too much fun ! :D

[QIbHom]

Yeah, I know about make. Built a LFS system, once. Might do it again. It was great fun, and I learned a lot. Of course, I've forgotten most of it.

[CaptainMooseInc]

I don't know if this will help any, but this is my system according to CPU-Z. I produce around 4000 points a day in FaD w/ it.

[PS2pcGAMER]

Which project would be good for a P-M with the Dothan core? FAD seems incredibly slow on it... but that may just be me.

[ECL]

I've done a little benchmarking with the latest BOINC client (4.19) on various boxes and I've come up with some figures. The results are taken from the built-in benchmarking feature and are given as Whetstones/Dhrystones. Each result given is the best of several runs.


AMD64 3400+ (2.40 GHz, WinXP) 2284 / 6261
AMD 2800+ (2.08 GHz, WinXP) 1934 / 4660
AMD 2400+ (2.00 GHz, WinXP) 1853 / 4489
AMD 1800+ (1.53 GHz, WinXP) 1424 / 3457
Intel P4 (2.41 GHz, WinXP) 1190 / 3515
AMD 2400+ (2.00 GHz, RH9) 1030 / 2445
Intel P4-M (1.80 GHz, WinXP) 914 / 2762
Apple G4 (1.42 GHz, OS X) 668 / 2072
Intel P3 (700 MHz, SuSE) 366 / 707

Looks like, in general, you want an AMD processor on Boinc, and WinXP instead of Linux. This is not a great project for P4-M laptops. The two XP2400+ machines are interesting, since they tend to deliver similar throughput on many projects. In this case, the Linux box is significantly slower than the Windows box, though they're the same model CPU, amount & speed of RAM.