boinc update

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Well, over a week later and lets see what is what.

Over the past few days, averaged around 140k points per day (PPD). MilkyWay are now issuing some work units that are slightly less points per second than before, but at least it's all work!

Gone from 1.59 million to 2.83 million since the last post. At the minute I have one 4850 card in HK, and the other in Dutchie. Having them both in Dutchie was putting making temps of 110ºC!!!

Looking at the cards in terms of cores and core speed, I posted the following over on the MW forums:

Cards that can process MW at the minute:

3850 - 668Mhz, 320cores, GDDR3 @ 828Mhz
3870 - 775Mhz, 320cores, GDDR3/4 @ 900/1125Mhz
3850X2 - 668Mhz, 640cores, GDDR3 @ 828Mhz
3870X2 - 775Mhz, 640cores, GDDR3/4 @ 900/1125Mhz

4770 - 750Mhz, 640cores, GDDR5 @ 800 Mhz
4830 - 575Mhz, 640cores, GDDR3/4 @ 900 Mhz
4850 - 625Mhz, 800cores, GDDR3/4 @ 993 Mhz
4870 - 750Mhz, 800cores, GDDR5 @ 900Mhz
4890 - 850-1000Mhz, 800cores, GDDR5 @ 975Mhz
4850X2 - 625Mhz, 1600cores, GDDR3 @ 993Mhz
4870X2 - 750Mhz, 1600cores, GDDR5 @ 900Mhz

So in terms of RAC, using the 3850 as a normalised value of 1:

3850 - 1
3870 - 1.16
3850X2 - 2
3870X2 - 2.32

4770 - 2.25
4830 - 1.72
4850 - 2.34
4870 - 2.81
4890 - 3.18 to 3.74
4850X2 - 4.68
4870X2 - 5.62

Formula = (cores / 320) * (1+((Mhz - 668)/668)

So a 4870X2 will get you roughly 5.62 times more RAC than a 3850.

Now, my intention at the beginning of the week was to get some 3850X2 cards, for 100GBP each, so crunch and also bench for some points (because not many have been benched...!).

I was going with the following:
HELLFIRE (i7 920) - 2x 3850X2
HAL (E6400) - 2x 4850
Dutchie (X2-5050e) - 2x 4670
HK (X2-4400) - GTX 280
JC (3000+) - 3850X2

But then the following occured to me given the numbers above. 3x 3850X2 cards at 100GBP each give the equivalent of 6x PPD. However, for the same price, 2x 4850X2 cards give 9.36x PPD. So I made a spreadsheet comparing price of the cards, and MilkyWay output:

Read it here.

So the way to go is 4850s or 4850X2s. Which in a sense is good - 4850s will get me some nice Global points at HWbot - though 3850s would have gotten me hardware points.

Also this week, a friend needs a new computer, so I'm going to sell HK, my X2-4400, to them. This will mean Dutchie will more than likely become my PC for network storage, and HAL will become a BOINC machine. It will also fund the above purchases :) :)

Thus the situation will end up:

HELLFIRE (i7 920) - 2x 4850X2
Dutchie (X2-5050e) - 2x 4670
HALBERD (E6400) - 2x 4850
JC (3000+) - GTX 280

It just means I also need to purchase a PSU for JC, and a case for HAL.