Best Systems?

[Ricky]

Davidcoton,

Apparently FTW stands for "For the win". The salesman claimed that it was the best grade for the chip goes into these cards, and thus, they are able to clock higher as a standard clock. I had no idea, but when I checked what I had for Nathan_P, I discovered that I have the GTX960 as one. I don't overclock, so I have been confused as to why the GTX960 performed better per core than the GTX980. I never seemed to notice that its clock was higher.

On another philosophical note:

I am always am in awe as to how complex and precious life is. I had to put my dog down today. He had a ruptured disc and possibly cerebellum degenerative disease. He quickly deteriorated to the point he couldn't walk and was in much pain. I consider it an honor and privilege to contribute to the science of FAH.

[kiore]

Have never heard FTW rendered as "for the win" usually other words
But yes having one of these in GTX 780ti it does clock and cool better, is also significantly larger than stock cards.
Re the OP, best always very subjective, for a single system producing most results some kind of multi cpu with as many high end GPUs would do the trick, but if you define it as best farm, for set up cost then probably a collection of cheap systems with a top end GPU in each also pretty awesome for production. Some people would see best as points per $ and or power consumption, and that is a very wide open question.

[Nathan_P]

your gpu is clocked slower than your brothers so there will be a points gap generated there and remember that QRB is not linear, its exponential, a 10% increase in clock speed usually yields more than 10% gain in PPD. Projects do vary widely in PPD, my 970 has varied from 240k to 310k PPD and the 960 from 125k to 170k PPD. I would also make sure that your 980 is not driving the display, unless you need the power for games, and that its in a gen 3 x16slot, my 960 is in a gen 2 x8 slot and I am seeing lower PPD than what has been reported on the forum.

If your machine is taking 2 minutes to boot with an SSD have a look in the bios and see if there is anything that you are not using that you can disable.

As for a gaming station being "better", that depends on what you are doing with it, for gaming maybe, for heavy workloads your system will be better than your brothers, if you can afford faster cpu's in the future - yours will be just as good at gaming as your brothers.

[codysluder]

Disk cleanup plus disk Defrag might improve your boot time. It's usually not significant for FAH.

[toTOW]

Defrag is useless on SSD ... it might even kill them faster.

[Ricky]

toTOW,

I have read that SSDs don't need defrag also. It is rare that I reboot. Only when I feel a need to. Anyways, I had no intention of bootlegging this thread.

From what I have gather so far:

1. Newer technology GPU units I presume get better folding per watt.
2. If you want to CPU fold, then a workstation with large core count is best, but is it economical?
3. If you have a large number of GPU units (>3) in a case, you may need a case that can support 2 PSUs?

It is of my opinion that economy and practicality wise, it may be best to:
A) Use a high-end gaming board with a high clock rate and 6 to 8 core processor.
B) Use recently released GPU boards that have good clock rates and high CUDA core count. The newer technology presumably have smaller sub-micron masking to use less energy per folding point.
C) Make sure your power supply and cooling is adequate.
D) I have read on this forum that LINUX is better for folding than other operating systems, is this true?
E) Build a farm of these units until you spent what you wish to.

Anybody have any corrections or objections? After all, this is just an opinion.

[Jakem8]

Davidcoton,

Apparently FTW stands for "For the win". The salesman claimed that it was the best grade for the chip goes into these cards, and thus, they are able to clock higher as a standard clock. I had no idea, but when I checked what I had for Nathan_P, I discovered that I have the GTX960 as one. I don't overclock, so I have been confused as to why the GTX960 performed better per core than the GTX980. I never seemed to notice that its clock was higher.

On another philosophical note:

I am always am in awe as to how complex and precious life is. I had to put my dog down today. He had a ruptured disc and possibly cerebellum degenerative disease. He quickly deteriorated to the point he couldn't walk and was in much pain. I consider it an honor and privilege to contribute to the science of FAH.

Hey, I'm sorry about your dog. Some things money can't buy... like loved ones, right?
I'm acutely aware that having your own topic may be more beneficial for you, as others will be able to see the thread and not have it in mine.

To everyone else:
If someone would be to invest roughly £20m(~$30m), what would be the most cost-effective route? Don't worry about running costs.

[kiore]

To everyone else:
If someone would be to invest roughly £20m(~$30m), what would be the most cost-effective route? Don't worry about running costs.

With this sort of investment maybe you need to talk directly to the project owner.

[davidcoton]

Is this real or hypothetical?

If it's real, talk to Pande Group directly. Wise investment of such a sum needs more knowledge of future project developments than is publicly available.

If it's hypothetical, I think the answers are already given. It may not be in the realm of hardware purchases.

One other idea -- why not spend some money developing a good hardware system, and then build lots of them with FAH installed. Give them away to those who are prepared to run them for folding (subject to a good track record), and provide support and upgrades when the hardware becomes obsolete. Could even offer to pay the electricity bills!

[Jakem8]

Will do. Thank you.

[JonasTheMovie]

Does it help an SSD if you delete unused files (Disk Cleanup) and then Defrag?

You don´t defrag a SSD.