Folding Forum

I will be getting a small bonus sometime next month, so would like to enhance my existing folding rig.

My current rig is :

AMD Athlon (tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 6000+
M3N78-EM integrated GeForce 8300

The amount I will be spending is between $200 to $250. I chose the above 2 CPUs for consideration, reason is that going through the vendor website, the highest speed CPU that my mainboard can support.

This upgrade is all about improving my contribution to folding@home, so any suggestions are welcome. I will be running this rig for more than 18 hours a day, so I will be running SMP.

There are no other considerations for the upgrade, so do feel free to comment or offer alternatives if the amount of money spent can be put to better use. Thanks in advance for any suggestions and advice.

X6 1090T , without a doubt

With AMD Bulldozer just around the corner I would be really hesitant to upgrade a rig in the next month. In saying this, the motherboard you're currently using wouldn't support it anyway. Regardless, because K10.5 is a rather underwhelming micro-arch for FAH, the more cores you have the better. So stick to a 1090T.

That, or save up for an i5/i7 sandy bridge folder.

Well, I've seen the 1090T on sale as low as $175.
It is definitely the way you want to go without upgrading your MB.

You could also get a NV 560 TI.(assuming you have the PSU and Space)
Mine generates 13,000 ppd. This will be more than you will be able to generate using SMP, even with the six cores.

Of course, your system will be optimized for folding and not general computing. (however, and advantage of the GPU is that it runs shorter WU, so no bonus points lost when you pause to use your computer.)

Thanks for all the suggestions and advice I did think of getting the Bulldozer, until I did some checks and realized that my motherboard does not support it. As for an i5/i7 folder, that will probably be my next whole system build, once I saved up enough to get a whole new system.

I think I saw an article before, that mentioned that the more cores, the better for folding, but I cannot remember which website that I visited previously.

So its the 1090T for me. Once again, thanks for all your valuable advice and feedback, I really appreciate it.

Here are My two AMD X6 1090Ts running stock , Debian Linux , -smp only:

LQ:
Index 3: finished 552.00 pts bonus 4047.91 /16342.21 ppd); project: 6989 end: Thu May 19 05:32:36 2011;
Index 4: folding now 481.00 bonus 3451.22 /14101.28 ppd); project: 6052 expect: Thu May 19 11:25:50 2011; 17%
LR:
Index 6: finished 585.00 pts bonus 4160.10 /16283.07 ppd); project: 7146 end: Thu May 19 05:36:37 2011;
Index 7: folding now 481.00 bonus 3429.96 /13842.24 ppd); project: 6076 expect: Thu May 19 11:32:37 2011; 17%

About 14k to 16k ppd

Make sure your bios supports the x6. On many older boards an update is required to support x6 and if you have swapped processors beforehand, you may have to revert back, do the bios upgrade, and then reinstall the x6.

Noted, will keep that in mind. Thanks for the information.