Folding Forum

A Pentium CPU with an unlocked multiplier
I never expected Intel to release a 'Pentium K' CPU.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/pen ... ,3849.html

When overclocked, will this CPU become a low cost low power PPD champion in Folding@Home SMP?

Not with only 2 cores in my opinion.

most likely not ...

http://ark.intel.com/products/82723/Int ... apkw=g3258

but could be a nice CPU for a GPU system with two x8 cards

PCI Express Revision 3.0
PCI Express Configurations ‡ Up to 1x16, 2x8, 1x8/2x4
Max # of PCI Express Lanes 16

that one might be (much) better for CPU folding: http://ark.intel.com/products/80807/Int ... apkw=4790k

It'll be a single thread champion. For F@H, less useful due to it's scaling abilities and the exponential scaling with linear increases in performance.

From an efficiency perspective, going for additional cores is generally a better bet than overclocking, as power consumption rises significantly as clockspeed increases over and above the band set by the manufacturers.

For a dual GPU system using Nvidia GPUs and Open_CL cores I'd actually go with the lowest cost dual core processor, such as a Celeron.

From an efficiency perspective, going for additional cores is generally a better bet than overclocking, as power consumption rises significantly as clockspeed increases over and above the band set by the manufacturers.

CPU voltage increase raises power consumption significantly more than clockspeed increase.

ChristianVirtual wrote:most likely not ...

http://ark.intel.com/products/82723/Int ... apkw=g3258

but could be a nice CPU for a GPU system with two x8 cards

It's cheap and low wattage all right, but instead I'd choose something like

http://ark.intel.com/products/77481/Int ... apkw=4130t

Still only 35W, supports AVX2 and has HyperThreading. Sounds pretty good for feeding two cards at x8, plus a little bit of CPU:2 on the side. Or you might be able to wring some lightweight use out of the integrated HD4400 and two spare logical CPUs, even when two cards are folding at full blast.

Napoleon wrote: Still only 35W, supports AVX2 and has HyperThreading.

Hmm, AVX2: the future of folding in the non-GPU space. Nice catch. And agree: the better choice overall. The bit higher price might get easy compensated by lower power cost (and heat) in the long run.
Two GPU and NaCL ...

A bit off-topic, but the price of AVX will be coming down once there's competition. Recently I saw some research work done at MIT and prototyped by adapteva on working out the limitations in interprocess communications when the number of threads a single chip can run.
http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/research ... -chip-0623