Computer hardware: Difference between revisions

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Revision as of 21:06, 20 February 2020

152 bytes removed , 20 February 2020

throw away the old stuff

Kay

Bureaucrats

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+== 2020 ==
-== April 2008: a machine that may serve as a Linux workstation ==
+The recent [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryzen#CPUs:_Matisse_(Ryzen)_and_Castle_Peak_(Ryzen_Threadripper) Ryzen Threadripper 3xxx series processors] with up to 64 cores (128 threads) have a significantly better cost/performance ratio than other processor families. For example, a TR 3970X workstation can be bought for less than 5000€, and offers 64 threads.
-A Dell Vostro 400 MT costs 549,- € (plus tax and shipping, but on the other hand Dell gives a discount to universities) in Germany. It comes by default with a (high-end!) NVidia GeForce 8800GT graphics card, 3 GB of memory, a 500 GB disk, and a quadcore Q6600 CPU running @ 2.4GHz. If most of your data reside on a fileserver, then you might want to put an additional GB ethernet card (5-10€) into one of the two empty PCI slots.
+Make sure to buy DDR4-3200 JEDEC memory, but observe the following [https://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/amd-ryzen-threadripper-3990x-review,2.html table],
+ Memory  Rank	Official JEDEC frequency support
+x8	Single	DDR4-3200
+x8	Single	DDR4-2933
+x16	Dual	DDR4-3200
+x16	Dual	DDR4-2667
+x32	Dual	DDR4-3200
+x32	Dual	DDR4-2667
+which shows that the maximum speed with which the memory controller can drive the RAM may be less than that of DDR4-3200.
-This machine is very cheap, fast, small, and quiet - we have four of those. But as we ordered them in March they "only" have the 8600 GTS graphics (in practice even a GeForce 5200 is fast enough for [[coot]], [[O]] and [[pymol]]).
+The data transfer may become the bottleneck in keeping the cores busy; but 10Gb networking ports may be used, using the PCIe 4.0 bus.
-It is a good idea to switch (in the BIOS) the SATA mode from IDE (the default) to RAID ''before'' you install Linux, because this activates the very good Linux AHCI driver and makes the use of the Linux kernel option "irqpoll" unnecessary. (This hint applies to all modern chipsets featuring SATA disks; "IDE", "legacy IDE" and "enhanced IDE" are often not the best setups for Linux - depending on the distribution's kernel - , whereas "AHCI" and "RAID" are good. This option can be found in the BIOS, often under "Integral peripherals" or the like.)
+The [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epyc#Second_generation_Epyc_(Rome) 2nd generation AMD Epyc "Rome" processors] are the server variant of the Threadripper 3xxx workstation processors. They are more expensive and not quite as fast, but offer 8-channel memory and a higher maximum amount of memory than Threadripper.
-This GeForce NVidia card is quite suitable for crystallographic visualization, but - being GeForce and not Quadro - it does not support [[stereo]].