Another noobie with lots of questions..

Discussion about Intel CPUs and overclocking. Need help with that new Intel processor? Not sure which one is right for you? Like to void your warranty? This is the place for you! Please keep the topic on Intel Processors!
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wingnut
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Another noobie with lots of questions..

Post by wingnut »

Hello all,

I do a LOT of simulation work involving trading in financial markets (I trade for myself) which results in runs taking as long as 3 days (yep three) on a water cooled dual Xeon 2.8 with 2 gig of memory and nothing else special. The system is 3 years old. The simulations deal with an artificial intelligence program that does thousands of runs of mostly floating point computations. The disk IO is miminmal and the video needs are minimal as well. The application is single threaded for the foreseable future - its a third party program.

I'm looking for a way to dramatically shorten the time these runs take and have begun realizing that just upgrading my processor(s) will not have a very dramatic effect - ie cut the times by 1/2 or greater. I say this purely on the basis that after researching this I've noticed that while my system will run Super PI 1m in 56 seconds that the best overclocking results can get that down to 20 seconds or 3 times quicker and that seems to be an extreme result.

Now to my questions:

1. Am I correct in my statement above about not seeing a dramatic increase in speed by just upgrading/buying the latest and greatest processor currently available?

2. What would the hottest avail system without any overclocking run Super PI 1m?

3. Is it feasible to create a reliable\stable system that could cut my run times substantially?

4. If the answer to #3 is yes then approximately (in terms of Super PI) what kind of increase would I be looking at and approx how much $$ would it take?

5. What processor manufacturer would be the most appropriate for this?

Thank you very much for any and all input on this!

wingnut
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kenc51
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Post by kenc51 »

Welcome to LR Forums!!!

You said the program you use is single threaded???? Why are you using a dual cpu setup? If the program is single threaded, then all your using is a single 2.8GHz cpu!!! -> you could upgrade to the 3.8GHz P4, but this will not give you 50% performance increase..... I can't see how you can get such a big improvement in performance using any of the current available hardware :( ... You need to get a multi=threaded version of your software......
wingnut
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Post by wingnut »

I got it because I do other things on it as well.

I realize that a mutithreaded app would be nice but I can't force the company to do it. They've been promising long enuf for me to give up waiting.

Ok - current avail hardware is out - but how about something overclocked?
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kenc51
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Post by kenc51 »

current hi-end P4's OC over 4GHz and beyond easily -> they are better than AMD when it comes to FPU performance...encoding etc...

A P4 @ 4.4GHz with 2mb cache will still be less than 50% increase in performance...but is about as close as you'll get....unless your into phase change cooling etc.

Others here will jump in to help I'm sure.......that's the cool thing about LR's forums!!!
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Post by Apoptosis »

My Intel 660 overclocked to 4.5GHz on just water cooling and was stable as a rock.

I have a thread on it here and was getting 28 seconds in 1m superpi.

http://forums.legitreviews.com/viewtopic.php?t=1935
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Post by wingnut »

kenc51 - thanks! And you're right about the forum - I've ready many in my search and this is the only one I've posted to.

Apoptosis - I'd read that earlier today and was a primary reason for my first post! Thanks!

Could you point me to some articles/posts on how I might get started on a project like the one in your thread? I'd be VERY grateful!
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Post by Apoptosis »

Sorry i am getting in this late, but you are wanting to get a new CPU for work or are you trying to overclock the ones you already have?

If you are thinking about buying new processors I'd overclock the 2.8GHz processors you have now and see what improvement you get.

If your software doesn't have any trade secrets or personal stock info in it I could run it here on several CPU's and post up the results.
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Post by wingnut »

Apoptosis:

I'm a little reluctant to try and overclock my xeon machine as its my primary and I can't really afford to have it down or screw it up :shock:

So, I'm really leaning towards a new one dedicated to just running the simulations.

Its very kind of you to offer to run some tests on your rig(s) and I'd like to take you up on it. It will take me a cupla days to wrap up a test suite and get it to you. I've got one right now that runs about 1/2 hour on my rig - is that too long for each test? If so how long should I make it?
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Post by heidrickla »

Hey Apoptosis who did your avatar? He looks groovy.
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