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hpc
GPU – Graphics Processing Unit Upgrade
Jul 17th
Decided to upgrade my main workstation’s Nvidia Quadro FX370 card ($129) to the XFX GTS 250 ($129 – previously $300++). Had to move almost everything around in my existing MSI Neo-6 motherboard. System: Running Vista Ultimate 64bit, 8Gb, Intel Quad core Q8200@2.33Ghz. 550W PSU
Performance difference was significant. Summary and pictures below:
Povray [Previous] 23m 28s 100.83PPS/147456 pixels
Vista – Graphics was lowest base score. Before = 4.1, now its 5.9
3dMark06: 3D 1473 to 11,582 SM2 552 to 4522, SM3 478 to 5436, CPU still the same @ 3331
Currently downloading and will run SPEC/GWPG benchmark and will publish results here.
Viewperf 3dsmax-04 Report Result:
SPECViewperf 10.0 Report Weighted Geometric Mean = 6.59
Viewperf maya-02 Report Viewperf 10.0 Weighted Geometric Mean = 21.35
Composite Result: 74.88 SPECjvm2008 Base ops/m
Nvidia 3D Game benchmark result 52.8fps average for Direct X Area i – Download software from here – Nvidia.
Network Addressed Storage.. [NAS]
May 9th
Looking for a NAS, with gigabit interface (l’m done with slow access speeds via usb interface to my internal gigabit network) so as to speed up my rendering server farm file access, and expandable with support for additional sata drives and affordable. Finally settled for the DLINK DNS-321 for $130 and bought just one 1Tb SATA drive that was on sale for $87 – a Samsung 10,000rpm 32Mb buffer drive. As sata drives fall in price and l get more bang for a buck l can add to this unit. I can mirror a drive, but the unit doesnt support ntfs etc – which is fine for me since my shared files on this will be media files, mp3 and rendered jpeg pictures. It has a web interface control and can be accessed remotely via ftp anywhere on the net. This system is built on a GPL / Linux based system, and will format your drive to ext2 format. There might be a hack out there for a more native windows file system support.
Update: 5/14/09. I’m returning this item. The file transfer time to and fro ext2 to my ntfs formatted drives is so so slow, about 10-20x (even by Windows wrong estimates). The gigabit connectivity makes no noticable difference, even when on the same Cisco 5 port Gigabit switch as my server. I’ve ended up overloading my faithful dell sc430 server by “creatively” adding this 1Tb drive to it, the server is designed to support only 2 sata hard drives. See picture below.
See this website on links for DNS-321 NAS Hacking
Microsoft Hyper-V…
May 7th
Using Windows 2008 Server Operating system, this allows you to create a server based virtualized computing platform.
- An x64-based processor. Hyper-V is available in x64-based versions of Windows Server 2008—specifically, the x64-based versions of Windows Server 2008 Standard, Windows Server 2008 Enterprise, and Windows Server 2008 Datacenter.
- Hardware-assisted virtualization. This is available in processors that include a virtualization option; specifically, Intel VT or AMD Virtualization (AMD-V).
- Hardware Data Execution Protection (DEP) must be available and be enabled. Specifically, you must enable Intel XD bit (execute disable bit) or AMD NX bit (no execute bit).
- An applicable example is the Intel XEON E5430 Quad core CPU
Good microsoft setup link here.
Nvidia cuda….
Feb 14th
Wanted to take advantage of the CUDA from NVIDIA (a leading GPU manufacturer) – a system that uses GPUs for scientific computing. You also need a minimum of 256Mb Video card RAM to take advantage of CUDA. This will also increase my BOINC/SETI processing speed. My current nvidia driver for my PNY Quadro FX370 was dated 5/26/2008 release 7.15.11.6996. So l downloaded the latest driver from the nvidia website and the new driver is now dated 12/26/2008 release 7.15.11.8120
/this works okay on my Quad-core workstation and boosted my Vista index from 3.6 to 4.2
My Vista index ratings for my Processor/RAM/Hard drive was before and after the update 5.9
Graphics rating went from 3.6 to 4.2
Games graphics capability went from 4.0 to 4.6
It will be interesting to see this week what this GPU processing does to my boinc/seti ratings.
As of 2/26/2009
Seti
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