[gentoo-amd64] hardware choice

[gentoo-amd64] hardware choice

[Daniel Iliev]

Hi, guys!


I've decided to get an Intel based box, but I've not been following
closely the hardware development for more than 5 years. Another
trouble is that most of the people I can ask don't use Gentoo and they
miss the point of "much compiling". So, I need your help.


1) CPU:

model,CPU Freq,FSB Freq,cache,technology

E8400, 3.00GHz, 1333MHz, 6MB, 45nm
Q8200, 2.33GHz, 1333MHz, 4MB, 45nm
Q6600, 2.40GHz, 1066MHz, 8MB, 65nm

Which one? (please, consider overclocking).

On the local market those are in the same price range and I'm going to
take Q6600 for the bigger cache (8MB). Is that the correct choice?



2) Main board.

I was advised to get Asus P5K Premium (P35, ICH9) for Q6600. The thing
is there are models from the P5Q series (like P5Q3) which have a newer
chipset (P45, ICH10) but the same price. I can't understand why should
I choose the premium mobo even it's an older model. Please, advise.


3) DDR2

600,800 or 1066? The thing confusing me is that the newer CPUs run at
1333MHz and the older (Q6600) at 1066. So, which DDR2?


4) Overclock

I intend to overclock the system but not extremely. I've been told
Q6600 would go up to 3GHz w/o any trouble. Is that true? How high
would the other two CPUs go w/o additional cooling and compromising
the stability?


Thanks in advance!


--
Best regards,
Daniel

Re: [gentoo-amd64] hardware choice

[Branko Badrljica]

Given your CPU choices, it is obvious that you are ignoring i7, I 
suspect beacise the price.

In that case, I think you should reconsider AMD. I have a couple of 
Phenoms, which work really fine with Gentoo.

However, if its lower frequency and smaller cache of 9850 and 9950 is 
what bothers you, you should consider Deneb, which is to come out any 
day now.
3GHz model should be quite cheap, it has 6MB of L3 which is not far from 
Intel's 8Mb and it also allegedly overclocks very well.
People are getting to 4.4GHz on aircooling, which means machine should 
behave rock stable at 3.5GHz+ with really good cooler, like Thermalright 
IFX-14.

Boards are relatively good and inexpensive, as well as DDR-II RAM is 
these days. I have stuffed 8GB in my box for something like €150.
I have  Foxcon A7DA-S, but Biostar models seem to be cheaper and record 
OC was done on such board ( 6.3 GHz on LN2), so it should perform well.

Also, having a true QC can mean something with optimised multithread code.

Intel's i7 is fine, but quite expensive and its smaller i5 won't be on 
the market for some time, and getting old C2D or Q2D seems a bit of 
waste these days...






Daniel Iliev wrote:
> Hi, guys!
>
>
> I've decided to get an Intel based box, but I've not been following
> closely the hardware development for more than 5 years. Another
> trouble is that most of the people I can ask don't use Gentoo and they
> miss the point of "much compiling". So, I need your help.
>
>
> 1) CPU:
>
> model,CPU Freq,FSB Freq,cache,technology
>
> E8400, 3.00GHz, 1333MHz, 6MB, 45nm
> Q8200, 2.33GHz, 1333MHz, 4MB, 45nm
> Q6600, 2.40GHz, 1066MHz, 8MB, 65nm
>
> Which one? (please, consider overclocking).
>
> On the local market those are in the same price range and I'm going to
> take Q6600 for the bigger cache (8MB). Is that the correct choice?
>
>
>
> 2) Main board.
>
> I was advised to get Asus P5K Premium (P35, ICH9) for Q6600. The thing
> is there are models from the P5Q series (like P5Q3) which have a newer
> chipset (P45, ICH10) but the same price. I can't understand why should
> I choose the premium mobo even it's an older model. Please, advise.
>
>
> 3) DDR2
>
> 600,800 or 1066? The thing confusing me is that the newer CPUs run at
> 1333MHz and the older (Q6600) at 1066. So, which DDR2?
>
>
> 4) Overclock
>
> I intend to overclock the system but not extremely. I've been told
> Q6600 would go up to 3GHz w/o any trouble. Is that true? How high
> would the other two CPUs go w/o additional cooling and compromising
> the stability?
>
>
> Thanks in advance!
>
>
> --
> Best regards,
> Daniel
>
>
>
>   

Re: [gentoo-amd64] hardware choice

[Branko Badrljica]

Branko Badrljica wrote:
<SNIP>


Ooops. Sorry for top-post ;o/

Re: [gentoo-amd64] hardware choice

[Daniel Iliev]

On Sun, 14 Dec 2008 23:57:00 +0100
Branko Badrljica <brankob@avtomatika.com> wrote:

> Given your CPU choices, it is obvious that you are ignoring i7, I
> suspect beacise the price.
>

Correct. After all even the platform I'm targeting at is an overkill
for my Home desktop needs.

> In that case, I think you should reconsider AMD. I have a couple of
> Phenoms, which work really fine with Gentoo.
>
> However, if its lower frequency and smaller cache of 9850 and 9950 is
> what bothers you, you should consider Deneb, which is to come out any
> day now.

I was told to wait for "the new Phenom", though the guy said rumor has
it the release will be in Jan or Feb next year. Anyways, it doesn't
matter for me. I had Athlon-XP, now I'm with a Sempron. It's time to
get an Intel for a change. I hope a CPU like those I target at will be
more than enough for my computing needs for the next 2 or 3
years.

So, my questions still remain:
 - q6600, e8400 or q8200? Which is faster after overclock with plain
air cooling and plain mid-tower box?
 - what mobo should I take for it
 - what kind of ddr2 should I get


-- 
Best regards,
Daniel

Re: [gentoo-amd64] hardware choice

[Wil Reichert]

On Sun, Dec 14, 2008 at 4:30 PM, Daniel Iliev <daniel.iliev@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 14 Dec 2008 23:57:00 +0100
> Branko Badrljica <brankob@avtomatika.com> wrote:
>
>> Given your CPU choices, it is obvious that you are ignoring i7, I
>> suspect beacise the price.
>>
>
> Correct. After all even the platform I'm targeting at is an overkill
> for my Home desktop needs.
>
>> In that case, I think you should reconsider AMD. I have a couple of
>> Phenoms, which work really fine with Gentoo.
>>
>> However, if its lower frequency and smaller cache of 9850 and 9950 is
>> what bothers you, you should consider Deneb, which is to come out any
>> day now.
>
> I was told to wait for "the new Phenom", though the guy said rumor has
> it the release will be in Jan or Feb next year. Anyways, it doesn't
> matter for me. I had Athlon-XP, now I'm with a Sempron. It's time to
> get an Intel for a change. I hope a CPU like those I target at will be
> more than enough for my computing needs for the next 2 or 3
> years.
>
> So, my questions still remain:
>  - q6600, e8400 or q8200? Which is faster after overclock with plain
> air cooling and plain mid-tower box?
>  - what mobo should I take for it
>  - what kind of ddr2 should I get

I personally run an Asus Maximus board with a Q6600 OC'd to 3.4G & 8
gigs of DDR2 800.  That said theres little reason to run a quad core
for just desktop type stuff so my suggestion would be to go with the
E8400 & some low latency DDR2 1066 or 1200.  4 GHz is typically
obtainable with that CPU so you don't want the RAM to be your limiting
factor.  The P5K series is based on the older P35 chipset, you should
prolly go with the P45 based series - P5Q.  The only differences
between Pro, -E, Deluxe, etc models are extra ports & bling.  Just
figure out if you need extra wifi or sata ports or esata then go with
the cheapest model that meets your needs.

A lot of people on this list (myself included) use a tmpfs to speed up
compilations, a good motivator for 4 gigs of RAM if you can handle it.

[gentoo-amd64] Re: hardware choice

[Nikos Chantziaras]

Daniel Iliev wrote:
> I've decided to get an Intel based box, but I've not been following
> closely the hardware development for more than 5 years. Another
> trouble is that most of the people I can ask don't use Gentoo and they
> miss the point of "much compiling". So, I need your help.
> 
> 1) CPU:
> 
> model,CPU Freq,FSB Freq,cache,technology
> 
> E8400, 3.00GHz, 1333MHz, 6MB, 45nm
> Q8200, 2.33GHz, 1333MHz, 4MB, 45nm
> Q6600, 2.40GHz, 1066MHz, 8MB, 65nm
> 
> Which one? (please, consider overclocking).

I would get the E8400 because it overclocks good.  Upping the FSB from 
333 to 400 will give you 3.6GHz (the CPU has a multiplier of x9).  That 
means you can get DDR2 800MHz RAM and run it with an FSB:DRAM ratio of 
1:1 (400 FSB = 800 DDR).  1:1 FSB:DRAM is the fastest configuration for 
Intel systems.  If you get DDR2 1066 RAM, then you can up the FSB even 
more while retaining the 1:1 FSB:DRAM ratio.

The E8400 can go up to about 4.4GHz with a good aftermarket cooler. 
Don't overclock it at all though with the stock cooler.


> On the local market those are in the same price range and I'm going to
> take Q6600 for the bigger cache (8MB). Is that the correct choice?

The Q6600 has *less* cache per core than the E8400.  The E8400 has 3MB 
per core while the Q6600 has 2MB per core.  Yes, it's shared cache, but 
for emerges all the core will be used.

The reason I recommend the dual core over the quad core is that 
compiling isn't the primary use of a desktop PC.  Application 
performance is, that's why the higher speed per core of the E8400 is IMO 
better.


> 2) Main board.
> 
> I was advised to get Asus P5K Premium (P35, ICH9) for Q6600. The thing
> is there are models from the P5Q series (like P5Q3) which have a newer
> chipset (P45, ICH10) but the same price. I can't understand why should
> I choose the premium mobo even it's an older model. Please, advise.

I'd recommend the Asus P5E is you can find it.  It's X38 based (slightly 
more overclockable then P35 and P45, supports crossfire PCIe x16 while 
P35 and P45 only have PCIe x8 in crossfire) with FSB1600 and its price 
is very good (130€ here).


> 3) DDR2
> 
> 600,800 or 1066? The thing confusing me is that the newer CPUs run at
> 1333MHz and the older (Q6600) at 1066. So, which DDR2?

It doesn't matter if the CPU is FSB1333 or FSB1066 because you can run 
the RAM at whatever speed you want.  But as I mentioned earlier, the 
fastest FSB:DRAM configuration on Intel chips is 1:1, so to up the FSB 
above 400 while retaining this 1:1 ratio, you'll need 1066 RAM.  The 
timings don't matter that much on Intel, so 5-5-5-15 RAM will perform 
virtually just as well as 4-4-4-12 RAM.


> 4) Overclock
> 
> I intend to overclock the system but not extremely. I've been told
> Q6600 would go up to 3GHz w/o any trouble. Is that true?

Depends on the CPU (not all Q6600 are equal) and motherboard.  But in 
general, 3GHz is easy to get with that CPU.  Note: only with a good 
aftermarket cooler!  Don't try with the stock one.



> How high
> would the other two CPUs go w/o additional cooling and compromising
> the stability?

You don't overclock with the stock cooler.  Unless you consider an 
overclock of, say, 200MHz as overclocking (the Q6600 for example can go 
from 2.4GHz to 2.6GHz with the stock cooler).  Higher than that may be 
stable at the beginning, but the life of the CPU is greatly diminished. 
  It won't live for long if it runs at 70C while with a better cooler it 
would run at 50C.

If you intend to only "overclock" that much, then there's no point in 
going Intel at all.  I'd recommend AMD in that case.

Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: hardware choice

[Martin Herrman]

On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 5:47 AM, Nikos Chantziaras <realnc@arcor.de> wrote:

>> 2) Main board.
>>
>> I was advised to get Asus P5K Premium (P35, ICH9) for Q6600. The thing
>> is there are models from the P5Q series (like P5Q3) which have a newer
>> chipset (P45, ICH10) but the same price. I can't understand why should
>> I choose the premium mobo even it's an older model. Please, advise.
>
> I'd recommend the Asus P5E is you can find it.  It's X38 based (slightly
> more overclockable then P35 and P45, supports crossfire PCIe x16 while P35
> and P45 only have PCIe x8 in crossfire) with FSB1600 and its price is very
> good (130€ here).

Since about 2 months I have a new system. I was also looking into the
Asus P5Q series, but noticed that it has a harddisk controller that
was not fully supported by the kernel at that time. Eventually I have
bought a Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3R, which runs fine.

I want to use this new machine for about 5 years. I expect that even
on the desktop, multi-threading and parallel execution will become the
standard, so I chose a quad-core instead of a dual core (if you play
games, you might want to look for dual core with higher MHz).

This board has extra cooling features that only work with 45 Nm CPU,
so I bought a Q9300 instead of Q6600 (which had better value for
money). The memory I used: OCZ2RPR10664GK (OCZ, Reaper edition,
PC2-8500 @ 1066 MHz, 4 GB Kit). Twice: so a total of 8 GB,
/var/tmp/portage and /tmp are mounted as tmpfs..

Regards,

Martin

[gentoo-amd64] Re: hardware choice

[Duncan]

Nikos Chantziaras <realnc@arcor.de> posted gi4ng7$6qp$1@ger.gmane.org,
excerpted below, on  Mon, 15 Dec 2008 06:47:06 +0200:

> The reason I recommend the dual core over the quad core is that
> compiling isn't the primary use of a desktop PC.  Application
> performance is, that's why the higher speed per core of the E8400 is IMO
> better.

I won't disagree with you, but I will throw in my own experience going 
from single CPU to dual socket (before the dual-cores), now to dual dual-
core socket (so four cores, total), and add another factor to think 
about.  While it doesn't match your recommendation, it fails to match due 
to one specific aspect, that may or may not be a factor for the OP.

A bit of history, first, going back some years to establish the 
foundation.  The upgrade to my first Athlon, the lowest speed they 
offered IIRC, 500 MHz, was a very good one for me.  I was extremely happy 
with that machine, because for the first time I could run intensive 
streaming, etc, say (keep in mind the era) a 300 kbps Real Video stream, 
and keep up both with playing the video and handling the network video 
stream, without a hitch!  I could even drag the playing window around 
with the mouse (in Windows 98, IIRC), and the thing would keep playing, 
not a hitch!  That 500 MHz Athlon was good stuff!

A few years later, I upgraded, way more than doubling the CPU and with 
other efficiencies as well, to 1.33 GHz.  I was quite disappointed with 
that upgrade, particularly after the great experience I'd had with the 
500 MHz Athlon.  I thought, way more than double the speed, it should be 
able to handle two of the things well that the 500 MHz machine could 
handle one of so well, or handle one intensive one while being able to 
keep up with several less intensive background tasks, say encoding a 
video (or now, doing the latest emerge -uDN @world)  while continuing to 
do normal stuff on the desktop.  I was wrong, it could still do only one 
thing at a time well.  Trying to get it to do something heavy in the 
background while continuing to web browse or whatever in the foreground 
didn't really work so well, and I ended up rather disappointed in that 
upgrade.

Living with that for a few years, I realized what I had done wrong.  Yes, 
the thing was faster, but it was just a single CPU.  I would have been 
better off getting a dual CPU machine, even at just a GHz or likely even 
at 800 MHz, than I was with the 1.33 GHz single CPU.  I determined that I 
wasn't going to make /that/ mistake again.

It was during this time that I switched from MSWindows (98) to Linux, 
rather than upgrading to what I quickly labeled eXPrivacy, which was a 
very bitter disappointment to me as I had to that point been a loyal MS 
user (even running the IE 4, 5, and 5.5 betas).  But eXPrivacy crossed a 
line I simply was not going to cross, and MS very literally gave me 
little choice BUT Linux.  Of course, now, I'm glad they gave me that push 
(can't thank them enough for it, actually!), but without it, I'd have 
likely still been an MS user today.  Unfortunately, the problem was NOT 
just the W98 scheduler, as Linux was bumpy trying to do multiple things 
at once too.  I really DID need a multi-CPU solution, and determined that 
was what my next one would be.

As it turned out, my next upgrade was from ia32 to amd64, as well as from 
single CPU to dual CPU.  I purchased a dual socket Opteron box, 
originally dual Opteron 242s.  And yes, I had been correct in my guess.  
The dual Opteron, even tho I just upped the speed from my previous 1.33 
GHz to the 1.6 GHz of the Opteron 242s, and only had a gig of RAM, was 
everything I had dreamed about in terms of properly multitasking.  Even 
if I let the heavy multi-threaded task use all the scheduler would give 
it of both CPUs, it was STILL WAY WAY WAY smoother and more pleasant to 
work with than the single CPU.

But, I DID notice one nagging problem.  If for some reason something got 
in an infinite loop, hogging one of the CPUs, while it didn't mean no 
hope, reboot and get it over with, like could have with a single CPU, 
that old jerkiness of running the rest of the system on a single CPU came 
back.  Having actually experienced the smoothness a dual CPU could give, 
the experience both under runaway thread conditions and under extreme CPU 
load still left something to be desired.

Well, as it happens, I still have that same mobo, but I've upgraded 
pretty much everything else around it.  I'm now running 4-way md/kernel 
RAID-6 for my main system (with some parts I don't need redundancy on 
RAID-0, for speed), and upgraded the memory to a full 8 gigs, which was 
nice.

But the upgrade to dual dual-cores, for four cores total across two CPU 
sockets, was what really surprised me.  Like you I /had/ thought dual-
core was pretty much enough for me.  After all, I run pretty much a 
desktop system, altho as probably all of us here it's Gentoo, which does 
put us in the upper 20% of the demand profile for those with desktop 
systems.

BUT, what I found out, was that actual usability VASTLY improved!  In 
fact, I haven't been as happy with an upgrade since that upgrade to my 
first 500 MHz Athlon that I started this story with!  The four cores 
really DO make a difference, and it's MUCH MUCH bigger a difference that 
I would have ever expected.

Now, running Gentoo, I'm sure you're familiar with compiling stuff, and 
possibly with trying to do something else while you do.  On a single CPU 
single-core, yeah, there are things you can do to mitigate the effects 
and make it sort of work, but you definitely still notice it.  On a dual-
core or a dual-socket single-core, you can actually do stuff while 
compiling without too much of a problem, but, you do still notice it a 
bit.

What amazes me is that with the four cores, as long as I keep memory 
usage under control, I can run utterly ridiculous load averages, say 
several hundred, while compiling the kernel, a load average of 100 per 
core.  Yet properly tuned, /you/ /pretty/ /much/ /don't/ /even/ /notice/
/it/!  Keep in mind that it's NOT the memory, as I had upgraded to the 
the 8 gigs RAM before I upgraded to the dual dual-cores, and it's NOT the 
RAID, for the same reason.  Neither is it the fact that I have 
PORTAGE_TMPDIR pointing at tmpfs, again, because once I got the 8 gigs 
RAM, I was doing that back with the dual-cores too.

Now, the kernel is nice to run lots of build jobs on, because those jobs 
do use relatively little memory.  In practice, I normally run -j -l21, 
limiting to 21 load not because of the CPU load directly, but because of 
the memory most compiles require.  But as I said, as long as memory usage 
stays reasonable (which with the 4-way striped swap, means say half a gig 
or less into swap, the same effect on a single-disk machine would be 
probably 100 MB or so into swap, maybe less), once I upgraded from a 
total of two cores to four, load average basically /does/ /not/ /matter/ 
any more.  It literally ceases to be an issue.  A load average of one 
(0.25 per core), 2 per core, 10 per core, 100 per core, doesn't matter, 
the desktop is still very close to as responsive as it always is.

The same goes for those runaway processes I mentioned.  With a single 
core, it was pretty much game over.  You could usually quit programs and 
shutdown safely if you tried, but it was an exercise in patience to do 
so.  With dual cores (either as two sockets single-core each, as I 
originally had on this board here, or the single socket dual-cores so 
common now), it's better.  You can still run your stuff, sort of, and the 
system continues functioning well enough to shut down without too much 
trouble.

With the four cores, a few days ago I noticed a runaway process (a kernel 
process, no less, inotify or whatever, watching for a changed file, only 
something went wrong when I deleted the file, likely because I'm running 
directly off of Linus' git kernels and that code likely hit a bug) on my 
ksysguard graph, and wondered to myself how long it had been pegging 100% 
on that core, since I hadn't noticed any difference in performance at 
all.  Well, I wasn't ready to reboot at the time, and I let it run.  The 
thing ran for well over 24-hours, unkillable because it's a kernel 
thread, pegging 100% on one or another of the cores (it would switch 
cores once in awhile), while I did my thing, uninterrupted.  I eventually 
did reboot when I came to a convenient point to do so, mainly because I 
was tired of seeing that thing spiking 100% all the time, not because it 
affected performance.  If I'd have not had the ksysguard graphing it, I'd 
have literally never even known!

Of course, once you've seen the system handle 100 load per core without a 
sweat, it's little surprise that it could handle a single-thread runaway 
process keeping a single core pegged to 100, with the others effectively 
idling most of the time, or even if they had a bit of work to do some of 
the time.

It's that experience that has me recommending something different than 
you.  Yes, it's a desktop machine.  But we DO run Gentoo, so DO put it to 
use once in awhile.  And, having at least three cores does make a big 
difference over two.  With two, if one drops out, either because of a 
runaway process or because you're compiling in the background (at -j1 so 
it only affects the one CPU), the remaining single core is left having to 
multitask everything else, and it really does show up in lowered system 
usability.  That third core (tri-core Phenom) or go for four, really DOES 
make a difference, at least the way I use my machine, and the way I 
expect most Gentoo users will want to use it, if they can.  There's 
desktop, and there's Gentoo desktop, and at least for a Gentoo user, that 
third core DOES make a difference.

OTOH, I really can't see what I'd do with >4 cores ATM.  As the 
experience above demonstrated, with four, a single core can drop out and 
I don't notice it.  What would I do with eight, or even six?  Maybe 
decrease the compile-time where I'm merging stuff that can parallelize 
sufficiently?  Sure, but is it worth it?  At this point, four cores is 
I'd say the sweat spot.

Then there's memory.  Seriously. make it 4 gig.  You'll use it.  8 gig is 
nice, but honestly, the last couple gig, or even the last four, run empty 
a lot of the time.  So 8 gig memory if you can afford it, at least for a 
quad-core (4 for a dual-core is almost the same as 8 for a quad-core, for 
a dual-core, I'd say 2 gig minimum), but do plan on getting four, or 
you'll be crimping the efficiency of those cores.

Then there's disk.  Honestly, I'd say go for a 4-spindle SATA array you 
can run kernel RAID on, before upping from 4 to 8 gigs RAM.  A quad-core 
(or minimum tri-core for those going AMD who can therefore get it), 4 gig 
RAM, 4-way-SATA-in-kernel-RAID system, is going to be a very well 
balanced system, remarkably free of bottlenecks.  The learning curve on 
kernel RAID can be a bit steep, certainly, but get a system that well 
balanced tuned to make use of all components well, and you /will/ notice 
the difference!  You /will/ wonder how you ever got along without it.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

Re: [gentoo-amd64] [SOLVED] Re: hardware choice

[Daniel Iliev]

Duncan, if we meet one day the beer is on me! :)

I ordered Q6600, 4G DDR2-1066, Asus P5Q3.

Thanks, everyone!


-- 
Best regards,
Daniel