I've been folding and doing measurements on different platforms regarding folding performance.
It seems that p4 has an upper hand in folding, especially with HT technology. I don't remember how many PPD David is getting on his p4s but he gets a lot
p4 is however very expensive and I'm not going that route.
My current candidates are either AMD 2500 Barton or a cheap Celeron. I got my Celeron combo (CPU+motherboard) at Fry's for $60, you can add a 256 MB DDR PC2700 for $20 and have a working core of your computer for $80. I also spent $50 on HS+fan+AS4.
Overclocking potential of Celerons is huge IMHO and most of them can be taken to about 3 GHz which would equal 90-100 PPD. I don't know how much you can get out of Barton. I wonder how this compares to something like p4 2.6 which can be had for $220 (CPU only).
What is the cost effective PC for folding?
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ColdFlame,
We essentially asked the same question at about the same time in different threads.
As posted in the other thread, it looks like a motherboard with integrated video and LAN can be had for $50 to $60. An Athlon 1800+ Thoroughbred (T-bred) is $50 or a 2500+ Barton is $85. 256MB of DDR333 memory is $40, or if you are on a really tight budget, 128MB of DDR266 Kingston ValueRAM is $22. And so it goes. I am in the process of figuring this out myself.
I haven't put a pencil to what each of my machines produce, but each of my three P4's are running at 2.5MHz and above, so you'd EXPECT them to produce a lot. I thought the Athlons were supposed to be the overachievers of the Folding world?
David
We essentially asked the same question at about the same time in different threads.
As posted in the other thread, it looks like a motherboard with integrated video and LAN can be had for $50 to $60. An Athlon 1800+ Thoroughbred (T-bred) is $50 or a 2500+ Barton is $85. 256MB of DDR333 memory is $40, or if you are on a really tight budget, 128MB of DDR266 Kingston ValueRAM is $22. And so it goes. I am in the process of figuring this out myself.
I haven't put a pencil to what each of my machines produce, but each of my three P4's are running at 2.5MHz and above, so you'd EXPECT them to produce a lot. I thought the Athlons were supposed to be the overachievers of the Folding world?
David