A friend and I were discussing putting together a server for a project we were working on, and were wondering if it would be worth upgrading it into a folding box. The question is, how much of a return would we get?

If we built it, I think we would go with a dual Opteron 2346HE system. It's a Barcelona quad-core at 1.8GHz. I think AMD is the way to go because--as far as I can tell--Socket F can take AM2 heatsinks, while heatsinks for Intel Socket 771 are hard to find. Also, the power consumption on this processor is only 55W.

How would this 8-core machine compare to something like a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo, or Core 2 Quad?

Anandtech also projects the next Intel architecture will be noticeably faster than Core 2. Can anyone estimate how our proposed system would compare to one of these new architecture systems?

If you intend to build this system in any case by all means go ahead and fold. But each quad core on a separate motherboard, accessing it's own memory and such would be faster for folding.

In a multi-processor system each additional core also uses other resoures, so 2 processors would not be 100% better than one processor, more like 85%. Each additional processor would yield a smaller increase in processing power.

To reduce electrical costs you should consider 45nm Intel processors.

Phenom quads have folded on the slower side compared to quad Intel cores of the same speed.

"Anandtech also projects the next Intel architecture will be noticeably faster than Core 2."

That's about the last thing AMD needs to hear right now.

Why not look into a GPU powered box instead? They out perform multi-core setups by a huge margin.

Based on the above, it sounds like building this system wouldn't be worth it, given that it would also be possible to build separate systems that would provide greater performance anyway, especially if I can use Intel processors. As I mentioned above, I wanted to use AMD CPUs because I could fit AM2 heatsinks to Socket F, but I couldn't find any LGA771 boards that would accept LGA775 heatsinks.

We're still going to build some sort of system, but I think we'll try to kludge it together from parts on hand, so it won't be a high performance box. I'm looking into GPU folding, as I have an 8800GT now.

try the Thermalright HR-01-X CPU Cooler for Socket 771. I have two to cool two XEON Quadcores with just one 120mm Fan.

http://www.heatsinkfactory.com/thermalr ... ooler.html