Athlon 2400+ & Shuttle AK32vn for folder?

NullObject · Post by **NullObject** » Thu Mar 11, 2004 5:32 pm

Microcenter has an advertised special for an Athlon 2400+ & Shuttle AK32vn for $99

I was wondering if anyone new how 2400+ is as a folder? And how the motherboard is for stability and OC?

I need to add a few more points to slow down D Bailey's overtake rate

until I start my farm. This seemed like a cheap interim solution and there's a Microcenter close to me.

Thanks in advance.

haysdb · Post by **haysdb** » Thu Mar 11, 2004 5:46 pm

I have one 2400+ T'bred. It's good for ~450 PPW, give or take. Mine is not overclocked at all, since the motherboard that cpu is in does not support overclocking.

I don't know anything about that motherboard.

David

haysdb · Post by **haysdb** » Thu Mar 11, 2004 6:08 pm

If you have another $30 to go with that, consider a 2500+ Barton and a Biostar M7NCG 400 motherboard.

I have three 2500+ Bartons in these boards, all overclocked to 3200+ speed (2.2GHz). Sometimes they even go a little higher than that, up to around 207 FSB.

Add another $11 for a Speeze FalconRock HSF (or buy the retail CPU and use the stock HSF).

For memory you can get by just fine with PC2700 (DDR 333). In fact, this motherboard doesn't support DDR400 memory when using the integrated video.

These make for kick-ass little folders, up around 600 to 650 PPW.

David

sthayashi · Post by **sthayashi** » Thu Mar 11, 2004 9:28 pm

Seeing as I have 3 of them, I'd say it folds pretty damn well (although I'm never gonna be on YOUR threats list).

Dunno about the motherboard though.

Douglas Bailey · Post by **Douglas Bailey** » Thu Mar 11, 2004 9:47 pm

Or you could just take all that cash and make a donation to the Stanford project directly, then let me eventually catch up with you.

CoolGav · Post by **CoolGav** » Fri Mar 12, 2004 1:31 am

I think you're better off going with an XP2500+. Although the XP2400+ is a solid folder, the 2500 can o/c better and will net you more points. Get a good board capable of 400FSB and you'll be laughing. Of course, if its the 2400 or nothing, then it's not a bad CPU...

NullObject · Post by **NullObject** » Sat Mar 13, 2004 11:50 am

Thanks everyone for the feedback. I was interested in the combo mainly because I could pick it up and get it running this weekend. I'm not sure I'll have time to now. I'll look into the 2500+ setup suggested by farmer haysdb and seconded by CoolGav.

I'll probably need those extra points to hold D Bailey off for an extra day or two.

sthayashi, my really high production before was an alignment of the stars, or a voodoo thing

. And now I have mainly sTinkers(tm ARM). I think you will end up on my threats list soon. I'm just trying to keep you from catching up

D BaileyI thought of that, but then team SPCR wouldn't get additional points.

At the rate your going, I don't think you'll eventually catch me, I think you will run over me like a run away semi.

Douglas Bailey · Post by **Douglas Bailey** » Sun Mar 14, 2004 12:19 pm

The best prices I can come up with for a 2500+ Barton and either an Asus A7V8X-MX or Biostar M7NCG 400 motherboard run right around $145 delivered. (newegg). Does anyone have a better source?

And what is the general consensus on RAM... can a folding machine produce well with 256MG, or does it need 512MB to hit it's most efficient? I always assumed PPW was more a function of the CPU doing math than use of RAM.

Would love to hear any feedback since we are going to upgrade a couple of machines at work that have folding as their primary task in life.

This thread and all your comments have been really helpful to give me some direction on the new hardware. Thanks.

haysdb · Post by **haysdb** » Sun Mar 14, 2004 3:56 pm

Memory: 256MB is more than enough for a pure folding machine. Under Linux, I see no difference between 256MB and 128MB.

Motherboard: I have 4 of the Biostar boards, 2 of the Asus boards. Both are excellent boards, but the Asus board offers nothing in the way of overclocking features, whereas the OC features on the Biostar are very good. Even if you do not intend to overclock, I might still give the nod to the Biostar board. And BTW, if you don't want to overclock, a 2500+ or 2600+ "Thornton" would be the way to go, IMO, because it's clocked higher than the equivalently rated Barton. The extra cache (of the Barton) helps, but it doesn't offset the clock speed advantage of the Thornton when it comes to folding. In my experience.

David

dukla2000 · Post by **dukla2000** » Sun Mar 14, 2004 4:52 pm

haysdb wrote: And BTW, if you don't want to overclock, a 2500+ or 2600+ "Thornton" would be the way to go, IMO, because it's clocked higher than the equivalently rated Barton. The extra cache (of the Barton) helps, but it doesn't offset the clock speed advantage of the Thornton when it comes to folding. In my experience.

Agreed: my Tbred clocked at 2GHz (aka XP2400+) outperforms a stock Barton XP2500 on every WU I have monitored (660 mins v 701 for p520, 538 v 563 for p853, only p563 is close: 352 for XP2400 and 353 for Barton).