[gmx-users] Single core Quad processor or Dual processor Dual core?

[Erik Lindahl]

Hi,

On Jan 30, 2006, at 10:08 AM, Andrea Carotti wrote:

> Hi gmx users,
> i would like to know your experiences and opinions about this two  
> kind of machines.
> Taking into account that there is a great difference of costs  
> (8000? for a quad procs and 5000? for a dual core dual processor),
> i'm asking you benchmarks, performance/costs reports...
> Thanks to all

Opteron dual dual core should normally provide the best performance/ 
cost ratio. If you want to run large simulations faster in parallel  
it might even be worth to go with 8-way dual core (i.e., 16 cores).  
The price is in the ballpark of $18-20k right now. The performance/ 
cost ratio is slightly lower if you count per core, but if you take  
the faster communication between cores into account it is cheaper  
than buying myrinet cards.

Dual-core Xeons have significantly lower performance than the  
Opterons. Just stay away from them for now :-)

Cheers,

Erik
-----------------------------------------------------------
Erik Lindahl  <lindahl at sbc.su.se>     Backup address:  
<erik.lindahl at gmail.com>
Assistant Professor, Computational Structural Biology
Stockholm Bioinformatics Center, Stockholm University, SE 106 91  
Stockholm
Phone: +46 8 5537 8564     Fax: +46 8 5537 8214