[gmx-users] Suggestion needed for new workstation

[Martin Höfling]

Am Donnerstag, 9. August 2007 schrieb james zhang:

Hi James

> I want to buy a new workstation for MD simulation.
> I think the Mac Pro from Apple is really nice.

Workstations are imho not best if you plan to do long-taking simulations. Only 
think about this option if you're doing really short (minutes ~ hours) 
simulations.

> The configuration:
> *Two 3.0GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
> * *8GB (4 x 2GB)
> * *500GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s

RAM size shouldn't be an issue, except if you're simulating huge systems. 

I am not up-to-date how the "new" intel core architecture performs compared to 
AMD opterons but opterons probably give you the biggest "bang for the buck".
Maybe someone can provide up-to date information, the Gromacs benchmarks 
aren't informative about this.

> with price: *$6,225.00

~5000€

Well depending on the available infrastructure, a "cheap" workstation for 800€ 
will do the job. Then you have 4200€ remaining to buy compute bricks. You 
should definitely get more than 4 cores from this ammount.

> Any suggestions or comments?

Yepp, plz comment my comments, since we're planing to by additional compute 
nodes. 
ATM, we're thinking about 8-way opteron nodes with barcelona core, if it is 
available.

Best
	Martin