[gmx-users] Dual Processor Intel Xeon X5650 (6 core) versus Quad Processor Opteron series 6100 (12 core)

[Claudio M. Soares]

Dear All,

We are in the process of buying new machines for calculation (mostly
GROMACS, but also Gaussian 09, MEAD and other codes) to add to our
cluster. We have the option of buying Dual Processor Intel Xeon X5650
with 6 cores or Quad processor AMD Opteron series 6100 (12 cores) or
series 6200 (16 cores). The Quad processor machines (with Opteron 6274
- around 4200 euros plus VAT) are a bit cheaper than two machines with
Dual processor Xeons (X5650 - around 5300 euros plus VAT).

I would like to ear about your experience with the Quad processor
Opterons of this kind. Our cluster is used by a substantial number of
people, which means that the machines will not likely be devoted to
one job only at the time; sharing is probably going to occur (at least
this is the optimum way to squeeze the most of our present Dual Dual
Processor Intel Xeon X5650 (2 jobs at the same time)).

Additionally, we would like to have benchmarks of GROMACS in the
Opteron architectures. Or even better, if there is a kind soul having
one of these Opteron machines around, we would be very happy to run
our own benchmark (a tar file with an easy-to-run shell script that
runs without supervision). Sellers/representatives of this type of
machines should be kind to provide such possibility, but here in
Portugal this is not usually possible.

Thanks in advance,

Cláudio

-- 
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Claudio M. Soares
Instituto de Tecnologia Química e Biológica
Universidade Nova de Lisboa
Av. da República,
2780-157 Oeiras
PORTUGAL
Phone:(351)214469610/214469100
Fax :(351)214411277
email:claudio at itqb.unl.pt
http://www.itqb.unl.pt/~claudio
Skype: claudio.m.soares