What do you think about this computer?

Kefalonian-Greece · Post by **Kefalonian-Greece** » Sat Dec 22, 2012 1:05 pm

Because I do not know English well use translation program.
I hope to be understood.

What do you think about this computer?
Select it for chess?

Intel Xeon E5-1620 (3.60GHz - Turbo Boost 3.80GHz, 4C/8T, 10MB Cache, 130W)
32 GB RAM

I am interested in specifically how to play chess.

Kefalonian-Greece · Post by **Kefalonian-Greece** » Sat Dec 22, 2012 1:49 pm

The processor has 8 cores.

diep · Post by **diep** » Sat Dec 22, 2012 2:02 pm

Kefalonian-Greece wrote:Because I do not know English well use translation program.
I hope to be understood.

What do you think about this computer?
Select it for chess?

Intel Xeon E5-1620 (3.60GHz - Turbo Boost 3.80GHz, 4C/8T, 10MB Cache, 130W)
32 GB RAM

I am interested in specifically how to play chess.

Very expensive for its performance. Just 1 cpu of it goes into a motherboard whereas for Xeons you want to put in 2 as then you have more cores.

It has a TDP of 130 watt which is really a lot for just 4 cores.

http://ark.intel.com/products/64621/Int ... -Intel-QPI

I wouldn't buy it because it has so few cores. for computerchess you do not want 4 cores. You want 40.

diep · Post by **diep** » Sat Dec 22, 2012 2:14 pm

Kefalonian-Greece wrote:The processor has 8 cores.

It has 4 cores.

stegemma · Post by **stegemma** » Sat Dec 22, 2012 3:53 pm

If you need a computer only to play chess, any recent hardware should be good enough. You don't have to spend a lot of money. I don't know in your country, but in Italy you can find a good laptop for less than 500 euros.

Just don't buy a netbook, it would be almost unusable if you are a good chess player.

ZirconiumX · Post by **ZirconiumX** » Sun Dec 23, 2012 9:34 am

I have set myself a somewhat personal challenge - to build a decent gaming pc out of second hand parts for less than the price of a low-end laptop brand new - around £400.

I currently have a NUMA motherboard (not sure how MP is going to work), two Xeon L5420 chips (which as Vincent Diepeveen said 'are going for peanuts these days' - and run much cooler than your ), heatsinks, a case, and a HDD - all for £190.

A friend once said to me 'Look for it, Matthew, and you will find it.'

I suggest you look up the Xeon L5420 because they are ridiculously cheap.

Matthew:out

diep · Post by **diep** » Mon Dec 24, 2012 1:44 pm

ZirconiumX wrote:I have set myself a somewhat personal challenge - to build a decent gaming pc out of second hand parts for less than the price of a low-end laptop brand new - around £400.

I currently have a NUMA motherboard (not sure how MP is going to work), two Xeon L5420 chips (which as Vincent Diepeveen said 'are going for peanuts these days' - and run much cooler than your ), heatsinks, a case, and a HDD - all for £190.

A friend once said to me 'Look for it, Matthew, and you will find it.'

I suggest you look up the Xeon L5420 because they are ridiculously cheap.

Matthew:out

Checkout Ebay - you can get for $99 motherboards now from supermicro with 4 sockets where you can put in 8384 cpu's and such which go for $20 on ebay.

16 real low power cores for peanuts.

note the 6 core cpu's are more expensive $125 a piece last time i checked they also go in that motherboard.

under full load such machine eats 400 watt.

biggest cost: a good psu

you can have 24 real cores of 2.8Ghz for under $900.

note that at 4 socket cpu's you want to install linux - windows server 2008 and later is too expensive simply.

when i bought the L5420's quite some months ago, there wasn't as much alternatives as there is now. biggest problem with AMD: motherboards too expensive of multisocket solutions.

there was only 1 guy selling motherboards now (and a lot), for $99 there. when he stops selling it's again too expensive...

realize this eats more power than 2 machines L5420 yet a single board with 24 cores is a lot faster, to give 1 example.

note the L5420 are a bit disappointing in performance for Diep. it's off die memory controller. this AMD thing has on die memory controller. BIG difference.

i have old amd 16 core box here 8356. this is however old Hypertransport protocol - means slow memory latency. at the boards offered on ebay now the latency is way better as it's HT 3.0

the great amd 4 socket hardware and cpu's that are interesting now are tough to get on ebay. the 6180SE for example was $400 for quite a while yet no longer gets offered there at that price.

note i didn't hear of anyone building a 48 core AMD box yet. Diep would rock on it - yet realize not all programs are supporting SMP well.

intel really creams off market now and with the new xeons that you can no longer easily overclock, clustering is going to be cheapest.

p.s. L5420 uses off die memory controller, so that's not a NUMA board.

lucasart · Post by **lucasart** » Tue Dec 25, 2012 1:38 pm

I don't know very much about hardware, but I just bought this today (see below specs). I managed to find a shop that assembles custom PCs, somewhere in the backstreets of HK (where I live now). The whole lot for 4550 HKD (~ 450 EUR). Hopefully that one should be quite decent! I really got fed up with my old Intel Duo Core, as testing patches typically requires thousands of games (it's faster to play 8 games in parrallel...)

-Computer-
Processor : 8x Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3770 CPU @ 3.40GHz
Memory : 4002MB (581MB used)
Operating System : Ubuntu quantal (development branch)
User Name : lucas (Lucas Braesch)
Date/Time : Tue 25 Dec 2012 08:34:15 PM HKT
-Display-
Resolution : 1280x1024 pixels
OpenGL Renderer : Unknown
X11 Vendor : The X.Org Foundation
-Multimedia-
Audio Adapter : HDA-Intel - HDA Intel PCH
Audio Adapter : HDA-Intel - HDA NVidia
-Input Devices-
Power Button
Power Button
Logitech USB-PS/2 Optical Mouse
Logitech USB Keyboard
Logitech USB Keyboard
Eee PC WMI hotkeys
HDA Intel PCH Line
HDA Intel PCH Front Mic
HDA Intel PCH Rear Mic
HDA Intel PCH Front Headphone
HDA Intel PCH Line Out
HDA NVidia HDMI/DP,pcm : 7=
HDA NVidia HDMI/DP,pcm : 3=
-Printers-
No printers found
-SCSI Disks-
ATA ST500DM002-1BD14
ATAPI iHAS124 D

PS: I did not pay the Windows Tax

smatovic · Post by **smatovic** » Tue Dec 25, 2012 3:30 pm

Resolution : 1280x1024 pixels

not really?

--
Srdja

lucasart · Post by **lucasart** » Wed Dec 26, 2012 6:48 am

smatovic wrote:
Resolution : 1280x1024 pixels
not really?

--
Srdja

Well I kept the old screen, and just changed the PC itself. Anyway, I'm sure my graphic card can cater for more pixels, if the screen has them

For the purpose of playing parrallel chess games, as fast as possible, I am mostly interested in: CPU, Cache, Bus Speed.
Graphics card, I don't really care, as I am not a "gamer". I'm sure the default graphics card is powerful enough for my needs, and much more.