small stress test...

[VJ]

I've installed BOINC on my old dual Xeon, to perform a stress test and to see how it stacks up. Finally, my home situation is so that I can start configuring my systems, and set up all servers and streaming functionality. Already I had an odd behaviour on the Xeon: copying large files to one U320 SCSI drive caused the system to freeze. I managed to solve this by updating the controller driver. Now, I'll run BOINC for a few days, maybe a week or so, just to see how the system holds up (cooling, etc.).

From the website and the benchmarks, it looks like floating point speed is just under half of my other system, and integer speed is below one quarter of the other system. So I don't think it will contribute that much and most likely uses a lot of power while calculating (10 year old system), but perhaps I can keep some BOINC process in the back ground while it is doing other things.

[Umfriend]

The good thing about such old systems is, I think, that they use about the same power whether or not they're doing anything or not ;-)

Anyway, just remember that wehn you're done with testing, first set the manager on that machine to "No new tasks" and let it finish the tasks it had. We always love now computers, be they old or new.

What kind if Xeon are these anyway?

[VJ]

The Xeons are close to these or these, but I cannot find the exact ones on the Intel website. Mine are Prestonia, socket 604, on a 533 MHz bus, but with hyperthreading. I seem to recall they also have some power management.
The mainboard is a Supermicro X5da8.

It is a 10 year old system, but it runs good enough for normal use. The fast disks make it surprisingly responsive, and e.g. Windows explorer opens faster than on a more recent Atom with a laptop drive. It is noisy as hell though: 4 case fans, 2 cpu fans, 1 fan in the raid case, 2x 10K harddisks, 3x 7200rpm harddisks and 1x 5400rpm harddisk. The CPU coolers are quite noisy, but there are no real options to replace them (old socket + limited space).

Noise and power usage are the main reason not to have the system 24/7. I will configure it as media server (as it is the computer with the most diskspace), hosting music and video in good quality (flac, iso). But then we'll have to see if I stream it from there, or make local copy for usage. Either way, if the configuration works, it may help to know what would be useful in a future upgrade.

[VJ]

After a few hours, CPU temperature went from 58°C to 67° (on the hottest CPU), and to 63°C on the other one. System temperature only went up a few degrees, to 56°C (default max. is 65°C).
But everything still running nicely, first task were reported already. :-)

[Umfriend]

Uhm, that is sooo old I don;t see how that one could be upgraded. But case fans can. So many silent fans with decent performance for not too much money nowadays. If you do want a 24/7 system then some replacements (MB, CPU, Mem) might bring TCO down quit a bit while being inaudible. OK, you might have to ditch them high-RPM disks as well for some slower, silent ones.

[VJ]

Well, when I say "upgraded" I meant "replaced by another machine". Upgrading implies changing the mainboard, but every other component in it is now obsolete (scsi, ide, PCI-X, ...) - apart from 4 SATA disk. The case fans are the most silent thing, so little benefit in changing those.

I will configure everything now for media/file server (and maybe some other functions), and then evaluate. My current HTPC is an Atom, but it is a noisy Zotac with a non-standard formfactor mainboard and cooler. It suffices, even for full hd, but makes a lot of noise. There are several future paths I consider, with either combined htpc/server, or dedicated server, but I'll keep using the machines I have for now, and work out the best configuration. Then I can see how to improve the situation (if needed).

The average turnaround time for Rosetta on the dual Xeon is 0.15, compared to 0.81 for my other computer (Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q8300@2.50GHz), so it is about 5-6 times slower. Still, the computers have about 8-9 years in age difference, so not too shabby...

[VJ]

The average turnaround time seems to be increasing; it is now at 0.25...
Meanwhile, I discovered that BOINC stopped on my other PC, but it is back online and running.

[VJ]

Hmmm... not sure which number to use from the computer property page to compare the speeds... Probably RAC would be the best one, but I suspect it needs to run longer in order to have it stabilize.

Recent average credit 93.24
Measured floating point speed 1105.34 million ops/sec
Measured integer speed 1807.52 million ops/sec
Average turnaround time 0.23 days

By comparison, the work computer has

Recent average credit 900.39
Measured floating point speed 2506.07 million ops/sec
Measured integer speed 7385.36 million ops/sec
Average turnaround time 0.52 days

I've modified the work computer settings to also compute while I'm working (for now, I'm not doing anything cpu or memory intensive), but not at 100%. It should be at 80% when I'm there, and at 100% when I'm not.

Judging by the measures speeds, I guess I should expect the Xeon to be 1/4 of the speed of the other one. Just wondering: it has two physical CPUs, does the benchmark combine them or not?

[Umfriend]

Huh? How do you set it to use 80% when active and 100% when not? Besides, the threads should be low priority, even if you allow 100% all the time, anything you do will push the WUs into suspension. I've had 8 WUs running on the lappy whiel working in SQL Server. Soon as a query started, WUs were suspended. I stopped doing this only becuase of the noise of cooling a 100C lappy CPU...

And it does assume you have plenty of memory. With 16GB, I could spare 2GB for the WUs.

RAC takes ages. I think best way to go is actually measure TC at set times for a few dyas (and update just prior to measuring). Can;t be helped I guess. To bad noone shows historic scores per computer.

[VJ]

Huh? How do you set it to use 80% when active and 100% when not? Besides, the threads should be low priority, even if you allow 100% all the time, anything you do will push the WUs into suspension. I've had 8 WUs running on the lappy whiel working in SQL Server. Soon as a query started, WUs were suspended. I stopped doing this only becuase of the noise of cooling a 100C lappy CPU...

Oops, I mis interpreted the settings... It is now set at 80% all the time.
My experience is different... When needing CPU (compiling code, running simulations), the whole system freezes for several seconds. It then becomes very unresponsive for a bit longer, but recovers. Most likely I do not have enough memory to allow that fast switching (only 4 GB). I do tend to be using several applications together then. So that is why I prefer to limit CPU time while I'm working on it. But you are right, there is now way to distinguish between when active and when not...

RAC takes ages. I think best way to go is actually measure TC at set times for a few dyas (and update just prior to measuring). Can;t be helped I guess. To bad noone shows historic scores per computer.

Yes... Well, I can still leave it running a bit longer. Good news is that everything is rock stable: temperatures are solid, system performs nicely. It actually feels more responsive than the computer at work, with boinc set to 100%. Even though it is older, slower and has less memory...

[Umfriend]

How many logical cpus does that machine have? When BOINC is off, the machine freezes not? My thinking is indeed the unloading and loading to/from disk causes the unresponsiveness but it can be checked a bit by using resmon.exe

[VJ]

The one at work has 4 logical CPUs (Core2 Quad). But it is my work computer, for which the main argument is economic: so it most likely does not have a very expensive mainboard (some lower price asus) nor disk. The machine is stable, but does seem to suffer in general when switching applications. For normal work use, it suffices. And as it has a Polish windows (EVERYTHING is translated), I'm not messing around with it too much.
The Xeon has 2 physical CPUs with hyperthreading. It has less memory, but much faster disks... So probably that makes the difference.

[VJ]

I stopped it from calculating for a few days: I needed it to do some other things, but also I needed to work in the room (the noise was too much). Perhaps I'll power it up again in a few days.

[VJ]

I let it finish all the tasks it had, and reinstalled the whole system. I will not be intalling BOINC on it: it just gives off too much noise and heat. As the system will only be powered up when using it, there is little point in keeping BOINC installed.

But of course my other system keeps crunching along.

[Umfriend]

I hear ya, I used to have my laptop crunch with 5 threads but I got tired of the fans' noise (which seemed to increase over time) so I'm at one thread currently