03 March 2012

It's Here.

I present to you, fellow readers of this blog, the soon-to-be second fastest[1] student owned computer on MIT campus:
The beginning of an ultimate case mod for the ultimate hackintosh

Projected specifications:
  • Two Intel Xeon X5650 @ 4.0GHz
  • 24GiB DDR3-1600 RAM
  • Two AMD Radeon HD 6870
[1] The fastest will most certainly be this baby, if not for beefier GPU hardware then the soon-to-be liquid nitrogen pots sitting on top of the dual hexes. I also need to mention Cyril Lan's rig, which is powered by a 2500K @ 4.8GHz with dual AMD Radeon HD 7970s, but for most nonspecialized applications, CPUs dominate, sadly.

13 comments:

  1. what if (!!) someone outside EC has something ridiculous too?

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  2. As I mentioned in the citation, Cyril Lan has a beast rig that will trounce this box in GPU performance. I haven't heard of anyone else who spends absurd amounts on hardware, though.

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  3. It next step up from dual 4GHz+ hex-cores is quad 8-core Intel, and I've yet to meet someone with a 32-core system.
    Now, it is possible, but unlikely that someone on campus has a 48-core AMD box, if they happen to be Folding@Home fanatics...

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  4. If anyone owns a 48+ core box, please post a self portrait of yourself with the box and a screen connected to the box with a screenshot of wPrime and CPU-Z!

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  5. I seriously doubt this is the fastest computer on campus. I would be shocked if there are not several uber-performance-nerds on west campus you don't know about.

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  6. …all the more motivation to start the Collegiate Overclocking League to expose those west campus overclockers…

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  7. Hey...don't forget about the GPU fanatics. Though it won't matter for applications you buy, but for those of your own that you write you can get a lot more speed for your money with a nice GPU.

    My desktop + GTX-580 blows away the school cluster on my LBM codes.

    Just sayin'.

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    Replies
    1. I forgot to mention that you'll be obliterated once my friend (linked in my post) puts seven GTX460s in his SR-2.

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    2. Also, for compute nothing beats the GTX 460 768 MB, which is under $100/TFLOPS right now and supports all the relevant CUDA/OpenCL-related updates.

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    3. Haha! I never said mine was the fastest out there. :-)

      I get time on a machine with 6 C2070s that leaves mine in the dust too on my multi-GPU codes. (though per GPU, the GTX-580 beats the C2070 as long as the smaller card can hold the problem in memory)

      I have to agree though; dollar-for-dollar it's hard to beat the GTX460.

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  8. I'm against getting a second GPU because I haven't done anything GPU intensive to ``warrant'' getting another one. Another limiting factor is that I insist on running OS X and using the stock drivers, which greatly limits the space of GPUs available.

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  9. Have you seen this?

    http://reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?54430-DAVINCI-RESOLVE-and-***HACKINTOSH***

    I have also a Hackintosh, with a gtx580 gpu! Goes like hell! :)

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