Anything below a P3 is a bit of a waste of money due to the power/point ratio. However every unit is important (he says finishing off his 16 core, 24GB server he's "testing" over Xmas)
I don't run a machine for anything less than 500PPD, that's really what it's all about. Price to run against points that you get from the rig. Basically most people consider P4 Northwoods the absolute bottom end of the spectrum, and I'm not even sure that they produce 500PPD. GPU wise the low end of the spectrum is an 8xxx series card, because the folding client won't run on anything lower than that.
I think I got 300ppd tops with an old 2.4GHz P4. My dual Athlon MP 2600's only got 250 points each with standard clients. SMP took far too long so wouldn't meet the deadline. If it's at home then use AMD X2's or c2d's as a minimum. If you're running it on a work network (with permission) then almost anything will do as every WU counts & you're not paying for the electricity.
I've got Athlon X2s running, the lowest I ever saw was 69PPD! But the CPU is driving two 8800GT which generate over 4000PPD each, and they don't suffer if the CPU is folding, so I figure why not? In the end it comes down to how much effort do you want to put into gaining a small number of points, and if you are prepared to pay for the electricity, noise and space that will be needed. As Unicorn says, at least the answer is easy with Nvidia cards.
I'd half expect saspro to be running it in work though, so hopefully it won't cost him anything but it'll definately be costing someone! All for a good cause though
That's impressive sas. I found a 2.8GHz S775 Celeron and an old asrock motherboard in the workshop last night, how many PPD does anyone think that might be worth? Enough to make it worthwhile running?
'Faid not lads. Did some research on it and it's an old single core Celeron D 336. The board has an AGP slot but that's no use. Might do as a small file server for the workshop some day. Then again, maybe it'll end up back in that dark corner covered in dust