Cute. Judging by the performance of a VIA Epia system running at 1.2GHz on Super-pi, though, it'll probably be outperformed by any of our AMD/P4 systems
its so not worth it, with the space they had they could have used mATX sktA systems and popped in some 1.8 durons - woulda cost less too.
you could but power consumption would go up five fold, and as its meant to be always on for two years that would probably eek out any cost benefit
i defo doing this when some company finally gives me a job!!! (not 12 nodes, though, 6 i think ) come on u graduate employers !
Those boards are too costly for their performance IMHO. I could get a 2000+, an Aero 7 Lite and an A7V266 for less than the cost of one of the boards that he used, and I'd get better performance. And I could undervolt the proc for lower power consumption. But I did read the article, and I'd do it, but with a better system.
there is no way you could ever undervolt a p4 or even a P3 to give the same power useage as a mITX C3... not a chance in hell. even my nehemia 1ghz ENTIRE BOARD when FULLY loaded (mem, GFX ,CPU, as in, playing a divX video and MP3 at the same time ) only draws about 25watts. most gfx cards draw more than that alone! recon u could get a p4 to run of half a volt?
I know that, I'm just saying that for the same price you can get a lot more computational power, even if it's at the cost of a higher power draw and larger size.
i think if you wanted more computaional power at as little power consumption as possible youd have to have onboard everything and cut it down as much as possible, i was thinking if youre using nfs do u even need a hard disk? could you not just use ram ? anyway im sure theres the optimum way of doing things becuase matx boards and durons are extremly cheap, i guess youd have to work out the power cost difference...
As far as wattage for the duron, a 1.3 GHz Duron with the Morgan core uses about 60W max, the 2200+ uses 62W max. /EDIT I could also (for about the same cost) get a node with: Athlon XP 2200+ 256MB 400MHz Ram Vantec Aeroflow Asus A7V8X-MX (With Video and Lan) 350Watt PSU WD200BB (7200 RPM, 2 MB buffer) The controlling node would also have a CDROM.
6*XP2200 crunching away thats a beast esp as its not got the overhead of windows I rekon its about 15 Gigaflops! /me wonders if the ulead has a unix client out ?
whilst you can get durons and uatx mobos q.cheap at the mo (remember the mobo's used in this project are £70 all in), they have a power consumption (for mobo,pro,ram+video) of say 100W each. At 7p per unit(kWh) these mobos will use about 20p per day (assuming an efficient power supply). That means each motherboard will use about £150 of electricity over its two-year projected life. Compare that to the 120W of the complete system above (say £200 for 2 years), and you can see your 6*cluster (£900) is far less cost effective. People always drastically underestimate the cost of electricity in theses circumstances. It is similar to the number of people I know that use 'server' computers for no purpose other than broadband distribution, without realising they will be paying £100 a year for the privelidge!
