Bit-tech best hardware of 2010

[Tattysnuc]

The X3 processors are under £60 and destroy anything Intel has at that price. Instead they recommend the G6950 and are one of the few well known websites which does so. They do so on the basis of an extreme overclock which you may or may not get. The same goes for their testing suit which again is more biased towards Intel based CPUs and which they have only recently tried to overhaul.

They use X3(which runs better on Intel CPUs) as a CPU gaming test and Crysis which runs better on dual cores too.

They NEVER reviewed the Athlon II X3.

They also ignore things like core unlocking too. If you are going to push a CPU to its limit with overclocking then at least try core unlocking.

One of my mates got a 2.9GHZ Phenom II X4 by unlocking their 2.9GHZ Athlon II X3. Not bad for a processor under £70.

Also,regarding the Phenom II X6 their reviews were not that great too. There were enough tests from other websites to show that the Phenom II X6 was quite close to the socket 1366 and 1156 Core i7 processors in highly multi-threaded software and also at a lower platform cost too. The whole point of getting a six core processor or a quad core with HT is for such software though.

They NEVER reviewed the much cheaper Phenom II X6 1055T and Phenom II X6 1075T either. The Phenom II X6 1055T was priced around the same level as the Core i5 760 for a very long time and the Phenom II X6 1075T is a few quid more.The Phenom II X6 1055T and 1090T were launched at the same time BTW. Instead they made sure they reviewed the most expensive Phenom II X6 processors and hence could compare them to a Core i7 and not a Core i5 instead.

Websites like Hexus and Anandtech did do reviews on the cheaper Phenom II X6 processors.

They did an article on GTX460 overclocking and then forgot about the HD6850 which also overclocks quite well too. Anandtech did an article on HD6850 overclocking BTW.

I completely agree with what you're saying. They do have a recommended hardware, and then update that periodically, which is a bit naff, as the comments from other users of Bit-tech are also very quick to point out, which covers a multitude of price points. They're doing "Arthur" (as in Arfa job) in their reviews, which is certainly alienating a good percentage of their potential readership. The Hardware of the year award I don;t even see the point of. Seems like a tenuous reason for an article. Tom's definitely do this better, at least they are more thorough.

I for one would like to see how the 6 core Phenoms compare vs 6 core Intels, but no-one seems to be comparing them, certainly not in Folding, which is where my interest lies. "Nibbler" has me sold on the Phenom as a solid platform, but it's not quite extreme enough for my taste.

I think I can say that my concerns with Bit-tech is when they do a review, they do cover what they cover ok, but they don't do enough comparisons. Tom's went a bit too far the other way, and in my opinion they lost the clarity of their message with the database due to having TOO MANY comparisons. There needs to be some sort of standard, and this is where the problem lies.

I'd like to see Tom's data available in something like Extreme overclocking's very excellent folding stats pages rather than trying to fit the query into their small pages, along with having prices (launch and current) so that frames/£ could be calculated at different resolutions.

... and also I'd like folding scores to be included, but they appear to be only covered in any way by Bit-tech, so they can't be all that bad...

[scaryjim]

A quad core phenom @ 2.5GHz turns 4.4kppd on 500k units, and ~ 3.3kppd on 2M units. So a hex at the same speed should give 5k - 7k ppd. Given the 1055T runs at 2.8GHz you'll get a bit more than that from a retail Hex, and bump one (a 95W 1055T for preference if you're overclocking) up to around 3.8GHz and... well. Should be a phenomenal amount of points from a £150 processor. If I had the money I'd get one and bench it for you

EDIT: Just checked back and Hexus got their 95W 1055T to 4GHz under an AC Freezer 7.

[watercooled]

I have a 1055T I might be able to bench. I say might because I've not folded for some time and when I did it wasn't for long so I didn't learn much about it e.g. the different work units. If you give me an idea what to do I could get some numbers up for you.

[Tattysnuc]

That would be fabulous if you could. I'm not sure how long this would take you, but here's the steps if you're serious:

1. Install the client
2. Install a client monitor: I use FAHmon or HFM-Mon
3. Set up/reuse your username and folding team (we'd love you to come and join the Hexus one obviously using Team: 69776)
4. go into the client and set the priority on the advanced tab to "Slightly above..." and then set the slider to the maximum as shown .
5. You'll need to also get a passkey so that the bonus points are all included for timely returns which you can do from here
6. Let it run through the 10 work units required to qualify you for the passkey bonus. For the purpose of benchmarking, don't have any of the other clients running

It takes 10 work units to be completed before you get the bonus points, so if you can, please fire it up and leave it running. Keep an eye on it though, because it is REALLY processor intensive. I've been able to bench at 4.41 Ghz on my 980X after successfully running OCCP, Prime 95, WinRAR and SuperPI all concurrently for 1 hour manually looping, and then when running folding it has failed.

If you could leave it running a bit longer, I'm certain you'll be welcomed with open arms to the folding threads. I see a few of the "faces" are over here already...

Think I'm going to start OUR database of results, so that people come to us for advice rather than us linking to other "bigger" sites.

[watercooled]

Okey doke, the client you linked seems to be a CLI only one. It's all the same to me, except for CPU priority the options were low or idle so I chose idle which I assume is the same as 'slightly higher'. If not I can change it. I joined the Hexus team with username Watercooled@Hexus.

Edit: OK it's running but it only seems to be using 1 core according to Task Manager?

[scaryjim]

you need to make a shortcut with the -smp flag at the end of the "target":

On my Web Server 2K8 box at work it looks like: C:\Users\<username>\FAH\Folding@home-Win32-x86.exe -smp

[watercooled]

Ah thanks, that was easy enough. Was expecting to spend hours faffing about there!

[scaryjim]

No worries - welcome to the hexus folding "fold" (if I may make a horrendously obvious pun )

[watercooled]

One more thing - FahMon is showing a yellow status box (not green)?

Edit: NVM it's gone green now.

I'll post the PPD estimate soon.

[scaryjim]

I've had that on my home computer with the GPU client. It probably means that you haven't done enough % of the work unit for it to accurately work out your PPD, although it could be that fahmon is having trouble reading the log files properly. Does it show an estimated PPD, or not?

[watercooled]

It does now, not sure how much this means but at 3% completion:

Project : 6067
Core : SMP2 Gromacs
Frames : 100
Credit : 481


-- SMP --

Min. Time / Frame : 4mn 33s - 9612.96 ppd
Avg. Time / Frame : 4mn 38s - 9354.78 ppd
Cur. Time / Frame : 4mn 33s - 9612.96 ppd
R3F. Time / Frame : 4mn 33s - 9612.96 ppd
Eff. Time / Frame : 5mn 00s - 8344.86 ppd

PPD in the bottom right of the windows is 10005.48

[scaryjim]

Interesting. You won't get those kinds of points until you've chewed through your first 10 WU on this client, as you don't start getting bonus points straight away, but those figures are higher than I was expecting. Is that a 1055T at stock 2.8GHz?

[watercooled]

Yeah it's all stock. The rest of the specs are in my sig and the CPU is a 95w one.
Here are the stats at 6%:

Project : 6067
Core : SMP2 Gromacs
Frames : 100
Credit : 481


-- SMP --

Min. Time / Frame : 4mn 27s - 9938.80 ppd
Avg. Time / Frame : 4mn 35s - 9508.28 ppd
Cur. Time / Frame : 4mn 27s - 9938.80 ppd
R3F. Time / Frame : 4mn 35s - 9508.28 ppd
Eff. Time / Frame : 4mn 50s - 8780.19 ppd

[scaryjim]

That's pretty impressive then: I was expecting a bit more than 50% higher than my Opteron quad, but you're getting more than double!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

This is one of the comments by a staff member(Claave) on a question posted in their GTX560 review thread:

Senilex 48 minutes ago
Quote: Originally Posted by Claave
Quote: Originally Posted by Cyberpower-UK
Where's your 6950 1GB review?

We're not in the habit of reviewing things that haven't been launched yet... :S

Yet you have done in the past for paper-launch Nvidia cards.

Other reputable tech site has reviewed this card with the 6950 1GB performance figures, shame you guys missed the boat on this. The review would of been a lot more credible.

[watercooled]

It still seems pretty steady at 20%:

Project : 6067
Core : SMP2 Gromacs
Frames : 100
Credit : 481


-- SMP --

Min. Time / Frame : 4mn 26s - 9994.90 ppd
Avg. Time / Frame : 4mn 31s - 9719.57 ppd
Cur. Time / Frame : 4mn 28s - 9883.23 ppd
R3F. Time / Frame : 4mn 27s - 9938.80 ppd
Eff. Time / Frame : 4mn 48s - 8871.81 ppd