[Noisebridge-discuss] To hack or to punt? Trying to revive my Quad-core server.

[Brian Morris]

On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 7:43 PM, Ken Adler <ken.adler at gmail.com> wrote:

> hummm.... it just struck me that I could probably put the quadcore chips in
> my other machine which currently have dualcore chips, right?  When I get
> home I will look at the other server to find the model number and look up
> the specs
>
> Also, as part of the troubleshooting I bought this graphics card<http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Galaxy+-+NVIDIA+GeForce+210+DDR2+PCI+Express+Graphics+Card/9539671.p?id=1218121172103&skuId=9539671&st=galaxy%20210&cp=1&lp=2> for
> $60 (with tax and immediate gratification at BestBuy next to my office in
> emeryville).
>

A 200 series design is a couple years old or more. You should try and get at
least a 400 series. Also, the drivers compatibility situation has reversed
from what it was a couple years ago -- support is now better for AMD and
worse for NVIDIA. But not that much I think, and I couldn't tell you off the
bat which AMD are comparable.  The 400 series is not the newest either, they
just came out with a laptop mobile  a couple few months back, so 500 for
desktops would be current. Just a caution sometimes a few labeled as lower
end actually the previous. So the 320 used in recent Macbooks is actually
200 series.

Of course it depends on how much you want to spend. I know Apple is putting
more and more of everyday computing loads onto the graphics cards, but I
don't know how much the other operating systems are yet. If you are into
software hacking though it is (to me at least) definitely the thing.

Am disappointed Apple did not put NVIDIA 400 Mobile 64bit GPU in new MacBook
Pro. Maybe they opted for speed, and wanted to get away from NVIDIA, who are
saying now they are going out of the graphics business even though they won
the suit against Intel.




> seems like you know your way around these things, Brian... is there a
> better choice in the same price range that I should go for  (now that I am
> not in immediate gratification/troubleshooting mode).  Could buy it off the
> internet or run to frys.
>
> Ken
>
>
>
> On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 6:17 PM, Brian Morris <cymraegish at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> I've thought about having  a machine like this as something to put a GOOD
>> graphics card in, that is something that does GPGPU / OpenCL in 64 bit
>> native precision. This is where the action is these days, at least in my
>> neighborhood.
>>
>> My best thought now on playing with it is to find another working machine
>> and start swapping parts. Yes there is a good chance that the motherboard is
>> blown altogether or it will be soon.
>>
>> Smaller case I disagree with as you want the space for air circulation.
>> Some people are putting in multiple gpu boards. The speedups with a GOOD
>> desktop card are on the order of 256 or better. Physics codes running 24/7
>> for a month are reduced to overnight. This includes image recognition
>> training programs for robotics helps. The robot can learn in its sleep
>> without having to hibernate for a month.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 3:19 PM, Ronald Cotoni <setient at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> FYI what I would do is gank the cpu memory and disk and buy a REAL cheap
>>> board and put it into a WAY smaller/quieter case.  It is still an OK cpu
>>> even by todays standards since it is a quad core.  It is still faster than
>>> most new laptops today as well (even the i7 ones)
>>>
>>> On Mon, Mar 14, 2011 at 1:09 PM, Ken Adler <ken.adler at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I have a quad-core server (
>>>> http://support.gateway.com/s/PC/R/1014899R/1014899Rsp2.shtml  upgraded
>>>> to 4 G RAM) that I am trying to refresh.
>>>>
>>>> I plugged it in and was not able to get any video .
>>>>
>>>> So I went out and bought a new video card and plugged that in... still
>>>> no video  -  tried both VGA and DVI.  I confirmed that the monitor is
>>>> working fine (plugged it into another PC and it worked)
>>>>
>>>> My question is, should I just give up now and resign myself to trashing
>>>> the PC?
>>>>
>>>> Alternatively, if I bring it into NoiseBridge (coming in for Pyclass
>>>> tonight) is there some strategy for troubleshooting/ necessitating the PC
>>>> without access to video-out initially.
>>>>
>>>> Thoughts?
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Ken Adler
>>>> <510-290-5806> <510-290-5806> <510-290-5806>510-290-5806 (cell)
>>>> Ken at adler.net
>>>> ----
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Noisebridge-discuss mailing list
>>>> Noisebridge-discuss at lists.noisebridge.net
>>>> https://www.noisebridge.net/mailman/listinfo/noisebridge-discuss
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Ronald Cotoni
>>> Systems Engineer
>>>
>>>
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>>> Noisebridge-discuss at lists.noisebridge.net
>>> https://www.noisebridge.net/mailman/listinfo/noisebridge-discuss
>>>
>>>
>>
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>>
>
>
> --
> Ken Adler
> 510-290-5806 (cell)
> Ken at adler.net
> ----
>
>
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