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Dear ccp4 community,
Thank you for the replies to my question below. I have summarized them
(also below).
Cheers ! Gunnar :^)
_________________________________________________________
This is the email question I sent to the CCP4BB:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
We are buying new Linux workstations (Fedora or RH Enterprise Linux) that
should be able to run 'nicely' most(!) stereo graphics modeling & other
macromolecular crystallographic software.
I would really appreciate any suggestions/comments/feedback on the
suitability/compatibility of the hardware we are considering:
Intel Xeon Server/Workstation
_________________________________
... Intel SE7525GP2 Server Board w/
Dual Channel RAID 0 or 1, Onboard Video & 1Gb Network Onboard
... 2 x Intel Xeon 3Ghz CPU
... 2 x 512MB Kingston Reg. ECC RAM
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Here is a summary of replies:
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From: Neil Paterson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Just a couple of thoughts:
if you are buying xeons make sure they have 2MB cache - intel processor
architecture demands a large cache and performance really suffers if
they only have 512kb (my 2GHz centrino laptop is much faster for
mosflm/scala than the 2.5GHz xeon boxes at the esrf - 2MB cache vs
512Kb). I would be tempted to go for a dual core opteron system with at
least 2Gb ram (phaser needs lots). You'll need a quadro graphics card
for decent stereo support. might be an idea to get a board that supports
raid 0+1 - all the speed/io benefits of striping and the data security
of mirroring (downside is you need at least 4 disks).
hope that helps,
Neil
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
From: Kay Diederichs <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Gunnar,
I can confirm that RHEL is a good choice as an OS (we use Centos-3 and
-4 here). AMD Dual-Core CPUs appear to give more performance, at lower
prices. 1GB memory is enough for 99% of crystallographic calculations.
You can have RAID-0 and -1 easily with the Linux md software RAID on any
motherboard; most of the solutions that are advertised as RAID are
actually "fake RAID" - i.e. the driver (under Windows) makes the drives
appear as RAID to the OS.
I doubt though that you will get Stereo from the onboard graphics;
you'll need to buy Nvidia Quadro cards.
HTH,
Kay
--
Kay Diederichs http://strucbio.biologie.uni-konstanz.de
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel +49 7531 88 4049 Fax 3183
Fachbereich Biologie, Universität Konstanz, Box M647, D-78457 Konstanz
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
From: David J. Schuller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
...
> I can confirm that RHEL is a good choice as an OS (we use Centos-3 and
> -4 here). AMD Dual-Core CPUs appear to give more performance, at lower
> prices. 1GB memory is enough for 99% of crystallographic calculations.
> You can have RAID-0 and -1 easily with the Linux md software RAID on any
> motherboard; most of the solutions that are advertised as RAID are
> actually "fake RAID" - i.e. the driver (under Windows) makes the drives
> appear as RAID to the OS.
>
> I doubt though that you will get Stereo from the onboard graphics;
> you'll need to buy Nvidia Quadro cards.
What he said. We prefer AMD Athlon 64s over Intel for performance,
price/performance, and heat. Socket 939 (Athlon 64 and X2 dual core
compatible) motherboards with PCI-express x16 slots are very affordable
right now.
Athlon64s have the memory controller integrated right into the CPU, so
they all take DDR400 (PC3200) RAM with no ECC. This should be cheaper
than the registered ECC RAM required by the server board you listed.
The on-board ATI Rage XL graphics with 8 MB dedicated RAM will not be up
to stereo. We are building a couple 'stereo' graphical workstations
right now and will be going with the Quadro FX1400 cards, which fit in a
PCI-express x16 slot.
Here's the Stereographics product compatibility page:
http://www.stereographics.com/support/boards/brd-chrt.htm
Cheers,
--
David J. Schuller
modern man in a post-modern world
MacCHESS, Cornell University
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
From: Igor D'Angelo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Dear Gunnar,
sorry, I messed up the card type. I meant NVidia Quadro FX4500. Here
is a link. It supports Open_GL and stereo visualization.
The price ? Scary, probably..... have a look.
http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/12319_na/12319_na.HTML
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
--
Dr. Gunnar Olovsson
c/o Strynadka Lab
Life Sciences Centre (4th floor)
University of British Columbia
2350 Health Sciences Mall
Vancouver,BC V6T1Z3 Canada
Tel +1(604)822 8032 or 7729
Fax +1(604)822 7742
Lab page: http://byron.biochem.ubc.ca
