Fushigi
Storage Is My Life
Combo of a Q6600 + ECS mobo for $199, appears to be brick & mortar only.
Cheap Core2Quad Q6600 @ Fry's today only
- Thread starter Fushigi
- Start date
I actually went to my local Fry's: It was insane. Their checkout line wrapped around the store and the store isn't small.
Regardless, they had run out of the MB's. No rainchecks and no alternative MB's. However, they were offering just the processor for the same price. My reaction was: Bait and Switch. Even if I was willing to get just the processor, I wasn't willing to deal with the line. I just left, after complaining to the dept. manager ...
Regardless, they had run out of the MB's. No rainchecks and no alternative MB's. However, they were offering just the processor for the same price. My reaction was: Bait and Switch. Even if I was willing to get just the processor, I wasn't willing to deal with the line. I just left, after complaining to the dept. manager ...
Fushigi
Storage Is My Life
Mine was supposedly out of the motherboards as well, but there was a stack of ECS mobos for Athlons in an aisle display and on top was the one needed for the C2Q bundle. Someone must have just dropped it there. So I grabbed it & asked a drone to write up the combo. He was genuinely surprised I had found one as they had about 120 alloted for the store and had sold out by 8AM (it was about 9:15). But the offer was still good so he wrote it up, we added in RAM (2GB for $20 AR) and a PSU (500W Antec for $7 AR) and I grabbed an A-Data 16GB thumb drive for $90 AR and got in line.
I figured I could wait 30-45 minutes to save over $200 on the prices. But that would have been easy. This was Black Friday and half of the Chicago Suburbs wanted new HDTVs. It was 12:11 when I made it to a cashier. Two hours and 41 minutes in line. I seriously thought about giving up several times but you know how it goes. After waiting so long you become determined to see it through and not waste the time you already spent waiting. After a while someone with authority in the store came around with a cart full of bottled water (which they sell) and was just handing out bottles to people in line. It was a nice touch. And as frustrating as the wait was, everyone was in good spirits.
Would I do it again? Not sure. The wait did cause me to miss another store that I wanted to hit before the 1PM early bird deadline but I'll hit them today.
They did have all 74 checkout lanes running so I can't blame a lack of cashiers.
I figured I could wait 30-45 minutes to save over $200 on the prices. But that would have been easy. This was Black Friday and half of the Chicago Suburbs wanted new HDTVs. It was 12:11 when I made it to a cashier. Two hours and 41 minutes in line. I seriously thought about giving up several times but you know how it goes. After waiting so long you become determined to see it through and not waste the time you already spent waiting. After a while someone with authority in the store came around with a cart full of bottled water (which they sell) and was just handing out bottles to people in line. It was a nice touch. And as frustrating as the wait was, everyone was in good spirits.
Would I do it again? Not sure. The wait did cause me to miss another store that I wanted to hit before the 1PM early bird deadline but I'll hit them today.
They did have all 74 checkout lanes running so I can't blame a lack of cashiers.
Bozo
Storage? I am Storage!
74 checkout lanes???!!!!
Zow Wee
Must be one big store!
Bozo :joker:
Zow Wee
Must be one big store!
Bozo :joker:
ddrueding
Fixture
Most of the Fry's around here have that many, but over half of them are closed off most of the time (the back side of the customer service area).
sechs
Storage? I am Storage!
They're also of strange designs... like Mayan temples and wild west shows....
ddrueding
Fixture
The one closest to me is Wild West themed, and is horrible. They all have clueless employees, so I won't even use that to judge, but this one has the worst layout and poorest selection of them all. I typically go to the one in Sunnyvale, which has no theme at all.
sechs
Storage? I am Storage!
The Sunnyvale Fry's is the latest incarnation of the first store -- just a big box.
It seems to me that the North San Jose location (the Mayan temple) has the best service (of the ones in the Bay Area), because it's attached to Fry's headquarters.
It seems to me that the North San Jose location (the Mayan temple) has the best service (of the ones in the Bay Area), because it's attached to Fry's headquarters.
Fushigi
Storage Is My Life
Ditto the Downers Grove, IL store. No theme.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
Fry's has themes?
ddrueding
Fixture
All the older stores around here do. The few most recent don't.
Eat me, drink me....
sechs
Storage? I am Storage!
It's pretty bizarre in my opinion.
I took a friend from Southern California to the one in Palo Alto, and her response was basically, "WTF?"
There are 3 Fry's in this metro area. One has wild west theme, one has outer space theme, and the oldest (i.e. -- the one with worn out floors) has an oil derrick / maritime theme.
Otherwise, I went to Fry's on "Black Friday" and saw a *hell of a lot* of bargains everywhere (and a zillion people) -- but I had no use for any of them (the zillion people included).
But, as I was about to leave, I thought I would take a swing through the rarely-visited-by-me software department just for a final looksee. I ended up buying Nero 8 Ultra Edition. With the instant rebate at the register, the Fry's mail-in rebate, and the Nero mail-in "upgrade" rebate (I use retail version of Nero 6) added together, I will end up paying $0.00 after I receive my rebate checks (not counting postage for two first class snail mail letters).
A friend of mine bought a Seagate 750 GB FreeAgent Pro (eSATA + USB2) for $175 -- no rebate. Someone else I know bought a pair of nice 22-inch LG LCD monitors for $199 each -- no rebate.
Otherwise, I went to Fry's on "Black Friday" and saw a *hell of a lot* of bargains everywhere (and a zillion people) -- but I had no use for any of them (the zillion people included).
But, as I was about to leave, I thought I would take a swing through the rarely-visited-by-me software department just for a final looksee. I ended up buying Nero 8 Ultra Edition. With the instant rebate at the register, the Fry's mail-in rebate, and the Nero mail-in "upgrade" rebate (I use retail version of Nero 6) added together, I will end up paying $0.00 after I receive my rebate checks (not counting postage for two first class snail mail letters).
A friend of mine bought a Seagate 750 GB FreeAgent Pro (eSATA + USB2) for $175 -- no rebate. Someone else I know bought a pair of nice 22-inch LG LCD monitors for $199 each -- no rebate.
paugie
Storage is cool
For $199, you would get only a 17" regular sized (i.e. not wide screen) LCD here.
Fushigi
Storage Is My Life
Those 22" LGs were going like hotcakes when I was there as well. I was tempted but for three things: 1. I hadn't researched them at all. 2. I would have either had to try to hide it from the wife (which wouldn't work) or use it on her PC (which doesn't do me much good). 3. I would have had to step out of line to get one and as I noted the line was over 2.5 hours long.
BTW of the two times I've picked up C2Qs with ECS motherboards on Fry's deals, both times the systems have turned out to be pretty reasonable. Sure, they're limited on expansion (2 DIMMs, 2 SATA + 1 IDE, etc.) and don't support the latest stuff, but for basic workstations with onboard video I could easily see dropping one in to upgrade my wife's PC. Both seem to be quite stable running the SMP Folding client 24x7 - one in Vista Basic and the other in Kubuntu.
BTW of the two times I've picked up C2Qs with ECS motherboards on Fry's deals, both times the systems have turned out to be pretty reasonable. Sure, they're limited on expansion (2 DIMMs, 2 SATA + 1 IDE, etc.) and don't support the latest stuff, but for basic workstations with onboard video I could easily see dropping one in to upgrade my wife's PC. Both seem to be quite stable running the SMP Folding client 24x7 - one in Vista Basic and the other in Kubuntu.
Fushigi
Storage Is My Life
Fry's Anniversary Sale. I think it's nationwide but it is at least going on in the Downers Grove (Chicago suburbs) location. Stuff that wound up in my cart:
Q6600 w/ ECS motherboard for $180.
Q9450 for $280
750GB Seagate for $110.
Antec Solo for $30.
Vista Ultimate OEM for $170, get a $50 gift card.
Cheap Crucial & OCZ RAM after rebates.
Dual-core laptop for $380.
(The laptop is for a co-worker.)
Q6600 w/ ECS motherboard for $180.
Q9450 for $280
750GB Seagate for $110.
Antec Solo for $30.
Vista Ultimate OEM for $170, get a $50 gift card.
Cheap Crucial & OCZ RAM after rebates.
Dual-core laptop for $380.
(The laptop is for a co-worker.)
ddrueding
Fixture
Nice shopping trip Fushigi! I'm envious of that Q9450...
Fushigi
Storage Is My Life
Yeah, but I won't be installing it right away. It'll be the foundation of my 1st DDR3 system so I'll have to start watching for a good mobo & DDR3 RAM.
The Q6600 will replace my wife's Athlon XP 2900. Nice bump for her.
The Q6600 will replace my wife's Athlon XP 2900. Nice bump for her.
Just as a side note, I got an earlier Frys Q6600 w/ECS motherboard special. The MB sucks big ones. Specificly, RAM latency, by default, was tested in the 500ns rather than the 50-60ns for a p35 chipset. After fiddling with RAM settings the best I could do was get it down to the 210ns. It also maxed out at DDR2-667.
I am in the process of swapping it out for a Ga-X48-DS4. Not because it wasn't stable, but it just sucked perfomance-wise. normally I'm not bothered by such, but this was just too bad.
I've finally found a good use for SLI motherboards -- Folding. The new GPU2 clients are producing around 2000-2500 points per 3870 (aprox $150-$170). You can have multiple clients, and it works well with multiple boards (not crossfire/SLI linked). Put two boards in a dual-core machine and you can fold like mad: Far better than an SMP client The video boards use around 80W each which isn't too bad either.
Hint, I really shouldn't comment but the new SMP core is not going to be point friendly to dual-core machines. Specificly, they found a much better method of core-scaling and since the benchmark machine is a quad and the old core didn't scale well, expect the SMP point production for dual-cores to about drop in half, while the quads stay the same. It will also be questionable as to whether the dual cores will be able to complete the WU's in time. I think Stanford will have to adjust point-values/deadlines to keep people happy. However, I don't know what they will do with the situation.
I am in the process of swapping it out for a Ga-X48-DS4. Not because it wasn't stable, but it just sucked perfomance-wise. normally I'm not bothered by such, but this was just too bad.
I've finally found a good use for SLI motherboards -- Folding. The new GPU2 clients are producing around 2000-2500 points per 3870 (aprox $150-$170). You can have multiple clients, and it works well with multiple boards (not crossfire/SLI linked). Put two boards in a dual-core machine and you can fold like mad: Far better than an SMP client The video boards use around 80W each which isn't too bad either.
Hint, I really shouldn't comment but the new SMP core is not going to be point friendly to dual-core machines. Specificly, they found a much better method of core-scaling and since the benchmark machine is a quad and the old core didn't scale well, expect the SMP point production for dual-cores to about drop in half, while the quads stay the same. It will also be questionable as to whether the dual cores will be able to complete the WU's in time. I think Stanford will have to adjust point-values/deadlines to keep people happy. However, I don't know what they will do with the situation.
Fushigi
Storage Is My Life
Mark, any idea which ECS motherboard that was? Today's buy was my 3rd Q6600/ECS combo & I think they've all been different boards.
Now, since we have to dedicate a CPU core to the GPU client, if you run a C2Q with GPU, are you doing single-core clients for cores not tied to GPUs or are you still doing the SMP client? I've been doing 3 single-core clients + GPU.
Now, since we have to dedicate a CPU core to the GPU client, if you run a C2Q with GPU, are you doing single-core clients for cores not tied to GPUs or are you still doing the SMP client? I've been doing 3 single-core clients + GPU.
ddrueding
Fixture
Why not get a triple-SLI board and a Q6600? It will pull tons of juice, but should give a healthy point total...
The board was a P4M900T-M
Currently, The GPU2 client has affinity problems with the SMP client when running Vista (not XP/W2003/W2000). Specificly, under Vista the GPU2 uses one core, leaving 3 cores which theoretically should do fine with the SMP client but doesn't. What happens is that 3 processes get a core and the last one gets 0% causing the entire SMP client to stall. The best fix currently is to run the SMP client inside a VM while the GPU2 client runs natively on Windows or 3 uniprocessor clients+GPU.
With Windows XP/2000/2003 the GPU2+SMP seem to co-exist better.
However, if you have an SLI MB, with a dual core processor, then you just do GPU folding and it just screams.
There is absolutely nothing stopping, that I know of, a 3 or a 4 video card setup on a quad if you had 3-4 X16 PCI-E cards all running at X16. I think you would get a slow down if the PCI-E cards are running at 8x or 4x but I don't know how much: I'm not sure it has been tested. theoretically, you could get 8000-10,000 on a single machine using 600-700W as opposed to an OC'ed quad running just SMP getting 3000 for 250-300W of continious power. usage.
Do note, that VijayPande Just made a statement saying that the point structure for all the clients are going to be rebalanced shortly to make the point structure correlate better to the science benefit. So who know what is going to happen.
The GPU2 client is supposed to work for the upcoming ATI 4xxx series coming out in June-July. TechReport. The 4850 will cost $229, and the 4870 will cost $349.
Fushigi
Storage Is My Life
I've got one of those. Running Vista it seems to fold within roughly 10% of my Linux system, which is some other ECS board (have to look it up ..).
The Linux system will shortly be redone as an XP system to replace my wife's Athlon as noted above. The rebuild will include adding a 3870. It'll do GPU Folding + either SMP or 3 single-core instances.
My other and at that point final Athlon will eventually be rebuilt using the C2Q9450, but I'll have to buy more parts (mobo/RAM at least) before I can finish the build. I was planning on Vista Ultimate as it was cheap today, but may use the license loophole to run XP instead if Stanford can't program around the affinity problem. With the faster CPU I'll take the DDR3 plunge so I'm considering X48-based boards. Such a shame that this machine, the fastest in my herd, will be relegated to the basement to act as our home server.
Long term I should have 4 Q6600s (3 being 'budget builds'), 1 Q9450, and 3+ 3870s Folding plus my C2D laptop and any other misc boxes I feel are worth the electric bill to run.
Fushigi
Storage Is My Life
On my P4M900T-M using CPU-Z 1.45, I've got the following:
CAS 4
RAS to CAS 5
RAS Precharge 5
RAS (Cycle Time) 13
RC 19
RAM is at 1.8V, 333MHz although it'll do 400.
The board is Rev 1 and BIOS is 080014 from 5/29/2007.
CAS 4
RAS to CAS 5
RAS Precharge 5
RAS (Cycle Time) 13
RC 19
RAM is at 1.8V, 333MHz although it'll do 400.
The board is Rev 1 and BIOS is 080014 from 5/29/2007.
My Q6600 on the same MB - P4M900T-M Revision 1.0
Bus 266x9 = 2395MHz
PC2-6400/DDR2-400 2@1GB Part#=OCZ2SOE8001G
The RAM is running at the following settings currently and it produces the lowest latency, I could create.
DRAM Freq.: 333 MHz
FSB : DRAM 4:5
CAS# Latency (CL): 4.0
RAS# to CAS# Delay (tRCD): 5
RAS# Precharge (tRP): 5
Cycle Time (tRAM): 13
Command Rate (CR) 2T
Bus 266x9 = 2395MHz
PC2-6400/DDR2-400 2@1GB Part#=OCZ2SOE8001G
The RAM is running at the following settings currently and it produces the lowest latency, I could create.
DRAM Freq.: 333 MHz
FSB : DRAM 4:5
CAS# Latency (CL): 4.0
RAS# to CAS# Delay (tRCD): 5
RAS# Precharge (tRP): 5
Cycle Time (tRAM): 13
Command Rate (CR) 2T
At the moment, what I'm trying to do is replace 9 machines with 2 as an summer energy saving and a summer temperature comfort goal. So, I'm going with two quads that will run multiple VM's rather than having multiple machines dual booting to different OS's.
The machine I'm currently setting up is:
MB: Ga-X48-DS4
CPU: Q9450 - OC'ed to 3.2GHz (It seems to be very stable at that speed getting aprox 3200PPD with SMP folding)
Video: Sapphire HD3870
RAM: 4x2GB - Geil PC2-1066
5 small HD's - One for each VM (Vmware Server Beta 2.0)
Power Supply: PC power and cooling Silencer 750
Case Antec P80
Base OS: Microsoft 2008 Server (X64).
Once I have that up and working as my Domain controller; The alternative OS's running in their individual VM's; GPU2+SMP folding (The SMP will be running off a VM). When all that is done and everything is working to my satisfaction, I'll move to my old Q6600
I intend to replace the motherboard to the same Ga-X48-DS4; the video card to the same Sapphire HD3870 add some ram to 4GB and see what it can do OC'ed running GPU2+SMP folding.
Once both are up and running, I'll be shutting down my collection of five X2 4600's and one 2.8 P4's (5 SMP clients, 2 GPU clients, 2 Uniprocessor clients). My expectation is that my Power bill will go down significatly, my folding PPD (with two SMP + 2 GPU2 clients) should stay the same or go up slightly. I have no idea yet, what I will do with the surplus machines
The machine I'm currently setting up is:
MB: Ga-X48-DS4
CPU: Q9450 - OC'ed to 3.2GHz (It seems to be very stable at that speed getting aprox 3200PPD with SMP folding)
Video: Sapphire HD3870
RAM: 4x2GB - Geil PC2-1066
5 small HD's - One for each VM (Vmware Server Beta 2.0)
Power Supply: PC power and cooling Silencer 750
Case Antec P80
Base OS: Microsoft 2008 Server (X64).
Once I have that up and working as my Domain controller; The alternative OS's running in their individual VM's; GPU2+SMP folding (The SMP will be running off a VM). When all that is done and everything is working to my satisfaction, I'll move to my old Q6600
I intend to replace the motherboard to the same Ga-X48-DS4; the video card to the same Sapphire HD3870 add some ram to 4GB and see what it can do OC'ed running GPU2+SMP folding.
Once both are up and running, I'll be shutting down my collection of five X2 4600's and one 2.8 P4's (5 SMP clients, 2 GPU clients, 2 Uniprocessor clients). My expectation is that my Power bill will go down significatly, my folding PPD (with two SMP + 2 GPU2 clients) should stay the same or go up slightly. I have no idea yet, what I will do with the surplus machines
Fushigi
Storage Is My Life
See reply in the main Folding thread.