Ian Greenhalgh

It's all about the money....
 
They even released updates that broke Win10 so people would upgrad to 11
 
Win10 was stable for years, then they released updates that broke the memory management so that win10 now has a serious memory leak problem and my PC runs out of memory and crashes a couple of times a day, despite me having 128Gb.
 
Lots of other people report the same problem witgh this memory leak, it seems to be impossible to fix.
 
I love Linux but need a wondows box to run several pieces of software that are unavailable on Linux.

Hi folks
 
I've just obtained a barebones HP z820 workstation for almost nothing and intend to build it into a nice dual Xeon setup.
 
It has dual 2011 sockets that support v1 and v2 E5 Xeons. I know the 26xx series work but there are also the 46xx series, which interest me because they can sometimes be had for 15-20% the price of the 26xx equivalents.
 
I'm thinking a pair of 4650v2s would be rather nice and a lot cheaper than a pair of 2680v2s.
 
Now, what I'm wondering is this - does the BIOS have to have specific microcode for a specific CPU in order for it to work?
 
If so, does that mean that only CPUs on the HP Support List for the z820 will work?
 
Is it possible to mod the BIOS and insert microcode to add support for a CPU such as the 4650v2 if it isn't supported by the existing BIOS?
 
The z820 uses the C602 chipset rather than the X79, does this mean Intel XTU won't run?
 
Being a HP, there won't be any options in the BIOS for overclocking, and apart from a handful of 16xx series chips that won't work in a dual socket setup, these Xeons are locked, well, I know the 26xx series are, but are the 46xx series also multiplier locked?
 
Are there any workarounds/hacks/mods that would enable a moderate overclock of the CPUs in a z820?

I shall do that as soon as I can. At the moment I have the card removed from my PC as the fan bearings were going causing it to vibrate and emit a very annoying noise. I've ordered a replacement fan, as soon as it comes I'll get it installed and put the card back in my PC and run those tests for you.

The performance seems good, I can play The Outer Worlds at 1920x1200 with high settings and Vsync enabled (60Hz monitor) and it seems nice and smooth. I've only just managed to complete that game, so I haven't played much else, No Man's Sky runs well too, but I've not played it for more than an hour or so.

Hi folks
 
I've just started using some of the Topaz AI apps for photo processing, mostly Sharpen AI. They produce wonderful results but are very slow on my current setup - Dell Precision T5810 with Xeon E5-1630v3 and 32Gb quad channel DDR4, AMD Firepro W5100.
 
I'm going to upgrade my CPU soon, probably to a 2680v3 which will give me 12 cores instead of 4, that should speed things up. However, I suspect that the way to get much faster performance with these AI apps is more GPU power.
 
My budget is limited, so grabbing an RTX or some other powerful current or last gen GPU isn't an option.
 
I'm wondering, will one of the cheap P106 mining cards from China work to accelerate these apps, retaining my current firepro as my video card? That means running both AMD & Nvidia drivers side-by-side.
 
I note that some of the older Tesla cards like the Grid K20X are pretty cheap on ebay, would one of those be a better option?
 
I also note that Sharpen AI supports intel's OpenVINO, does this mean I can use an old Xeon Phi coprocessor such as the 3100 series to accelerate the app? I note those are cheap on ebay, although the 300W TDP and forced air cooling requirements are a concern.
 
I've struggled to find any relevant info on this topic, so right now I'm pretty uninformed on the whole subject of accelerating AI apps.