Anyone here have experience with the Dell Poweredge r715 for computer simulations?

[jaslion]

14 minutes ago, Mega2 said:

Thanks for the advice. I found an IBM X3850 X5 (7143-AC1) with Intel Xeon 8-Core E7-4830 processors (a total 32 cores). Fortunately for me it's about the same price as the other server I bought. Since I probably won't be able to afford a Xeon e5 2697v2 server, would the IBM server be a good route?

What is your budget?

[Mega2]

26 minutes ago, jaslion said:

What is your budget?

$380 max. Maybe $410. I don't have more than $450 in my bank account at the moment so I don't have a lot of wiggle room.

[jaslion]

Just now, Mega2 said:

$380 max. Maybe $410. I don't have more than $450 in my bank account at the moment so I don't have a lot of wiggle room.

Look at a hp z620.

[Mega2]

47 minutes ago, jaslion said:

Look at a hp z620.

Thank you for the model. What would make the HP model better than the IBM one?

[jaslion]

6 minutes ago, Mega2 said:

Thank you for the model. What would make the HP model better than the IBM one?

It's a normal desktop for one so it's not going to be a massive noise machine and power draw. That ibm is going to scream and consume a crapton of power.

[Mega2]

37 minutes ago, jaslion said:

It's a normal desktop for one so it's not going to be a massive noise machine and power draw. That ibm is going to scream and consume a crapton of power.

Good point lol. My office has a storage room where this will be hooked up to. The walls are pretty thick and I can run cat 8 ethernet cables to it, so noise isn't my biggest worry.

 

I've heard that more cores tends to trump more speed for monte carlo simulation. Keeping that in mind, would the HP desktop still be better than the IBM server?

[Mega2]

2 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Those are hot and very power hungry, but it should work fine. I think those can use a few hundred watts idle. But Id really aim to get something newer if you can.

 

 

Thanks. Do you know anything that might be newer?

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 minutes ago, Mega2 said:

Thanks. Do you know anything that might be newer?

Dell r720, or a r820.

 

Or id just wait a little bit to save up for a r730.

 

How does the speed of the r715 compare to your desktop?

[Mega2]

4 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Dell r720, or a r820.

 

Or id just wait a little bit to save up for a r730.

 

How does the speed of the r715 compare to your desktop?

The desktop that I've been using for simulations is absolutely ancient so it runs at a 800 MHz clock rate but also has 32 cores. The r715 is about  Thus far it's run ok, but slow to say the least.

However, since the programs I use allow multi-threading (or hyperthreading for Intel processors), # of cores always trumps clock rate.

Since the r730, r720, and r280 tend to have fewer cores, I was curious why these would be preferable to something like the IBM X3850 X5 (7143-AC1) that has more built in cores.

Thank you again for all your help.

[Mega2]

I just bought Dell PowerEdge r715 but noticed from a few people here that its AMD Opteron 6380 processors may not be too good for scientific computing.

 

That said, I also found a IBM X3850 X5 (7143-AC1) at a nearby electronics surplus shop. The server has four Intel Xeon E7-4830 cores, which I why I'm considering computers with more cores (over 16 is advisable for my simulations).

 

As a bit background, I'm using Monte Carlo simulations, specifically Serpent and OpenMC. For those unaware, MC simulations are just probability simulations where a bunch of random events play out a couple thousand times. After a couple hundred or thousand trials general trend can usually be observed and that trend is used as the output.

 

Since these sorts of simulations can go on for days, I want to make sure that I'm able to get the best system possible while not breaking my $380 budget. Power consumption and noise aren't an issue for me.

 

Any advice on which of the two systems would be the best would be highly appreciated. Thank you.

[Electronics Wizardy]

31 minutes ago, Mega2 said:

The desktop that I've been using for simulations is absolutely ancient so it runs at a 800 MHz clock rate but also has 32 cores. The r715 is about  Thus far it's run ok, but slow to say the least.

However, since the programs I use allow multi-threading (or hyperthreading for Intel processors), # of cores always trumps clock rate.

Since the r730, r720, and r280 tend to have fewer cores, I was curious why these would be preferable to something like the IBM X3850 X5 (7143-AC1) that has more built in cores.

Thank you again for all your help.

The newer r720 + r730 would be better as the cpus do much more per clock. There is more than number of cores, the amount that each core can do makes a hug difference aswell.

 

THose cores in the x3850 x5 is pretty old now, and running first gen i7 era chips, and the newer ones also have faster bus speeds and ram speeds.

 

What specs is your desktop?

[igormp]

I'd say to keep using your poweredge. Even though those Opterons should be somewhat slower in FP operations, they will offer faster INT performance, with lower overhead since it has half the number of sockets.

 

Another thing is that those Opterons have AVX while the Xeons do not. I'm not sure if you built both softwares from the ground or got a pre-built binary, but using AVX would net you a really nice performance bump over those Xeons.

[Mega2]

10 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

The newer r720 + r730 would be better as the cpus do much more per clock. There is more than number of cores, the amount that each core can do makes a hug difference aswell.

 

THose cores in the x3850 x5 is pretty old now, and running first gen i7 era chips, and the newer ones also have faster bus speeds and ram speeds.

 

What specs is your desktop?

Thanks for the advice.

 

Out of curiosity, where would I go about finding what the ram speed? It looks to me like the bus speed and clock rate are about the same for most 720 and 780 designs on the market, at least the ones in my price range.

 

Out of curiosity, which desktop are you referring to? The one I'm planning to buy or the one I have already installed at work? Since everything is remote for us at the moment I don't know a lot of the hardware specs, however I do know that it has 32 cores, has a core speed of 800 MHz (as it's 13 years old), 3 TB of memory, and 500 GB of installed RAM. Beyond that I don't know much else.

[Electronics Wizardy]

26 minutes ago, Mega2 said:

Out of curiosity, where would I go about finding what the ram speed? It looks to me like the bus speed and clock rate are about the same for most 720 and 780 designs on the market, at least the ones in my price range.

Look at the manual of the servers, shows the max ram speed for the different configs of ram sticks.

 

26 minutes ago, Mega2 said:

Out of curiosity, which desktop are you referring to? The one I'm planning to buy or the one I have already installed at work? Since everything is remote for us at the moment I don't know a lot of the hardware specs, however I do know that it has 32 cores, has a core speed of 800 MHz (as it's 13 years old), 3 TB of memory, and 500 GB of installed RAM. Beyond that I don't know much else.

Can you run lscpu or simmilar to see what cpus the system has? Thats a weird speced system.

[Mega2]

7 minutes ago, igormp said:

I'd say to keep using your poweredge. Even though those Opterons should be somewhat slower in FP operations, they will offer faster INT performance, with lower overhead since it has half the number of sockets.

 

Another thing is that those Opterons have AVX while the Xeons do not. I'm not sure if you built both softwares from the ground or got a pre-built binary, but using AVX would net you a really nice performance bump over those Xeons.

Thank you for your advice, do you have experience working with similar simulation software programs?

[Mega2]

10 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Look at the manual of the servers, shows the max ram speed for the different configs of ram sticks.

 

Can you run lscpu or simmilar to see what cpus the system has? Thats a weird speced system.

Architecture:          x86_64
CPU op-mode(s):        32-bit, 64-bit
Byte Order:            Little Endian
CPU(s):                32
On-line CPU(s) list:   0-31
Thread(s) per core:    1
Core(s) per socket:    8
Socket(s):             4
NUMA node(s):          8
Vendor ID:             AuthenticAMD
CPU family:            16
Model:                 9
Model name:            AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 6134
Stepping:              1
CPU MHz:               800.000
CPU max MHz:           2300.0000
CPU min MHz:           800.0000
BogoMIPS:              4600.27
Virtualization:        AMD-V
L1d cache:             64K
L1i cache:             64K
L2 cache:              512K
L3 cache:              5118K
NUMA node0 CPU(s):     0-3
NUMA node1 CPU(s):     4-7
NUMA node2 CPU(s):     8-11
NUMA node3 CPU(s):     12-15
NUMA node4 CPU(s):     16-19
NUMA node5 CPU(s):     20-23
NUMA node6 CPU(s):     24-27
NUMA node7 CPU(s):     28-31
 

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, Mega2 said:

Architecture:          x86_64
CPU op-mode(s):        32-bit, 64-bit
Byte Order:            Little Endian
CPU(s):                32
On-line CPU(s) list:   0-31
Thread(s) per core:    1
Core(s) per socket:    8
Socket(s):             4
NUMA node(s):          8
Vendor ID:             AuthenticAMD
CPU family:            16
Model:                 9
Model name:            AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 6134
Stepping:              1
CPU MHz:               800.000
CPU max MHz:           2300.0000
CPU min MHz:           800.0000
BogoMIPS:              4600.27
Virtualization:        AMD-V
L1d cache:             64K
L1i cache:             64K
L2 cache:              512K
L3 cache:              5118K
NUMA node0 CPU(s):     0-3
NUMA node1 CPU(s):     4-7
NUMA node2 CPU(s):     8-11
NUMA node3 CPU(s):     12-15
NUMA node4 CPU(s):     16-19
NUMA node5 CPU(s):     20-23
NUMA node6 CPU(s):     24-27
NUMA node7 CPU(s):     28-31
 

oh wow, thats an even older dual operton system. I think its report speeds wrong, as that shoudl run at 2.3 most of the time.

 

The r715 would probably be a bit slower as its only dual socket.

 

Id still try to get something newer, as it will run circles around both of those systems.

[Mega2]

6 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

oh wow, thats an even older dual operton system. I think its report speeds wrong, as that shoudl run at 2.3 most of the time.

 

The r715 would probably be a bit slower as its only dual socket.

 

Id still try to get something newer, as it will run circles around both of those systems.

It was just brought to my attention by another user that most of the newer models (r720, r730, r780) have Xeons in them. A big disadvantage of Xeons is that, while Xeons have higher FLOPS, the int performance is diminished over the AMD and there's no chance of running AVX.

 

Given that, should I still try sticking to Xeons or are AMD processors the way to go?

 

Edit: also in terms of age the AMD and Xeon are about the same age

[Electronics Wizardy]

59 minutes ago, Mega2 said:

It was just brought to my attention by another user that most of the newer models (r720, r730, r780) have Xeons in them. A big disadvantage of Xeons is that, while Xeons have higher FLOPS, the int performance is diminished over the AMD and there's no chance of running AVX.

 

Given that, should I still try sticking to Xeons or are AMD processors the way to go?

 

Edit: also in terms of age the AMD and Xeon are about the same age

The problem is that amd has no server cpus between about 2012 and 2017. With your budget, you can get a gen or two newer intel system that will be better in int aswell as other tasks.

[Mega2]

4 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

The problem is that amd has no server cpus between about 2012 and 2017. With your budget, you can get a gen or two newer intel system that will be better in int aswell as other tasks.

Thanks for the advice. I looked it up and it says that the Opteron 6300 family is intended for servers like the one it's installed into.

 

As for a newer Intel in the same price range, I haven't quite been able to find one, as I have a hard $380 USD budget.

 

In terms of cache and bus speeds, it looks like the IBM server's Xeon is really the most that I'll need (about 25 MB and 7 GT/s, respectively).

 

Keeping all this in mind, I made a short list of the advantages/disadvantages of both the IBM server and the Dell r715. I'm not sure if you have background in computer simulations like Monte Carlo, but I was curious if you had any input on which system might be better:

 

PowerEdge r715: lower overhead, faster INT, and AVX
While the IBM server has: Faster FP operations, more threads, more cache, and higher base and top clock speed

[Mega2]

2 hours ago, igormp said:

I'd say to keep using your poweredge. Even though those Opterons should be somewhat slower in FP operations, they will offer faster INT performance, with lower overhead since it has half the number of sockets.

 

Another thing is that those Opterons have AVX while the Xeons do not. I'm not sure if you built both softwares from the ground or got a pre-built binary, but using AVX would net you a really nice performance bump over those Xeons.

To quickly follow up, I made a short list of advantages and disadvantages of the IBM server vs the Dell Server. Based on this, which would be best:

 

PowerEdge r715: lower overhead, faster INT, and AVX
IBM server: Faster FP operations, more threads, more cache, and higher base and top clock speed

[Mega2]

4 hours ago, jaslion said:

It's a normal desktop for one so it's not going to be a massive noise machine and power draw. That ibm is going to scream and consume a crapton of power.

Greetings,

 

It was brought to my attention by a user that the Opteron enables AVX, which isn't something that can be done on a Xeon chip. That said, I compiled a short list of the relative advantages of each model relative to each other. Let me know what you think and if this changes which system i should be going for:

 

PowerEdge r715 advantages: lower overhead, faster INT, and AVX
IBM server advantages: Faster FP operations, more threads, more cache, and higher base and top clock speed

[Electronics Wizardy]

8 minutes ago, Mega2 said:

As for a newer Intel in the same price range, I haven't quite been able to find one, as I have a hard $380 USD budget.

 

You should be able to get a r720 or r620 for that budget.  Here is one example https://www.ebay.com/itm/DELL-POWEREDGE-R620-8SFF-2x-6-CORE-E5-2640-2-5GHz-32GB-RAM-2x-TRAYS-H710/284124411052?hash=item42272274ac:g:RNQAAOSww-Zf4pjf

 

Id then upgrade the cpus to e5 2680 v2's. Here is one of them https://www.ebay.com/itm/INTEL-XEON-E5-2680V2-10-CORE-2-80-3-60GHz-25M-8-GT-s-115W-PROCESSOR-SR1A6/324427957993?epid=10027565705&hash=item4b8969c6e9:g:AfwAAOSwwyVf4kV5

 

This be much faster than the opteron system in your workload, and basically every other. Its 2 gens newer as well, and does much more for every clock.

 

 

4 minutes ago, Mega2 said:

It was brought to my attention by a user that the Opteron enables AVX, which isn't something that can be done on a Xeon chip. That said, I compiled a short list of the relative advantages of each model relative to each other. Let me know what you think and if this changes which system i should be going for:

 

PowerEdge r715 advantages: lower overhead, faster INT, and AVX
IBM server advantages: Faster FP operations, more threads, more cache, and higher base and top clock speed

The r715 is gonna be much slower in basically every task compared to the r720 or simmilar 2011 servers. just look at benchmarks from the era https://www.anandtech.com/show/5553/the-xeon-e52600-dual-sandybridge-for-servers/10

 

 

[Mega2]

52 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

You should be able to get a r720 or r620 for that budget.  Here is one example https://www.ebay.com/itm/DELL-POWEREDGE-R620-8SFF-2x-6-CORE-E5-2640-2-5GHz-32GB-RAM-2x-TRAYS-H710/284124411052?hash=item42272274ac:g:RNQAAOSww-Zf4pjf

 

Id then upgrade the cpus to e5 2680 v2's. Here is one of them https://www.ebay.com/itm/INTEL-XEON-E5-2680V2-10-CORE-2-80-3-60GHz-25M-8-GT-s-115W-PROCESSOR-SR1A6/324427957993?epid=10027565705&hash=item4b8969c6e9:g:AfwAAOSwwyVf4kV5

 

This be much faster than the opteron system in your workload, and basically every other. Its 2 gens newer as well, and does much more for every clock.

 

 

The r715 is gonna be much slower in basically every task compared to the r720 or simmilar 2011 servers. just look at benchmarks from the era https://www.anandtech.com/show/5553/the-xeon-e52600-dual-sandybridge-for-servers/10

 

 

Makes sense. Since I don't have the $200 to cover the processors, ill absolutely keep it in mind once money's a little less less scarce.

 

That being said, will INT performance and overhead be important factors for picking a good server? My IBM system has high cache, great speeds, and more FLOPS but gets beat by the PowerEdge when it comes to INT performance and overhead. Any thoughts for those two?

[Electronics Wizardy]

3 minutes ago, Mega2 said:

Makes sense. Since I don't have the $200 to cover the processors, ill absolutely keep it in mind once money's a little less less scarce.

 

That being said, will INT performance and overhead be important factors for picking a good server? My IBM system has high cache, great speeds, and more FLOPS but gets beat by the PowerEdge when it comes to INT performance and overhead. Any thoughts for those two?

Where are you getting your int performance benchmarks? The opterons are fine at int, but still worse than the intel chips at the same clock speeds, esp by the newer ivy bridge chips.

 

How often do you have to run these jobs, might make sense to just rent vps time when you need it. Then when you have a bit more, id try to get a system that would be much faster