Two new PC's for me!

[Ashful]

Expecting delivery on some new computing power this week. Two Dell T7610's, each populated with two eight-core XEON E5 processors at 3.1 GHz (8.0 GT/s), 32 GB RAM, and NVIDIA Tesla K20C 5GB GPU units (just for crunching data, the graphics card is actually just Nvidia Quadro K2000 2GB). Picked up another four 24" Dell U2412M monitors and two APC 2200VA UPS's to go with 'em.

The downside is, this should pick up my work pace quite a bit, as I sit here most of the day waiting on my current computer (single T7500 with two quad-core XEON processors at 2.8 GHz / 24 GB RAM) to crunch numbers. Less time for reading at hearth.com!

Any other interesting computers at work here?

 

[PapaDave]

I need that setup so I can surf the web and play Solitaire gooder.
WTH do you do Joful?
I haven't kept up with the latest and greatest for several years, and always got a generation or 2 behind that.
Serious firepower.

 

[bubbasdad]

Expecting delivery on some new computing power this week. Two Dell T7610's, each populated with two eight-core XEON E5 processors at 3.1 GHz (8.0 GT/s), 32 GB RAM, and NVIDIA Tesla K20C 5GB GPU units (just for crunching data, the graphics card is actually just Nvidia Quadro K2000 2GB). Picked up another four 24" Dell U2412M monitors and two APC 2200VA UPS's to go with 'em.

The downside is, this should pick up my work pace quite a bit, as I sit here most of the day waiting on my current computer (single T7500 with two quad-core XEON processors at 2.8 GHz / 24 GB RAM) to crunch numbers. Less time for reading at hearth.com!

Just curious, what do you do that requires that much gear?

 

[jharkin]

Reminds me that I need to bug IT about replacing my laptop... They are glacially slow about doing that until it breaks...


Nice hardware there.. Been ages since I had lots to play with at work, we are going cloud and virtualizing everything into a couple large regional data centers. Heck even my home box I haven't updated in years.. Still just a basic quad core i7 w 8gb. Other than adding some SSD goodness I haven't changed much.used to be a habitual 18 month upgrader...

 

[webbie]

Yeah, you must be doing some serious rendering! My 2009 Mac Pro mid-line model is by far the most powerful in this house......

 

[BrotherBart]

I just for the first time in twenty years quit using five years or older machines and sprung for dual core hyper-threaded machines with a boat load of RAM for me and the brown haired girl. No touch screen junk but I am starting to believe that I am the only person in the country that actually likes Winders 8.1. After I beat it into submission.

 

[PapaDave]

Got a new lappy a few months ago with windows 8. Did some stuff to make it gooder, then backed it up and put 7 on it.
I may put 8 back on and update to 8.1 just to check it out. I like the desktop though...not the tiles, since it's not a touch device.
Joful must be on pins and needles with a package like that coming.

 

[bag of hammers]

I just for the first time in twenty years quit using five years or older machines and sprung for dual core hyper-threaded machines with a boat load of RAM for me and the brown haired girl. No touch screen junk but I am starting to believe that I am the only person in the country that actually likes Winders 8.1. After I beat it into submission.

Should have stopped by your place on my way to return my recent Win8 laptop. About 2000 miles and 1 border crossing with expired passport but probably still worth it to witness the proper beating it deserves.

 

[BrotherBart]

I can easily see where for most people Winny 8 would be infuriating. All the stuff is there, and good stuff that never was before, but they have done a great job of hiding it all. The search function finds it though.

And not including a migration tool for moving stuff from XP and a comparable desktop was just absolutely stupid. Killing off their own OS and not giving a tool to move off of it is inexcusable. I fully intended when I bought the boxes to move everything to Linux. But reconsidered after using it for a few days.

 

[begreen]

I've been using 8 and 8.1 for a while now. Still prefer 7, but I can deal with 8 fine though Win 8/8.1 make much more sense on a tablet than on the desktop. They need to stop trying to make one shoe fit all IMO, but that ain't happening. Today they announced the advent of Win9. Loverly.

 

[Ashful]

Not rendering! Those big GPU cards are for pure number crunching, not graphics. I run large electromagnetic / microwave simulations, and occasionally thermal simulations on high power microwave circuits. I design equipment for high power RF and microwave test applications, such as ensuring our missiles and fighter jets don't fall out of the sky when flying past high power radar installations or are bombarded with high electromagnetic fields such as electromagnetic pulse weaponry.

These PC's will really help me work a lot faster, as I can run smaller problems on the CPU's, and larger problems on the GPU cards. My current computer is very fast, but in some benchmark testing I did on these machines, I found my simulation time will be 2x faster on smaller problems and 80x faster on larger problems. Solutions that currently take me 100+ hours on my eight XEON microprocessor cores might now finish inside an afternoon on two GPU's.

edit: Oh... and I did ask about installing win.8. Unfortunately, the software I'm using is still optimized for performance on win.7 x64.

 

[Jags]

...but I am starting to believe that I am the only person in the country that actually likes Winders 8.1.

So YOU are the one. I will pass this along to the IT community.

Windoz 9 coming around the corner in 2014. 8 has been Vista X 2 for computer sales.

(Joful, I look over my monitors at a new IBM Power7+ with lots of junk in the trunk.)

 

[Ashful]

(Joful, I look over my monitors at a new IBM Power7+ with lots of junk in the trunk.)

Nice! Would be fun to run some benchmark tests between these two! My four Xeon E5-2687W's + two K20C's against your Power7+!

 

[Jags]

IBM rates them different. It is based off of throughput. If you want to geek out:
http://www.spscicomp.org/ScicomP16/presentations/Power7_Performance_Overview.pdf

 

[Ashful]

Thoroughly geeked. I actually have a BS in computer engineering. Never used it much, though... quickly realized I'd rather be doing real electrical engineering than playing with bits.

What's the application for those machines? Seems to be more database operation and banking than scientific computing or design.

 

[Jags]

What's the application for those machines? Seems to be more database operation

Zactly - running a business (13 locations).
And data crunching.

 

[firefighterjake]

And here I am at work still using Windows XP . . . well XP Professional.

Windows 7 at home though.

My biggest gripe as a very occasional computer buyer is with the change in operating systems . . . and not being able to play some of my old computer games on them.

 

[Ashful]

Hah... I'm still using an old copy of Adobe Photoshop 5 on my home PC (with winXP-32). That particular piece of software is probably older than some of our forum members.

I play high-tech at work, so my home is kept decidedly low-tech.

 

[jharkin]

Pretty sure I have Photoshop 4.0 on CD somewhere... probably got it illegitimately in college

 

[Jags]

I play high-tech at work, so my home is kept decidedly low-tech.

Agreed. I am the same way.

 

[bag of hammers]

Wow - old school IT guy here - thoroughly outclassed in the home office dept. But I don't have the need...

I can easily see where for most people Winny 8 would be infuriating. All the stuff is there, and good stuff that never was before, but they have done a great job of hiding it all. The search function finds it though.

And not including a migration tool for moving stuff from XP and a comparable desktop was just absolutely stupid. Killing off their own OS and not giving a tool to move off of it is inexcusable. I fully intended when I bought the boxes to move everything to Linux. But reconsidered after using it for a few days.

+1 My frustration is similar to what you describe. I've followed every incantation and incarnation of MS operating system (and variants) since the DOS days. This one was easily the worst experience of all (and some were pretty bad). Hours loading / installing all the necessary updates (@ 100) from the out of the box state (ok not necessarily a win8 issue but a PITA), then creating / customizing an account (for my son), many other tweaks, etc. Only to be followed by a blue screen with absolutely no (clear) information other than "we found a problem" ,"we're diagnosing" etc.. Yep - without success. No (apparent) way to get to a boot menu, get to safe mode, break out of the thing. Arrrgggg. Christmas evening. Complete restore (good thing I built the system restore USB), then start over. Then hours spent digging for the necessary "fixes", etc. More time on Google and support sites than on the actual apps on the laptop. Finally somewhat closer to sanity, a half of boxing day with this (as bgreen eluded to) "tablet pretending to be a laptop". Sure it was pretty easy to figure out how to use it, but as I did, I truly hated the way it behaved. Charm bar?

Not a slam against anyone who meshes with it or likes it, just a matter of principle for me. I didn't pay $$$ for a 2 day project. This was a horrible experience. I avoided it last year 'cause I figured my son wouldn't adapt to it too well (and he's the king of gadgets) - I was right - it kinda frustrated the hell out of him too. It was a decent piece of hardware, nice touch screen, great sale price. And not much available without win8 installed. I took the leap this year. I don't mind change - I try to embrace it - but I could not get myself to like this at all. I refused to invest any more time or frustration into it. I bought the parts to rebuild his previous laptop, refurbished to like new state, and he is happier with that (Win 7 home premium - hardly an issue in 2 years). I may give Win9 a look see but I dunno. I'd like to send MS a bill for my time @ $250 / hour.

 

[Ashful]

The new hardware has arrived!

 

[jharkin]

Holy UPSs Batman

Now you need to tell the boss you need a bigger office to hold all that gear

 

[Ashful]

Holy UPSs Batman

Now you need to tell the boss you need a bigger office to hold all that gear

heh... I forgot to show the rig on the other side of the desk, another T7500 with another two LCD's. That'll go probably away once I get this hardware up and running, tho...

I did not choose (and would not have chosen) those UPS's. That was our IT guys. Each requires a dedicated 20A circuit, so now the facility guys are pissed they have to run two more circuits to my desk.

 

[Jags]

Hehehe
Pinky: so what are you gonna do tonight, brain.
The Brain: The same thing I do every night....try and take over the worrrld.