So, apparently these things are being decomissioned by Facebook and others, so
these CPUs are really cheap on eBay right. I just bought a pair for about $130.
Kind of crazy for a CPU that used to cost >$1500 each. Have motherboard, case,
RAM, and power supply coming in the mail. 16 cores/32 threads of goodness. I'll
post up benchmarks when I get this thing up and running.

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On 04/21/2016 01:08 PM, jhu wrote:
> So, apparently these things are being decomissioned by Facebook and others, so
> these CPUs are really cheap on eBay right. I just bought a pair for about $130.
> Kind of crazy for a CPU that used to cost >$1500 each. Have motherboard, case,
> RAM, and power supply coming in the mail. 16 cores/32 threads of goodness. I'll
> post up benchmarks when I get this thing up and running.
>
>
I'm interested in details on the motherboard you are using & if using 
linux or windows as your OS.

I've seen some of these pulled xeons popping up too and I've thought 
about upgrading my old render box with one over my 920 4 core. With a 
bios update, my MB looks like it would work with one.

The same computer has been down for while with a bad power supply. I've 
been holding off fixing it partly due life changes/tighter budget - but 
perhaps more because I really want to stretch for exactly the set up you 
are trying!

Bill P.

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William F Pokorny <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:

> I'm interested in details on the motherboard you are using & if using
> linux or windows as your OS.
>
> I've seen some of these pulled xeons popping up too and I've thought
> about upgrading my old render box with one over my 920 4 core. With a
> bios update, my MB looks like it would work with one.
>
> The same computer has been down for while with a bad power supply. I've
> been holding off fixing it partly due life changes/tighter budget - but
> perhaps more because I really want to stretch for exactly the set up you
> are trying!
>
> Bill P.

I bought an ASRock EPC602 on newegg.com. It sold out pretty quickly. You can
still find a few other dual Xeon boards on newegg. If you want to go this route,
make sure it supports LGA 2011 or LGA 2011 v2 processors (not LGA 2011 v3).

The only thing I have right now is the motherboard, case, and the two
processors. Still waiting for the power supply and CPU heatsinks/fans to arrive.

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I've got a Lian Li PC-V1200 case (Verari Systems) with 2 Xeon 5160 SL9RT 3GHz /
4M / 1333 chips on the board

It's slated to be stripped for parts - I could hold it to the side and see if
the boss wants to sell it intact.

Let me know ASAP about interest, and I can start to look into price/shipping,
etc.

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All the parts finally arrived. This thing is a beast! The Povray 3.7.0 benchmark
finishes in 56 seconds. The thing idles at 92 watts and pulls 310 watts fully
loaded. Not bad at all.

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On 30/04/16 07:27, jhu wrote:
> All the parts finally arrived. This thing is a beast! The Povray 3.7.0 benchmark
> finishes in 56 seconds. The thing idles at 92 watts and pulls 310 watts fully
> loaded. Not bad at all.
> 
> 

Any special optimisation of the PoV compile or are you using the vanilla
version?

John
-- 
Protect the Earth
It was not given to you by your parents
You hold it in trust for your children

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Doctor John <j.g### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> On 30/04/16 07:27, jhu wrote:
> > All the parts finally arrived. This thing is a beast! The Povray 3.7.0 benchmark
> > finishes in 56 seconds. The thing idles at 92 watts and pulls 310 watts fully
> > loaded. Not bad at all.
> >
> >
>
> Any special optimisation of the PoV compile or are you using the vanilla
> version?
>
> John
> --
> Protect the Earth
> It was not given to you by your parents
> You hold it in trust for your children

This is from the Debian repository.

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"jhu" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> Doctor John <j.g### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> > On 30/04/16 07:27, jhu wrote:
> > > All the parts finally arrived. This thing is a beast! The Povray 3.7.0 benchmark
> > > finishes in 56 seconds. The thing idles at 92 watts and pulls 310 watts fully
> > > loaded. Not bad at all.
> > >
> > >
> >
> > Any special optimisation of the PoV compile or are you using the vanilla
> > version?
> >
> > John
> > --
> > Protect the Earth
> > It was not given to you by your parents
> > You hold it in trust for your children
>
> This is from the Debian repository.

Hi, I'm French and I've been playing with POV since the early 90's, and I've
just finished building a dual Xeon system based on thoses cheap chips found on
eBay ($135 for both... amazing...). I used an Asus Z9PA-D8 motherboard, a couple
of Cooler Master Hyper 212X, 32 Gb of regulard UDIMM DDR3 1600 from Crucial

POV, the result is below:

CPU time used: kernel 0.80 seconds, user 1992.38 seconds, total 1993.17 seconds.
Elapsed time 69.37 seconds, CPU vs elapsed time ratio 28.73.
Render averaged 3778.82 PPS (131.52 PPS CPU time) over 262144 pixels using 32
thread(s).

so, that's 3778.82 PPS average. Not bad I think.

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"IronMan" <str### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
>
> Hi, I'm French and I've been playing with POV since the early 90's, and I've
> just finished building a dual Xeon system based on thoses cheap chips found on
> eBay ($135 for both... amazing...). I used an Asus Z9PA-D8 motherboard, a couple
> of Cooler Master Hyper 212X, 32 Gb of regulard UDIMM DDR3 1600 from Crucial

> POV, the result is below:
>
> CPU time used: kernel 0.80 seconds, user 1992.38 seconds, total 1993.17 seconds.
> Elapsed time 69.37 seconds, CPU vs elapsed time ratio 28.73.
> Render averaged 3778.82 PPS (131.52 PPS CPU time) over 262144 pixels using 32
> thread(s).
>
> so, that's 3778.82 PPS average. Not bad I think.

Welcome to the club! What OS are you using?

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"jhu" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> "IronMan" <str### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> >
> > Hi, I'm French and I've been playing with POV since the early 90's, and I've
> > just finished building a dual Xeon system based on thoses cheap chips found on
> > eBay ($135 for both... amazing...). I used an Asus Z9PA-D8 motherboard, a couple
> > of Cooler Master Hyper 212X, 32 Gb of regulard UDIMM DDR3 1600 from Crucial

> > POV, the result is below:
> >
> > CPU time used: kernel 0.80 seconds, user 1992.38 seconds, total 1993.17 seconds.
> > Elapsed time 69.37 seconds, CPU vs elapsed time ratio 28.73.
> > Render averaged 3778.82 PPS (131.52 PPS CPU time) over 262144 pixels using 32
> > thread(s).
> >
> > so, that's 3778.82 PPS average. Not bad I think.
>
> Welcome to the club! What OS are you using?

I'm currently using Windows 10 Pro x64. I guess I could squeeze a little more
juice using Linux. Windows 10 is improved though, as performance is better with
HT turned on than with it turned off. I think this was not always the case in
the past with older version of windows. Some people seem to render the bench in
Povray 10 seconds faster under linux.
But, hey, I already get almost 100.000 MB/s memory bandwidth up from 24.000 on
an i7 3770K@4 Ghz, so I guess for this kind of money, the game was worth the
candle!
I remember rendering some scenes back in 1994 on a 386DX without a math
coprocessor, that would litterally take ages, now, the same scene renders in
just 2 seconds on the Dual Xeon rig... yep, we've come a long way...  ;-)

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