Re: Any recommendations for new hardware (quadcore/GPUs)?
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg116965] Re: Any recommendations for new hardware (quadcore/GPUs)?
- From: Fred Klingener <gigabitbucket at BrockEng.com>
- Date: Sun, 6 Mar 2011 05:41:18 -0500 (EST)
- References: <iknsc6$k98$1@smc.vnet.net> <ikq8oa$853$1@smc.vnet.net>
On Mar 4, 3:43 am, Yves Klett <yves.kl... at googlemail.com> wrote: > um... forgot to explicitly mention that this would be about performance > when running Mathematica... > > Yves > > Am 03.03.2011 12:00, schrieb Yves Klett: > > > Hi, > > > there are not too many benchmarks for current (especially mobile) > > hardware to be found, so perhaps someone can give some information on > > their preferred hardware? > > > Two things interest me in particular: > > a) will a quadcore (i7) offer significantly more performance than a dua= l > > core? Of course this depends on the nature of the task... > > > b) Is there any difference between cheaper gaming cards (e.g. NVidia > > GTX) versus expensive professional cards (e.g. NVidia Quadro), > > especially concerning CUDA/OpenCL? > > > Any impressions are welcome. > > > Yves It's hard enough for me to piece together the capabilities and limitations of processors, cores (real and virtual), OS support, 32-or 64-bit, hyperthreading and the way all that relates to licensing conditions, but then having to pick apart the fractal layers of CUDA capabilities makes for a pretty complicated puzzle. I think the Wikipedia overview articles on NVidia GPU families is pretty good, and the tables describing layers of CUDA capabilities at least give some insight into the types of questions to ask when documentation examples don't work for you. True, none of that forms a basis good enough on which to order expensive hardware, but it can help with the shopping. I'd like it if WRI would post an authoritative guide on all this with emphasis on how Mathematica interacts with it. I think WRI isn't the type of company that would certify particular configurations, but we could hope. Bummer about the new MacBookPro going to AMD Radeon graphics. Fred Klingener