Data Compression PC

[encode]

Thinking about a new PC.

Check out the specs:

CPU
Intel Core i7-2600 (3.40GHz) 8MB LGA1155 BOX - 4 cores
or
Intel Core i5-680 (3.6GHz) 4MB LGA1156 BOX - 2 cores

Memory
DIMM 4Gb DDR3 PC10660 1333MHz Kingston (KVR1333D3N9/4G) x 4 = 16 GB

Not sure about faster DDR3s like 1600 MHz, 1800 MHz ... 2133 MHz

Graphics
Zotac 1536Mb GF GTX 580 AMP! ZT-50102-10P 2xDVI, Mini-HDMI HDCP Ret
or
GigaByte 1536Mb GF GTX 580 GV-N580D5-15I-B 2xDVI, Mini-HDMI HDCP Ret
or
Leadtek 1536Mb GF GTX 580 2xDVI, HDMI Ret

In other words, GeForce GTX 580, not sure about exact brand though. It's the most expensive thing.

Motherboard
Any motherboard that will be suggested by the retailer. Probably some Intel or GigaByte.

Other stuff
Any tower/case with needed parameters and descent built quality.

No soundcard needed - I have a pro soundcard - EDIROL FA-66.

Recently updated my monitor - now it's 23" Samsung, pro series, FullHD wide screen.

Also updated my mouse - now I have a wireless mouse by Logitech with funny nano-receiver called Unifying.

Not sure about separate SSD for Operating System or additional SATA3 HDD. Probably will take something or not...

[willvarfar]

Disk? Seems awfully important to consider too. 14GB RAM - you can never assume that's enough and you won't need to hit disk other than load/save and that load/save will soon come from page buffers in kernel

The strength of SSD is parallel read/writes - disks are on-par with SSD if you have sequential reads or writes from a single thread, its only when you start doing lots of both at the same time that the disk goes worst-case and the SSD stays nice and flat performance and wins massively.

[osmanturan]

Considering SSD, you may consider Corsair Force series. Or as another option, you can use RAID-0 on regular HDD. Someone claims that you can achieve ~500 MiB/sec sequential speed (with async I/O) which is more than enough I think. As to CPU, I would prefer i7 with no doubt. Because, we're moving multi-threading trend and you can optimize your programs with multi-threaded optimizer (I'm sure you can't notice 0.2 GHz difference). Also, consider slightly overclocking. Maybe Shelwien can drop something about this Please let us inform about your computer specification and performance metrics (i.e. some compressor tests) when you setup your new computer.

[JangoFatXL]

CPU, RAM and Graphics look very good. You should buy an SSD. Nothing gives you so much speedup like an SSD. SSDs with Sandforce Controller are very good, like this one: http://geizhals.at/eu/a534347.html But be carefull, dont buy a new one with 25nm - the older ones with 35nm are faster! If you want an SSD on SATA3, your only choice is the crucial real ssd: http://geizhals.at/eu/a509870.html

If you need even more speed, you can buy an SSD on PCIe: http://geizhals.at/eu/a536445.html
If you are insane, you can buy one of the following ones : http://geizhals.at/eu/?cat=hdssd&xf=221_1000&sort=r

[JangoFatXL]

I forgot to mention: SSDs are NOT as reliable as HDDs. Backup VERY often your data if you use them

I read some crazy stories (feedback from amazon buyers). Someone wrote he deleted the ssd and installed a new operating system over the older one. Next day he had the old OS after booting up

[encode]

In addition, SSDs are quite expensive!

The best 2 TB HDD with 64 MB cache costs about the same as an average 100 GB SSD... At some point, I think we should wait for some time, to let the SSD technology raise up and be more reliable and cost efficient.

Also, I'm thinking about mini-ITX form factor. It's small, silent and I can use Core i5/i7. But I can install just about 8 GB of RAM (it can be enough though) and due to weak power supply unit I cannot use a powerful graphics card!

http://www.thermaltake.com/product_o...CID=C_00001513

[joerg]

@encode:
you wrote "In other words, GeForce GTX 580, not sure about exact brand though. It's the most expensive thing."

why not using the new Nvidia Geforce GFX 560 Ti ?

Gigabyte GV-N560OverClock-1GI or Gigabyte GV-N560SuperOverclock-1GI or Palit GeForce GTX 560 Ti 2048 MB ?

this would save a little money i think ...

or
if you want really the maximum performance you can wait for the GTX 590:

http://www.nordichardware.com/news/7...ual-gf110.html


rumours about GTX 590: 3x DVI + 1x miniHDMI

GPUs: 2 x GF110 , Cores @ 650MHz , Shader @ 1300MHz
GDDR5: 2 x 1536 MB = 3072 MB @ 1000MHz

Unified Shader: 2 x 512 SP = 1024 SP , Memoryinterface: 2 x 384-bit , TMUs: 2 x 64 , ROPs: 2 x 48

PCI-E: 2 x 8-pin PCIe

TDP: 375W == "Max. consumption" = "A lot"


best regards

joerg

[osmanturan]

In addition, SSDs are quite expensive!

The best 2 TB HDD with 64 MB cache costs about the same as an average 100 GB SSD...

Yes, I agree. SSDs are really expensive especially in my country and I can only find a few variety of brands (only Intel, Corsair and Kingston). If we're discussing about a high-end desktop (which seems obvious), I would surely buy 2 x 1 TB HDD and setup them as RAID-0. But, for my F series sony vaio laptop (i7 740QM 1.73 GHz 4 cores/8 threads, 8 GiB RAM, GeForce GT330M, 500 GiB 7200 RPM HDD), I'm not sure what can I do...

[Shelwien]

@osmanturan: you can try overclocking it with http://cpufsb.de/ (also there're separate tools for nvidia), maybe replace RAM with faster (or add more if there're slots, but its unlikely).

@encode: SSD only can speed up the random access to files, which only happens at OS boot (maybe also game boot).
Other feature that i like is that I can kick it around without breaking.
But windows always writes to the system partition, so I found it hard to use it for file storage.
Obviously, timing the compressor while it works with files on system partition makes no sense too.
So I think that a separate small drive is necessary for system, and it makes sense to use SSD there.
Also I don't see what's your problem with overclocking. It doesn't require messing with hardware these days -
you just run the bios setup and change the frequencies there. And it really matters, for example, my i7-930
(originally 2.8Ghz) works at 4.2Ghz - 24/7 under full load.
That's imho the main reason for buying desktop PCs these days... otherwise its better to just buy a notebook
and attach external mouse/keyboard/display to it.
Also its not really a "Data Compression PC" if you can't check durilca's LTCB result on it

[osmanturan]

@Shelwien: Well, yes overclocking can be a option. But, I suffered a lot from excessive heating. For example, I had a MacBook Pro which dual-boot (Win7 + MacOSX). By running genetic algoritm to mimic a photo from large number of a small pattern around one week, I simply made my macbook running like a truck And IT guys couldn't fix it. Exactly same story prior to macbook - asus laptop. That's the main reason why I bought that laptop - it's the coolest and fastest laptop I've personally tested under heavy load (even faster than a Dell Allienware which has exactly same configuration). As to RAM, it's at the edge of i7 740QM limit Higher memory is not supported by CPU

Seems I've to wait until Sandybridge become mainstream and also SSDs get cheaper

[encode]

Also its not really a "Data Compression PC" if you can't check durilca's LTCB result on it

Okay, PC with 16 GB RAM is a data compression PC. And, say, a week later Shkarin will run his DURILCA with 28 GB of RAM - thus this 16 GB PC will be outside data compression area...

Anyway, mini-ITX has just two slots for DDR3.

Also, probably, the GeForce GTX 580 is not the best idea.

Gainward 2048Mb GF GTX 560Ti Phantom DDR5 2xDVI, HDMI, VGA RTL

It looks cool - 2 GB of video memory at reasonable price!

[Shelwien]

1. As to Shkarin - I doubt that he makes much more money than you, so yeah, if he'd manage to show a significant result with 28G of RAM,
then that would be the new requirement for compression PC

2. As to ITX etc - just get a notebook already

3. So how do you use that video memory? Afaik there's even no ramdrive for it

[encode]

Some defined amount of video memory can be required by a game.

GeForce GTX 560 Ti costs just as low as half of a price of GTX 580! And GTX 560 is new - year 2011!

Regarding Notebook. I cannot find a notebook that will be even close to posted configuration above. And even that TOP notebook costs double price of my mini-ITX idea...

MiniITX Silverstone Sugo SG07B 600W

That thing will support modern video cards!

[Matt Mahoney]

Fig. 2 in LTCB suggests that compression to 100 MB will be possible on a machine with 64 GB or 128 GB memory. Just my guess. Once memory is 100x corpus size then other things start to become more important, like what algorithm you use.

http://mattmahoney.net/dc/ltcbmemory.png

[JangoFatXL]

Overclocking is definitely an option, especially with new sandy bridge CPUs. All you need, is a really good cpu heatsink the right cpu+ mainboard and information how to do this.

[Black_Fox]

Coolermaster Hyper 212+ was the king of performance/value for a few years already, when I bought it in 2009. It reportedly can be used on Socket 1155.
I have Q6600 overclocked from 2,4 to 3,0 GHz and can't get over 70 degrees whatever the load is. And that's some old manufacturing process, Sandy Bridge could get higher

EDIT: Is this forum able to use ANY non-ASCII characters at all? Degree sign is international character!

[giorgiotani]

I agree with the suggestion of buying SSD, at least for partitions for system(s), IDE, and most used virtual machines, and a partition for data for testing purposes, while a large good quality disk (or a small NAS) can keep the "bulk" storage.
Also I second the suggestion of plenty of RAM so you could also consider about creating one or more RAMdisks for even faster test data access.

[encode]

Will try to get my new PC within a week. A final configuration will look like:

Enclosure
MiniITX Silverstone Sugo SG07B 600W

Motherboard
Intel BLKDH67CF H67 S1155 2xDDR3 1xPCI-E16x, DVI, HDMI, DP, 1xeSATA, 2xSATA6Gb/s, 2xUSB3.0 GLAN mini-ITX

CPU
Intel Core i7-2600 (3.40GHz) 8MB LGA1155 BOX
Or Intel Core i7-2600K if it will be available.

Memory
DIMM 4Gb DDR3 PC10660 1333MHz Hynix x 2 = 8 GB
Or Kingston branded modules.

Hard disk
2000Gb Seagate (ST32000641AS) 64Mb 7200rpm SATA3 Barracuda XT

Video card
Gainward 1280Mb GF GTX 570 GS DDR5 2xDVI, HDMI, DP RTL

DVD/BLURAY
BD?R/?RW NEC BC-5500H-01 (slim) OEM

[osmanturan]

Why did not consider RAID-0 option for HDD? Could you share your reason?
Edit: I guess, because of miniITX

[encode]

This mini-ITX motherboard has support for RAID stuff. However, I need no RAID. I will use just one HDD.

[Nova]

@ Encode even though i am not an expert but still i just bought a new HDD just a month ago and after looking at a lot of reviews this is the best one i could find i think you should look at it.Its the best drive for performance and reliability
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136579
Though its not SATA 6Gb/s.

[encode]

I'm just a huge fan of Seagate! All my hard drives are Seagate ones! Looking at specs your HDD is quite the same as I mentioned. Same 2 TB and 64 MB cache. However, since the listed above motherboard has SATA3, I will go for SATA3...

[encode]

Although, Western Digital disks have a large cache (64 MB) even with lower capacity drives - i.e. 640 GB HDD.

Currently, I have a system drive for Windows/Software and an external one as an archive.

I guess, I will get a small HDD (or probably SSD at last) for system and software, and, later an external USB 3.0 high capacity hard drive for archive.

[encode]

10000rpm hdd:
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=20

[encode]

http://www.corsair.com/solid-state-d...ce-series.html

[Surfer]

How about SAS?

[Piotr Tarsa]

I think that throwing a huge amount of RAM is better than buying super fast disks. SSDs have reduced longevity compared to HDDs. I suggest buying two big 7.2k RPM HDDs, not RAID-ing them or maybe RAID-1 - RAID-1 offers the same read speed as RAID-0 AFAIK, offers better safeness of data and RAID-0 is irrelevant today as disks are huge and cheap.

RAM is orders of magnitude faster than SSDs, imagine that you have loaded an entire ISO of double-layer game DVD to RAM

If you care about application startup time then you can buy a small SSD and use it to store mostly read-only files.

FYI I have 8 GiB of RAM. Games loads slowly only on first try/ startup. When level is reloading (for example I've died in game) all relevant data is cached in RAM so reloading is really fast. So huge amount of RAM matters if you're playing games where you're dying frequently.

[Nova]

10000rpm hdd:
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=20

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/pro...s/cheetah-15k/

[Nova]

May be you should look at the tests of this review
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...tion,2630.html

[osmanturan]

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/pro...s/cheetah-15k/

It's a server-level HDD. You need a motherboard which provides SAS interface.