Hi,
I'm planning on putting together a system which will be used exclusively for my PhD work, which involves computational physics (simulating transmission electron microscopy techniques and calculating errors in the results under different conditions). I have a fairly complex program which was originally written in C++ by a colleague, but has been extensively reworked by me for my specific purposes. I do not have a solid background in programming and major changes to the program can take a lot of time that I do not have available to spare.
The program only utilises a single core, and I want to avoid rewriting the software to utilising multithreading. My main question is about cpu choice. I have read numerous forum posts about ideal cpu choice for this sort of application, but none that explain clearly why a specific cpu would be better than another. One that pops up regularly is the Intel 980X, though these comments are from old posts and may be outdated.
I currently have a core2duo (e8400), and this has a clock speed of 3.00GHz. The Intel 980X has a clock speed of 3.33GHz. My somewhat naive understanding of this would imply to me that if I only use a single core, this would only be 10% faster than my current processor, but if multithreading was used, it would be more than three times faster because of the increased number of cores. Would this analysis be accurate?
I am working on a budget, so I probably wouldn't even be able to afford a processor that good, and if I was getting less than a 10% increase in productivity, it would not be worth upgrading at all.
In addition to any explanatory answers to the question above, I'd also be interested in specific recommendations if anyone has any My budget is likely to not be much above AUD1000. I will be accessing the computer remotely, so I do not need a any input or output devices, nor a dedicated video card or sound card. This means that the majority of the $1000 can be allocated to motherboard, cpu, and ram, and the motherboard can be very minimal in terms of expansion slots. I don't know what would be the best ratio to split the budget for each component, but I'm thinking that $700-$800 could probably be used for the cpu.
Thanks in advance for any help. Cheers.
I'm planning on putting together a system which will be used exclusively for my PhD work, which involves computational physics (simulating transmission electron microscopy techniques and calculating errors in the results under different conditions). I have a fairly complex program which was originally written in C++ by a colleague, but has been extensively reworked by me for my specific purposes. I do not have a solid background in programming and major changes to the program can take a lot of time that I do not have available to spare.
The program only utilises a single core, and I want to avoid rewriting the software to utilising multithreading. My main question is about cpu choice. I have read numerous forum posts about ideal cpu choice for this sort of application, but none that explain clearly why a specific cpu would be better than another. One that pops up regularly is the Intel 980X, though these comments are from old posts and may be outdated.
I currently have a core2duo (e8400), and this has a clock speed of 3.00GHz. The Intel 980X has a clock speed of 3.33GHz. My somewhat naive understanding of this would imply to me that if I only use a single core, this would only be 10% faster than my current processor, but if multithreading was used, it would be more than three times faster because of the increased number of cores. Would this analysis be accurate?
I am working on a budget, so I probably wouldn't even be able to afford a processor that good, and if I was getting less than a 10% increase in productivity, it would not be worth upgrading at all.
In addition to any explanatory answers to the question above, I'd also be interested in specific recommendations if anyone has any My budget is likely to not be much above AUD1000. I will be accessing the computer remotely, so I do not need a any input or output devices, nor a dedicated video card or sound card. This means that the majority of the $1000 can be allocated to motherboard, cpu, and ram, and the motherboard can be very minimal in terms of expansion slots. I don't know what would be the best ratio to split the budget for each component, but I'm thinking that $700-$800 could probably be used for the cpu.
Thanks in advance for any help. Cheers.