[Herts] Another dead distributed processing project, maybe, and advice sought on an upgrade.

[David Honour]

Nvidia is good, 6600GT cards are fine, If you can still get them. Dodge 
ASROCK.

On Tuesday 22 May 2007 15:06:15 Steve Clark wrote:
> Just read this
>
> http://n0cgi.distributed.net/cgi/dnet-finger.cgi?user=bovine
>
> Basically, RSA Labs are abandoning their challenges, so there will be no
> more prizes or even confirmation of solutions. The distributed.net
> people are canvassing for opinions on whether to continue the RC5-72
> challenge anyway. I'm running that as well as their OGR project and I
> know at least one other LUGger runs it too.
>
> This follows on from Grid.org shutting down their public project
>
> http://www.grid.org/
>
> I intend to concentrate on Folding at home, but I was having some issues
> with it on my current PC. I may take it up again when I upgrade.
>
> My upgrade plan is to build a new PC and use my current drives in it as
> they are good enough. I was thinking of the following parts:
>
> * AMD Athlon X2 4600+ or faster, depending on current prices
> * Asus M2npv-vm motherboard. I'm having second thoughts about this as I
> don't really need it to be micro-ATX and may need more than 2 PCI slots
> * Probably 2GB of DDR2. I gather it's best to run a matched pair for
> maximum speed
> * Antec NSK4400 case. Looks to be good quality and reasonably quiet
>
> I don't play games, but I want more processing power for things like
> audio and video processing. On-board graphics would probably be adequate
> and nVidia seems to be the best supported. I would consider a reasonably
> priced ATX board with a cheap PCI-E nvidia card if anyone wants to
> suggest one. If I go that path then I could go for an Intel chip (4300?)
> as the motherboard chipset will be less important.
>
> Budget is around 250 quid. I've paid around that for a stick of RAM in
> the distant past!
>
> I'm currently running a Duron 1200 with 786MB and on-board GeForce2
> graphics, so this is a big step up. This PC will only be running Linux
> (Kubuntu), so Vista/XP compatibility is irrelevant.
>
> Any suggestions folk would care to share?