The best BOINC PC for the dollar... is not really a PC.

It's a Sony Playstation 3 with a Linux distro on it. Several distros will install on it, and it even has a custom distro (Yellow Dog) that was developed with Sony's help and will take advantage of many PS3 features that others won't.

The PS3 has 7 CELL processors that will do 218 GFLOPS, and costs about $400. In contrast, an Intel QC6600 and motherboard will cost about $500 and only does about 12 GFLOPS or 20 GIPS (integer ops.) An installed OS will be able to access 6 of the 7 CELLs and thus get about 180 GFLOPS if the PS3 isn't doing anything else.

Been seriously considering getting me a PS3 just as a BOINC machine, and would be good Linux experience. But the $ factor is currently preventing it.

Also I'd need to research that BOINC would work properly. :^) But given that Folding@Home has a PS3 client now I don't see why not, and that's even without a full Linux OS present.

Been seriously considering getting me a PS3 just as a BOINC machine, and would be good Linux experience. But the $ factor is currently preventing it.

Many are waiting for PS3 being really usable as a Boinc machine. Currently I'm aware of two things to be seriously considered: 1) availability of SPE-aware Boinc applications, and until this is more-or-less widely solved, 2) power requirements and cooling.

Peter

That's unfortunate that no projects are currently taking advantage of it (other then Folding@Home). Much untapped potential.

That's unfortunate that no projects are currently taking advantage of it (other then Folding@Home). Much untapped potential.

To untap the potential they need to rewrite the whole application. Programming for a PS3 and taking full advantage of its Cell processor is quite different from programming for a normal CPU.

---

...
Let's throw the ball. My C2D T7200 clocked mostly at 1.33-1.66 GHz (trade-off between speed and fan loudness) seem to earn 360 CS daily, or 15 CS hourly. At 1.33 GHz the whole machine consumes between 49-54 Watt (depends on the display backlight off/on), thus 0.3 CS/Watt. For CS/Dollar, put your own numbers in to calculate it.

Peter

Another ball:

My Q6600 (Linux, 4GB) overclocked to 3GHz earns between 1,800 and 3,500 depending on which applications I run on it (my preferred applications generate the least, but I run them regardless). The same box with XP on it would give entirely different results for the same applications, probably in the range 2500 - 3500. So between 75 and 145 CS/Hour.

I'm not sure what the wattage is, but it is using a high efficiency (85%) 400W power supply. My wild guess is 300W when overclocked versus 250W at normal, but that's no more than intuition. It could be very different. I therefore can't give an accurate CS/Watt figure, but it could be in the region 0.6 to 0.3 CS/Watt/Hour depending on which applications, and plausible wattage figures.

---