2 Workstations or Quad Server
 

I have two aging dual processor workstations (3ghz Xeon & Opteron 248) which don't give great value for money running fluent (1s 3p licences), so time to upgrade the hardware.

Does anyone have experience running fluent on a quad processor type server? Does the shared memory performance outweigh the additional cost?

Also do dual core cpu's provide any real benefit for running fluent (when fluent licences are limited).

Not sure what spec to aim for, so any ideas most welcome. Thanks CM.

Re: 2 Workstations or Quad Server
 

Something you will have to decide is where the quad is going to live. True rackmount quad servers are so noisy that you don't want it anywhere near you. It seems as if the 4-way Xeons are no match for Opteron 8** family CPU's, but 8-series Opterons are very pricey compared to the 2-family.

A curious experience I had was with using Fluent on an 8-way Itanium, compare to several 2-way Itaniums. The 8-way was miserably slow, evidently the SMP was more of hindrance than help there.

In terms of footprint and convenience, I reckon a dual-CPU, dual-core Opteron workstation setup would be omptimal, but it's not going to give you much performance advantage over your current setup. The fastest dual core Opterons are at 2.6 GHz, vs. your current 2.2. So a 20% improvement is nice, but not earth shaking.

Re: 2 Workstations or Quad Server
 

I think just a second operton workstation might be the way to go, certainly cheaper.

I've only experience with XPpro, is there much gains to be had with a move to 64 bit linux? There seem alot of choices there, any recomendations?

Thanks

Re: 2 Workstations or Quad Server
 

Does anyone have any experience wrt dual core chips and Fluent?? Is it something to embrace or not worth the extra cash?? Thanks