AMBER Archive (2001)

Subject: Re: Bang for the Buck

From: R. M. Fesinmeyer (rmf_at_u.washington.edu)
Date: Sat Feb 10 2001 - 05:10:46 CST

Many thanks to everyone who responded to my initial message. I think I have
to agree with the opinion of the majority, that it would be nice if a dual
Athlon motherboard were available. Another promising option would be the
dual P3 board built on the 815E chipset. Unfortunately, it appears it will
be limited to 512MB. In addition to the anandtech.com and arstechnica.com
website that have been mentioned, I'd also recommend the 2cpu.com website;
they do a decent job of tracking the dual-x86 market.

Let me ask one related question to bring the 'brainstorming' to a practical
solution. What would you do with a limited budget of, say, $5000. I know
that's rather less than many of you work with, but it's probably in line
with those who "dabble" in MD calculations or use Sander to introduce NMR
structures to the amber forcefield.

This budget is large enough to allow for the more "exotic" P3 motherboards
and also allows for construction of small, 100Mb ethernet-based Athlon
clusters.

Again, thank you for your comments thus far, as well as any provided in
response to this e-mail.

Robert Fesinmeyer