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vgame64 said:
2GB 533 DDR2 Non ECC SDRAM- 2x1GB

I have posted because I want to know (while I can still cancel it) if the computer will be good at handling scientific computing tasks along with computer science related tasks. I will be doing a bulk of my bioinformatics research on it, using the CPU's to crunch the data I will need processed.

I am not really into video editing or any of the traditional mac artsy stuff...so I guess that part of the mac will go wasted.

Thanks
You should order it with Error Correcting RAM instead of non-ECC. ;)
I do believe it's available for the quad.
 
Yeah...I was thinking of doing that, but beyond the obvious additional cost being a detracting factor; I still love playing games. And we all know ECC ram blows for gaming.

Regardless that was not my main reason (otherwise I'dve gotten a pc) but I hope for research purposes the ECC isnt much of a difference.


I might in the future pick up a few sticks of ECC ram and swap it out.
 
yenko said:
You should order it with Error Correcting RAM instead of non-ECC. ;)
I do believe it's available for the quad.

The ECC ram is available for the Quad but its 500 bucks difference between non-ecc and ecc ram,same ram sizes ..

non-ECC ram is $899.99 for a 2 Gig stick compared to ECC ram is $1435.00 for a 2 Gig stick ..

the ram has to installed as 'paired' install to have ram run @ full speed.

the prices are from crucial.com


iphil
 
vgame64 said:
Yeah...I was thinking of doing that, but beyond the obvious additional cost being a detracting factor; I still love playing games. And we all know ECC ram blows for gaming.

I bet you'll see frame rate drops of about 2% when gaming, max. I've never used a Mac with ECC, but I you can always turn ECC off in BIOS on PCs, so hopefully the new G5s can as well.
 
Congratulations on your purchase. You'll have a lot of fun with it.
Forgive my ignorance, but can someone explain to me what ECC ram is and how it differs from non-ECC? I've never heard of this before.
 
congrats on the purchase, it will be an amazing machine. heck, why not do some folding@home on one or two of the four processor cores, probably won't slow it down at all and it'll help the cause. check out the distributed computing forum for the details :p
 
Congrats on your purchase, you won't regret it (maybe your bankaccount does...). A G5 is perfect for scientific research, but your programs have to be optimized. Also there goes a rumor/fact that if you purchase lower latency ram, the speed of your G5 could increase with up to ten percent. So maybe it's an idea for not getting ram from Apple, but from a third party that has lower latency. The price would be about the same, because Apple's ram prices are really high.
 
For the scientific computing.

If you write your own code which can use mutiple processor, it will best machine next to the cluster with many processors. And even if you wrote program for the single processor. It will come up with better performance than the p4 processor (with right optimization for ppc).

Here are different story. If you use commercial program like matlab, mathematica (i don't have experience with mathematica on mac though), or something else originally written for x86 processor and ported for mac, ppc is not the first choice.

good luck.
 
welcome to the club! just made the same purchase minus the 7800gt card, i'm not that patient. I also purchased my ram from another vendor.. Apple sells their RAM for too much.
 
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