Recent news

StreamComputing posts X86-workstation buying guide for OpenCL developers

January 07, 2013 by Tony DeYoung

This article by StreamComputing intends to help developers choose the best machine (price/performance) for OpenCL-development. It covers base memory, SSDs, motherboards, CPUs, and GPUs.

Conclusion & suggestions from the article

Before I give suggestions what to buy, this is the order of how I would spend my money on a new system:

1. Memory
2. SSD & RAID
3. Motherboard
4. Discrete GPU
5. (Embedded GPU)
6. CPU (Yes, I put CPU at the last place)

Memory: fastest available, 16GB. SSD: fastest that could hold your data (or buffer it). Motherboard is where all the time will get in, but I'm sure it's worth it.

For the single GPU it is also an AMD, now NVIDIA backs out of “budget compute”. For dual-GPU I cannot make a good suggestion. Things might change when Intel releases Haswell in Q2 this year, and NVIDIA feels pressured and gets OpenCL back up.

Even though I have an Intel-processor in my main machine, I suggest to get an AMD processor. You get or 4 CPU-cores extra or a powerful embedded GPU. If you need PCIe 3.0, then Intel is the only choice.