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YOU and your rigs video card

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(@armresl)
Posts: 1011
Noble Member
Topic starter
 

Reading builds on here, and chatting in person with people, I wonder why don't more people take better mind to put good video card(s) in their main examination PC's?

A lot of the people were noobs, so I guess it wasn't taught in college, but seasoned examiners saying that it does nothing for them.

Or decking out the computer with xeons, 6 cores, 64GB RAM, best coolers, SSD hard drives, Sata. USB 3, DL burners, etc. and then just use the onboard graphics.

If this is you why, if not you, what benefits are you seeing?

Are you cracking passwords, are you converting things?

 
Posted : 01/12/2012 6:03 pm
minime2k9
(@minime2k9)
Posts: 481
Honorable Member
 

Recently created new examination machines
2 x Quad core Xeon 3.3GHz processors
128GB Ram
1250w power supply
10,000 rpm drive 600gb system drive
Nvidia Quadro 2000 graphics card
USB 3, Sata 3 etc.
BL writer

Things that make the biggest difference (IMHO)
Processor clock speed (not cores!) - Basically if you run something like C4P or a search in Encase, you will notice your process in the resource manager shows a small percent (6% on an 8 core system in our case). This is because most things use a single thread an 6% is a single core maxed. Faster clock speed decreases processing time.
128gb ram as some things just eat ram (verifying in Encase etc)
SSD's don't make any significant difference to the performance except on startup but we tend to have machines on for 2 - 3 weeks easily so whats the point.
Graphics card - Wouldn't say it makes a huge difference to performance. We choose this one as we do a lot of image work and Quadro's are enough for that.
If you weren't doing a lot of image work, I can't imagine a graphics card would do much, unless you were cracking passwords.

 
Posted : 01/12/2012 7:32 pm
(@mscotgrove)
Posts: 938
Prominent Member
 

The biggest bottleneck is disk I/O.

A significant CPU user is hashing

Memory below a certain level slows everything down.

I don't crack passwords (or play video games) so I do not see that a video card is critical.

I would like to know if any one thinks that SSDs save much time, once the PC has booted?

 
Posted : 01/12/2012 8:04 pm
(@patrick4n6)
Posts: 650
Honorable Member
 

I buy a low end card for multiple headers as I work on dual monitors. You don't get that with onboard. Although recently AD announced that DNA will use CUDA, so it may be worthwhile if you crack passwords a lot - which I don't have much call for.

 
Posted : 01/12/2012 8:46 pm
minime2k9
(@minime2k9)
Posts: 481
Honorable Member
 

The biggest bottleneck is disk I/O.

I disagree…. I've used image files on a 4 disk raid 0 with a read speed in excess of 200mb/s, no speed increase (compared using tools such as IEF, C4All, encase searches etc)
Changing to a faster clock speed decreased time by 25 - 30% (CPU increase of 40%)
It seems a common misconception that disk I/O is bottleneck

 
Posted : 01/12/2012 8:57 pm
jaclaz
(@jaclaz)
Posts: 5133
Illustrious Member
 

I buy a low end card for multiple headers as I work on dual monitors. You don't get that with onboard. Although recently AD announced that DNA will use CUDA, so it may be worthwhile if you crack passwords a lot - which I don't have much call for.

Yes and no, I mean GPU's are a cheap method to get lots of flops (or megaflops or whatever, i.e. "computing power").
If you crack a lot of password, IMHO you'd better get low end graphic cards for your "main" PC and put together something like these
http//blog.zorinaq.com/?e=42
http//champagneandsecurity.wordpress.com/2012/02/06/what-hardware-to-choose-when-building-a-gpu-based-password-cracker-right-now-q1-2012/
as a "dedicated" password cracker.
Or, if you are not on a tight budget 😯 , this thingy here
http//www.renderstream.com/products/high-performance-computing/
http//www.renderstream.com/products/high-performance-computing/vdactr8/
looks impressive.

jaclaz

 
Posted : 01/12/2012 9:12 pm
(@mscotgrove)
Posts: 938
Prominent Member
 

The biggest bottleneck is disk I/O.

I disagree…. I've used image files on a 4 disk raid 0 with a read speed in excess of 200mb/s, no speed increase (compared using tools such as IEF, C4All, encase searches etc)
Changing to a faster clock speed decreased time by 25 - 30% (CPU increase of 40%)
It seems a common misconception that disk I/O is bottleneck

A 4 disk RAID-0, with a good (probably hardware) controller should be 4 times faster than a single disk. What you are saying is that with special hardware you can overcome the slow disk I/O issues. Most processes typically remain I/O bound.

Doing the original disk image will not be this fast

I suppose the question in this context is

"Is it better to attach a fast RAID, or a high end graphics card?"

 
Posted : 01/12/2012 9:15 pm
(@armresl)
Posts: 1011
Noble Member
Topic starter
 

8 GTX 680's that's what I'm talkin about

I buy a low end card for multiple headers as I work on dual monitors. You don't get that with onboard. Although recently AD announced that DNA will use CUDA, so it may be worthwhile if you crack passwords a lot - which I don't have much call for.

Yes and no, I mean GPU's are a cheap method to get lots of flops (or megaflops or whatever, i.e. "computing power").
If you crack a lot of password, IMHO you'd better get low end graphic cards for your "main" PC and put together something like these
http//blog.zorinaq.com/?e=42
http//champagneandsecurity.wordpress.com/2012/02/06/what-hardware-to-choose-when-building-a-gpu-based-password-cracker-right-now-q1-2012/
as a "dedicated" password cracker.
Or, if you are not on a tight budget 😯 , this thingy here
http//www.renderstream.com/products/high-performance-computing/
http//www.renderstream.com/products/high-performance-computing/vdactr8/
looks impressive.

jaclaz

 
Posted : 02/12/2012 9:47 am
minime2k9
(@minime2k9)
Posts: 481
Honorable Member
 

A 4 disk RAID-0, with a good (probably hardware) controller should be 4 times faster than a single disk. What you are saying is that with special hardware you can overcome the slow disk I/O issues. Most processes typically remain I/O bound.

Doing the original disk image will not be this fast

I suppose the question in this context is

"Is it better to attach a fast RAID, or a high end graphics card?"

Sorry, maybe I didn't make my post clear. Changing to a 4 disk raid 0 didnt provide any noticeable benefit to programs being run. As far as I can tell this is because a single CPU core is maxed without ever hitting the transfer speed of a single disk (roughly 70mbs)
Basically your CPU speed (not cores - most tools aren't multi-cored properly), so despite a process saying its only using 6% of your CPU and you have 80%+ free the CPU core speed is the bottleneck.

 
Posted : 02/12/2012 2:01 pm
jaclaz
(@jaclaz)
Posts: 5133
Illustrious Member
 

8 GTX 680's that's what I'm talkin about

Well, that might have been what you were thinkin about, but you never mentioned 'em till now.

jaclaz

 
Posted : 02/12/2012 5:10 pm
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