There are a lot of "critique my rig" posts

I wonder if this deserves its own category. I, for one, am thoroughly tired of “critique my rig” :tired_face:

But man people love posting these things over and over…

TL;DR you want lots of cores, as fast as possible, for the lowest price. Then add enough fast drives, and enough RAM to cover the number of plots those cores can do. Done. GOOD LAWD, PEOPLE! :pray:

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Let’s come up with a standard reply that won’t bash them for asking, but will help them figure it out. I can start with the example.

Hello! Use the information below to find how many plotters you can have in parallel. Each plotter needs:

  • 2 threads (This can be 1 also)
  • 3400 RAM
  • 256GB of temp disk space (A 2TB can run 8)

Reply back with the max number each component can support.

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Yeah it seems like there are some really simple guidelines everyone can use … and people are overthinking the hell out of this, lol :rofl:

For example, I stand behind this rule:

The absolute maximum number of parallel plots you can do on a given machine is equal to the number of cores and threads that machine has, added together, divided by two.

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Nice! I was trying to figure a way to say well 2 threads but you can go more than that…1.5 threads?

I’ll use that formula from now on.

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The absolute max is still a bit too high; on a 16c/32t machine, you’re probably not going to want to do 16 + 32 = 48, 48 / 2 = 24 parallel plots… but at least it offers a guideline for maximums…

Alright so Rev 2:

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When did the RAM and temp space needed go down so much? How did I not know this!?

Type of disk is important as well, that should be mentioned. For plotting you want SSD, ideally NVME M.2 SSD.

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How does adding cores and threads together make sense? Cores are physical, threads are virtual. Shouldn’t it just be at least 2 threads per plot and more if you want some speed gains?

Version 1.0.4 of the plotter. Also, only phase 1 uses the “threads” setting. Phase two through four use 1 thread.

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Version 3:

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Well, threads are like partial cores. Remember hyperthreading has been around a long time now and it’s pretty sophisticated at this point. So I’d say a thread is like half a core, as a rough rule of thumb, and I think that’s a fairly accurate statement.

A “Rig Feedback” category is a good idea

“Rigback”? I kid, I kid.

I always thought threads were tied to a core…as if each core were a bucket with threads in it.

  • CPU Intl i7-8700 - (6 core + 12 threads)/2 = 9
  • RAM: (46000 GB)/3400 = ~13.5
  • Temp Space: (4 TB)/256 GB = ~15.6

I’m going to try 9 at once…I blame you all if things explode :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Where is the 3400 for memory coming from? If the -b is not specified it will allocate 4600, will it not use that much during plotting?

When they launched v 1.0.4, the plotting resource requirements dropped significantly for ram and temp space

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Plotting is kind of complicated though. And people like to talk about their cars.

Core speed, thread coherency, CCX barriers, L1 & L2 cache sizes, RAM speed, multi-channel RAM, SLC vs TLC vs MLC vs QLC, on-die RAM & SLC cache cliffs, DC vs consumer drives, disk bandwidth, controller thrashing, PCIe lane contention, DMI bus vs direct-to-PCIe, bifurcation vs PLX.

But yeah, most people are stressing about “hai! how I mine 4 fish!” on a POS i7 and 16GB RAM.

不,我反对你的观点,你可以尝试使用最大线程数,同时开始2个任务或更多任务,确认一下结果,一定会令你大吃一惊!

No, I object to your point. You can try to use the maximum number of threads and start 2 or more tasks at the same time. Confirm the results. You will be surprised!