Hi friends, new to the forum but not to Chia…
My mind is spinning with different avenues for investigation and I am hoping some smarter people can give me a course of action for tuning my system. I have two plotter systems (one Intel and one AMD). Currently the Intel is greatly outperforming the AMD system despite have less core/threads, equal RAM, and one less 2TB NVME. I will list out the specs:
Intel Plotter (25 plots per day w/o additional tuning)
CPU: Intel I9-10900 (10 core/20 threads) @ 2.8GHZ
Mobo: MSI Z490-A Pro
RAM: 64GB (32x2) DDR4 3600 Corsair Ripjaw
NVME(s): 2x 2TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus
PSU: 750w Thermaltake gold rated
OS: Ubuntu 21.04
Threadripper Plotter (25 per day…looking to improve)
CPU: AMD 2970WX (24 cores/48 threads) @3.0GHZ
Mobo: ASRock X399M Taichi
RAM: 64GB (32x2) DDR4 3600 Corsair Ripjaw
NVME(s): 3x 2TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus
PSU: Corsair RM850x
OS: Ubuntu 21.04
The AMD at 4 cores per phase 1 (max 2 phase 1 per NVME) and 15 max plots in parallel, I am running into completion times of 12-14 hours. In comparison, my Intel runs 8 jobs in parallel with the same phase 1 restriction , finishes around 8-9 hours. I don’t see how that is probable given the obvious disparity in power.
What I’ve gathered so far from reading other threads and stack overflow:
- Check that the RAM frequency is set correctly in the BIOS
- Check that my CPU clock speed is actually as advertised (I am in the process of determining this)
- Check that the NVME speeds aren’t being throttled down to SATA speeds somehow
Things I’ve done so far to try to troubleshoot / improve performance:
- Increased thread count for phase 1 from 4 to 6
- Set RAM from 6000 to 8000
- Lowered the max number of phase 1 plots per NVME from 3 to 2
- Increased the time between plots from 90 minutes to 120 minutes and staggered job start times (1 per NVME) from 0 minutes to 30 minutes.
- Upgraded CPU fans to a Noctua air cooling setup
- Installed heat sinks for each NVME
I am struggling with next steps. I don’t want to halt plot production on my threadripper for a bunk test. Based on the provided information, is there a direction you’d begin investigating? Do I have a hardware bottleneck based on my mobo and/or CPU? I greatly appreciate any insight this great group has to offer!
TLDR; Intel faster than threadripper, what do?