Best budget GPU for F@H?

[VirtualLarry]

Just wondering which of these budget beauties would be better for a F@H GPU2 crunching rig. Candidates are the 9600GT or the 8800GS. Or would the extra cost for an 8800GT be worth it?

Does memory size matter much? Supposedly, back on GPU1, the 512MB X1900 series cards had a performance advantage.

 

[petrusbroder]

Thanks VirtualLarry, for posting this.
I just had thought about the same graphics cards myself - we have some nice discounts (for Sweden... still it costs more than in the USA) going on these.

 

[jswjimmy]

The 8800gs/9600gso will be faster crunchers out of the 2. Memory dosnt matter at all on gpu2 from what ive seen. I would go for the 8800gt my self. My 8800gts 512 is chugging along nicely ^_^ .

I would back up these claims but jimmy is way too tired and is going to bed.

 

[drkicker]

I picked up my PNY 8800GT from the egg a few weeks ago for $119 shipped. It cranks out about 4450ppd. Unless you're getting the other cards much cheaper, I'm not sure you'll find a better ppd/$ card.

 

[PG]

You might not want to get an Nvidia card for folding now. Stanford just changed the points structure and Nvidia cards are doing worse in PPD now:

http://foldingforum.org/viewto...&t=5452&st=0&sk=t&sd=a

Hi,

I'm warning you, you will start to see a new series of projects coming out this morning. The proteins we're studying here are larger and in some sense more relevant to biology than anything we've run on GPU2 to date.

However, due to the larger size of the protein, you may see a PPD drop putting NV cards more in line with ATI production. This isn't due to different benchmarking or a different way to assign points, but rather we anticipate NV to be slightly less efficient with larger proteins than it has been with the smaller ones.

Dan

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It seems Nvidia cards are taking about a 30% hit on average, and they are running 3 to 5 C hotter. Plus many are reporting lockups and other problems.