Bonus is in soooo a GTX 680 or an AMD 7970?

[Vengor]

I'm just not sure what one to get. I know both are great for gaming but I was going to let the Folding@Home be the tie breaker here. However there isn't a working folding client for the GTX 680 yet. I'm leaning toward the GTX 680 but I can't seem to find any in stock any where. Then there is the proven 7970 in stock and fast......

What do you guys think?

 

[Vengor]

I have lurked here for more than a decade but I'm really torn trying to decide what one to get.

 

[Chiropteran]

It's been clear from all reviews and even nvidia themselves that they sacrificed non-gaming performance to make the 680 a great gaming card. So I wouldn't expect it's folding performance to be nearly as high as a 7970.

 

[Vengor]

Yeah and i would believe that however Nvidia is working with Stanford on the new client.

...We are working with Stanford on a new Folding@Home client that takes maximum advantage of our new Kepler architecture. Stay tuned for more info!


Amorphous

So when there is a direct comment on that very thing from Nvidia I have to wonder just what is up their sleeve.

 

[Hallowed_Dragon]

I'm just not sure what one to get. I know both are great for gaming but I was going to let the Folding@Home be the tie breaker here. However there isn't a working folding client for the GTX 680 yet. I'm leaning toward the GTX 680 but I can't seem to find any in stock any where. Then there is the proven 7970 in stock and fast......

What do you guys think?

IMHO, you should buy whichever is cheaper where you live.
F@H has always been better on nVidia hardware, but this time around I have no idea since GTX 680 is not that good at GPGPU. I don't think you can go wrong with any of this 2 cards. I can say from personal experience that 7970 is a really capable card, but I won't recommend it if it is 50$ more expensive than the 680.

 

[RussianSensation]

It's been clear from all reviews and even nvidia themselves that they sacrificed non-gaming performance to make the 680 a great gaming card. So I wouldn't expect it's folding performance to be nearly as high as a 7970.

That's not a logical conclusion because you have automatically assumed that compute performance = Double precision performance. Folding @ Home benefits from many fast CUDA cores, not gobbles of DP performance. If this was Collatz Conjecture, MilkyWay@Home or PrimeGrid, it would be different. What's the score that HD7970 gets in F@H? 7000 points at stock clocks? That would put it around 9000-9500 @ 1200mhz using that data point. The added compute performance doesn't seem to benefit HD7970 for this program unless there is a specialized OpenCL client that takes advantage of its double-precision capabilities?

GTX460 768 beats an overclocked HD6990 and is >2x faster than a single HD6970.

If Double precision performance mattered, this would have never happened.

GF104 chip has 1/12th the SP performance in double-precision.
Cayman has 1/4th of SP performance in DP.

GTX460 768mb = 113 Gflops of DP performance
HD6970 = 676 Gflops of DP performance (6x more)
HD6990 = 1,352 Gflops of DP performance (12x more than a GTX460)

Based on this estimate a 1200mhz HD7970 should roughly get 8000-10000 points, if that.

It looks like Folding @ Home primarily benefits from many fast CUDA cores and memory bandwidth. Therefore, GTX680 should crush a 7970. Considering a GTX460 > HD6990 despite 12x lower DP performance, I can't see how HD7970 can possibly outperform a 1536 SP @ 1058 mhz GTX680 with same memory bandwidth as a GTX580.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

What kind of GPU are you currently using? If it's anything like a 5870, 6950, gtx560ti or higher and you're only playing at 1080p then skip the current 28nm gpu's and wait for the next round.

 

[Bobisuruncle54]

Haven't Nvidia cards had the advantage in F@H for a while now?

Isn't it Bitcoin mining where AMD has the clear advantage?

Edit: Looks to the case. GTX 680 all the way.

 

[Kenmitch]

...We are working with Stanford on a new Folding@Home client that takes maximum advantage of our new Kepler architecture. Stay tuned for more info!

There you go....When in doubt wait and see

Or just get the GTX680 if it's what you want.

 

[Vengor]

I'm currently running a single Diamond 5770 factory clocked at 930

 

[Grooveriding]

http://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=21049

Take a look there and at a minimum wait till there is a Kepler client. It sounds like the 680 will not be a good folder. If folding is a priority I would get a 580 which is still a decent card for gaming. Is there a folding client for the 7970 ? If so and it's faster, then get the 7970.

Or better yet, wait for a Kepler client and see. Reading that thread they seem to feel it will not be as good (worse) than the 580.

 

[Chiropteran]

Does Folding @ Home require dual precision? Doesn't look like it. So the added compute of HD7970 is worthless.

GTX460 768 beats an overclocked HD6990 and is >2x faster than a single HD6970.

If Folding @ Home primarily benefits from CUDA cores and memory bandwidth, GTX680 would crush a 7970. Considering HD6970 has nearly 4x the double-precision performance of GTX580 and is 4x slower, it looks like this program doesn't really benefit from DP performance.

I don't know, my interest is bitcoin mining but this is where I heard of folding problems as well...

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=73681.20

Folding @ Home is broken because nVidia broke it. The cards have way less DP/SP floating point performance than a 560 Ti. It's part of nVidia's new tactic of making their lower end architecture useful only for gaming.

In any case, it seems like if the folding client doesn't work at all on a GTX 680 something is pretty messed up. A 7970 is certainly infinitely better for folding until the 680 gets a working client. Seems like waiting is the only safe thing to do, or you could find that even with the working folding client the 680 is slower. And it may take months before that client is released.

 

[Vengor]

I hate waiting I have this curse that hangs around that if my bank account is much over zero after bills are paid some thing comes up that sucks all of it up plus an extra ten. =)

 

[vshah]

I hate waiting I have this curse that hangs around that if my bank account is much over zero after bills are paid some thing comes up that sucks all of it up plus an extra ten. =)

lurker fishing! you're mine!

i would get the 680

 

[abaez]

Damn! 12 year lurker with all his posts in one day. Nice. Lucky thread.

 

[smackababy]

I voted the 680, but I'd go with whichever is cheaper in your area. Most likely that will be the 680 when it is in stock. However, if you're in a time crunch, the 7970 isn't a bad choice. Also, the Folding@Home will come.

 

[Vengor]

LOL yep lurking for 12 years does that make me one of the biggest lurker ever caught so far?

We keep an informal, internal record. At 12 years and 1 month between registration and first post, you are the current record holder
-ViRGE

 

[moriz]

Having owned both, I'd say gtx 680 all the way. Definitely a boost in gaming performance, especially in bf3 and swtor. The latter has its fps triple.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

cpu folding dominates gpu folding, at least last time I checked it did.

I wouldn't let it factor into your decision making tbh.

2 470s at 900 core = 28k PPD + a 9800GT = 5k PPD + i5-2500k @5GHz getting taxed feeding gpus = 10k PPD for a total of 43k PPD. 800 watts~

1 i5-2500k @ 5GHz on Ubuntu doing Big Adv = 45k+ PPD. 180 watts~

You'd be better off putting together a i5/i7 z68 no gpu box together for dedicated folding.

 

[RussianSensation]

I don't know, my interest is bitcoin mining but this is where I heard of folding problems as well...

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=73681.20

Ok but you have to understand why certain cards run faster in certain applications. You can't just assume that because HD7970 runs faster in some compute tasks that it will do so in other tasks.

Also, the comments from that thread don't even make any sense.
I quote: "Folding @ Home is broken because nVidia broke it. The cards have way less DP/SP floating point performance than a 560 Ti."

That 2nd sentence is 100% wrong.

SP performance
-GTX680 has nearly 3x more than GTX560 Ti (3090.432 GFLOPS vs. 1262.592 GFLOPS for the 560Ti).

DP Performance
- GTX560 Ti = GF114 is 1/12th = 105 Gflops
- GTX680 = GK104 is 1/24th = 129 Gflops

GTX680 has faster compute performance than GTX560Ti in both single and double precision. Again, it would have to be gauged on a per program basis. In PrimeGrid, GTX680 is really weak.

Also, there is no indication that F@H benefits from DP performance. So their assumption that DP is important may not even be true in the first place.

 

[Elfear]

For gaming the 680 is 5-10% faster so it would be the smarter choice if the 7970 is still more expensive (although prices have dropped to $529.99 for HIS brand). Of course you probably wouldn't notice the added performance unless you play games that Nvidia does abnormally well in. If you don't mind waiting a few weeks go 680, otherwise a 7970 is a very capable card.

 

[JAG87]

LOL yep lurking for 12 years does that make me one of the biggest lurker ever caught so far?

Yes, and you are ruining your reputation so STOP POSTING!!!!!

Get the 680 and don't look back.

 

[Vengor]

I was looking at benches and seen that in most cases they were pretty close to each other so I was thinking that the folding would be my tie breaker. I'm not worried about the CPU at this time. I'll still be using my AMD 960T that I have OC'ed and unlocked to 3.5 for folding stable currently and shut off the extra cores and clock up to 4.0 for gaming. I had got the 960T, system board and 16 gb of memory before word of a bonus leaked out.

 

[RussianSensation]

I was looking at benches and seen that in most cases they were pretty close to each other so I was thinking that the folding would be my tie breaker. I'm not worried about the CPU at this time. I'll still be using my AMD 960T that I have OC'ed and unlocked to 3.5 for folding stable currently and shut off the extra cores and clock up to 4.0 for gaming. I had got the 960T, system board and 16 gb of memory before word of a bonus leaked out.

The cheapest quiet 7970 is $550. You can almost get a GTX680 and a used GTX460 for folding on the side for that much! If you are gaming at 1080P, keep in mind that your CPU will bottleneck you in some games such as SKYRIM. GTX570/HD7850 are good cards at $250-260 for 1080P unless you need the fastest BF3 performance or want to treat yourself to the best single-GPU card

 

[Vengor]

No Skyrim, It will be for Tera Online and Diablo 3 mainly. Also a smattering of other MMOs like Wow and DDO from time to time.