Budget GPU Cruncher

[deerslayer]

I have one motherboard that has no dedicated GPU in it right now. I'd like to pick one up for it for under $100 (used). What should I be looking for in this price range? The box is running Ubuntu if it makes any difference.

 

[Assimilator1]

What project are you looking at crunching?

Milkway uses double precision so quite old ATI GPUs do well against many modern high end-mid range cards, e.g the HD 5850 vs 7000 series is only beaten on DP power by the 7870 XT with the Tahiti LE core. Even the HD 4850 (& up) beat the sub Tahiti cores, but they are much more power hungry.
For 2nd hand cards the HD 5850 is best value, naturally the 6950s are better, just cost more. That's all just for MW though, but probably for any other DP powered projects.

Not a clue on the latest cards though, nor Nvidia GPUs, but either camp watch out for DP power it's very poor on many modern cards. If your chosen project uses DP of course .

 

[deerslayer]

Right now I'm running Rosetta, SETI, and Milkyway. However, afaik rosetta can't be run on GPU.

 

[Icecold]

If I had a hard cap of $100 I would be looking for a GTX 480, GTX 570, or an AMD 6950. It may take some time to find one for $100 or less but that's what I would shoot for and they are all solid on DC projects.

 

[deerslayer]

It's a squishy cap. Got a tax return coming soon

 

[Assimilator1]

Squishy, lol

I bought my 5850 for £66 from ebay thinking I'd got a reasonable deal (it was at the bottom end of typical ebay prices), then I visited a UK forum I hadn't been to for a while, & found them going for £35-40!! And 6950s for what I paid for the 5850! Damn!

Anyway, I've found for sometime now that you get more bang for your buck (by miles generally) buying a 2nd hand earlier generation card than any new 1, although you have got to factor in power usage too for us crunchers . e.g the 5870 is a similar speed & cheaper than the 6950 but uses quite a bit more power.

Re Rosetta, do they have any plans to?
Is any 1 of those 3 projects you mentioned more important than the others to you?

 

[deerslayer]

Rosetta. I run the other two for fun/to keep my video cards busy.

 

[GLeeM]

It's a squishy cap. Got a tax return coming soon

Depending on how "squishy" the cap is ... and if you could wait for prices to come back down ... a 7950 does a MW@H WU in 46 seconds for 160 points!

Your 7770 takes about 660 seconds for 160 points.

 

[Ken g6]

So, biological projects are important to you? Would you be interested in GPUGrid or Folding@Home? If GPUGrid, consider that it requires an Nvidia GPU. Folding@Home can use both kinds of GPU, but it isn't a BOINC project.

 

[Neurodog]

Getting AMD cards at the moment would be expensive since many people are buying new and used cards for GPU mining crypto coins. My local kijiji site has none, but has 3 ads from people looking for used cards to buy.
Unless the seller is unaware of the inflated prices.

I would get a 5850 if you can find one!

 

[deerslayer]

Yes. I ran F@H for a while. Haven't checked in to GPUGrid yet.

I missed a killer deal on an AMD card yesterday by about 25 minutes

@GLeeM - Is there ever an end to the upgrading? When the prices come back down I'll probably be shopping again. The cards I've acquired recently are hold-me-overs. Although I really like the 560 ti I picked up from Sunny. The last video card I bought before the 7770 was a 9800pro though. I've been away for....a while.

 

[GLeeM]

Is there ever an end to the upgrading?

You have to learn to control it and do little bits at a time

My main rig is i7 920 from five years ago ... I did upgrade the GPU from GTX275 to GTX560 Ti core 448 a year ago.
Last summer I upgraded the old computer to the 7950 and am hoping to upgrade that Core 2 Duo and mobo/ram to maybe an i7 4770 soon.

 

[deerslayer]

The last cpu and motherboard I bought before my FX 6300 was socket 939. The only reason I did that upgrade was because an error in ordering parts for my nephew's computer.

 

[Assimilator1]

I only just sold my old Q6600 a few weeks ago, had that ~5yrs.
Last new card I paid for was a 1950 pro , that died under warrantee which paid for the HD 4830 (now in my sons pc). IIRC I've always bought 2nd hand cards for 2nd rig, now doing it for my main rig.

You got me beat on the S939 though, by a year or 2 I guess .

Does Rosetta have any plans to release a GPU app?

Neurodog
What's with the sudden craze over coin mining?? And why only AMD cards?
Hi btw

 

[deerslayer]

No idea about Rosetta and gpu.

I'm thinking second hand on the video cards is the way to go. In the past I've always bought new, and tried to keep it $150 or less. But when I stopped crunching there was no crunching on GPUs either.

 

[biodoc]

Rosetta has no plans for a GPU app. They are constantly making changes/improvements to their CPU app so they claim it would too difficult for them to maintain both.

 

[Assimilator1]

Anyone know which cards run well on SETI? Does it matter which make?

Oh btw Deer slayer, re folding, atm Nvidia cards are fastest there, although that's on the verge of changing. Once F@H drop the older core GPU app (err pre 17 IIRC) the gap between the 2 camps is much smaller, don't know which is after overall but their is a benchmarking thread in the F@H GPU forum section.

 

[deerslayer]

What is the trick to get MW@H to download tasks on my ubuntu box? Maybe I don't have the right video driver? I have no idea. I'm linuxtarded. Maybe I should just buy another windows 7 key. I was trying to avoid that since the only thing I plan to do with this rig is crunch.

 

[Assimilator1]

What cat drivers are you using?
Maybe it's not a Linux issues but a driver vs MW issue??