FAH question on GPU hardware and cost vs reward

[hpglow]

Howdy all I have been a member of team Anand for some time my handle for FAH is KingSalami. First question I have is...

Does the AGP version of the 1900pro work and work well with FAH?

I have three computers that I could put one into, so that brings me to the next ? ...

Would I be rewarded with more points if I just built a low end quad core xeon and ran the linux SMP client?

If anyone could chime in on this I would appreceate it.

 

[BlackMountainCow]

First of all, welcome to the forums! :beer:

If a card is AGP or PCIe should not matter from what I know. But keep in mind that the GPU client is only available for Win, not Linux.

As to if you'd get more points with a Xeon, that heavily depends on the power of the other 3 PCs you could throw in. The SMP is still beta, and as such, it can always fail on you, hang, make troubles and what not. So in the end, you potentially could become very frustrated with a newly built Xeon that just won't run the SMP client, for whatever reasons.

The guy you should really ask about this is GLeeM, he's our F@H guru

 

[imported_Nacelle]

If you're going to get a x1900pro, be sure it's the 512mb version. If no one plays any games during the day you can expect near 3 wu/day. Recently each wu has been worth 330.

 

[hpglow]

Thanx... Two of computers that I have with agp slots are socket 939 Athlon 64 X2 3800s and the other is a P4 prescott. So I'm guessing that the concensus here is to add 3 x1900 pro 512mb and that would yeild the best results?

Sorry for spelling errors is there a spell checker in this forum?

 

[GLeeM]

I am not the guru with these clients

CupCak3 is (and others) hopefully they will post!

Here is what I know: the GPU client is also beta, but it has been tested in beta for longer than the Win SMP client. I think the Linux SMP client is still beta too, but has been out for about as long as the GPU client.

I do know that on the currently available WUs the Linux SMP gets better PPD than the Win SMP by a little bit.

The GPU client uses one CPU core and the video card.

Have you tried an SMP client on the X2s? I think they might be able to finish WUs before the deadline.

I'm just trying to kill time here waiting for CupCak3 or someone else to post. He uses both clients and would know exactly what would be best for your setups. Please be patient!

EDIT: because there are others besides CupCak3 that know these clients well too.

 

[hpglow]

I just set up the Windows SMP client two days agao and it is about 90% done with the first unit. Both of the two machines get gamed on about two to four hours a day so they arnt dedicated folding boxes. They are both overclocked from the standard speed of 2.0GHZ to 2.2GHZ.

 

[CupCak3]

With a 256mb x1950pro or xt you should expect around 520-600 ppd at stock speeds.

Do you have either of your x2's overclocked? You have a chance of not making deadlines if you use the winsmp client.

If I were you, I would try to run the linux smp client on your x2 machines using vmware if you need to have windows running. Then run an x1950 on the P4. You can then compare the two PPD. My quess is that this will be your optimal PPD. But with the x2's, you can also run a single cpu client on one of the cores. My overclock am2 x2 yields ~1000 PPD with the linux smp client. You may be able to save a several hundred bucks and yield more PPD

On a side note:

linux vs win smp: From what I've read there can be a considerable PPD difference between the two clients on the same machine. Sometimes only 150-200 PPD, but others over 600PPD. This is also running the linux client under vmawre which can give about a 5% or so performance hit as opposed to just running the client in linux.

Hopefully this helps


//edit my x2 # 2.72 gets over 1100 PPD on 2604