Folding with gpu2 on mixed cards

[Peter Trend]

Hey,

I wasn't sure if this should be in hardware or DC, but I just need to know: if I buy a card by one manufacturer, and an SLI board, and then buy a card with the same gpu but made by a different manufacturer, will I be able run folding@home gpu2 on them both? The specific cards Im looking at on ebay are Palit GTX 260 and BFG GTX 260 OC2.

I know I need SLI disabled to fold but I wouldn't mind trying a few games with this too, but it's not the most important thing, and one GTX 260 will run most games well.

Would appreciate a speedy response as Im trying to get all the parts together for gpu farm, but don't want to bid on anything useless!

 

[theAnimal]

Manufacturer does not matter.

 

[Peter Trend]

Thanks theAnimal!

 

[Assimilator1]

Any thread that even remotely relates to DC is OK in here

Good luck on your bidding :thumbsup:

 

[Peter Trend]

[Edit: Moved this post to its own thread].

 

[Assimilator1]

How come you got some 8800s, IIRC they are considerabley slower than the 260s.
Cheaper?

 

[Peter Trend]

Yeah exactly. 260s still an option for a future board as and when I get more cash, I'm building a case for 3 ATX motherboards and will hopefully network them together render-farm style. PPD per watt was a consideration, hence the Seasonic Gold (expect that to out-live the farm and still be useful). I think 260s and 8800s are both pretty good for folding efficiency. Paid between £45-£55 for each 8800GT 512, plus the price of the coolers.

I'm also hoping to learn some OpenCL soon enough, I have an idea for a parallel processed, GPU accelerated audio DSP program. Been doing a bit of C/C++/C# in my Audio Technology BSc just wondering what's possible. So it would be useful to have some Nvidia cards I can test stuff on too. There is a paper on using OpenCL for FFT on the G80 architechture which could be useful too. I'm a bit skeptical of my ability to use C well enough but no harm in trying I guess, the experience will help me with the other stuff we have to do! I'm not exactly a Visual Studio natural! lol

 

[dajeepster]

Yeah exactly. 260s still an option for a future board as and when I get more cash, I'm building a case for 3 ATX motherboards and will hopefully network them together render-farm style. PPD per watt was a consideration, hence the Seasonic Gold (expect that to out-live the farm and still be useful). I think 260s and 8800s are both pretty good for folding efficiency. Paid between £45-£55 for each 8800GT 512, plus the price of the coolers.

why don't you just get a pentium4 while you are at it....

j/k

 

[Assimilator1]

Heheh

Peter
I know zilch about programming! lol, you're a load smarter than me their if you can even consider it , good luck on that front.

How does the PPD/£ work out on 8800 vs 260?

Btw I only twigged that you're also in the UK when you said £s , good to see another fellow Brit here . How long have you been in TA?

 

[Peter Trend]

Hey! Been folding for TA since I got a 3870 and found out about f@h about 2 years ago, reading Anandtech Forums basically helped me sort everything out and later showed me how to build a quiet water cooling setup which works brilliantly. Then I was busy with University and had to stop folding as I lived in a 10'x8' box with inadequate ventilation, and kinda lost interest. Recently picked it up again while I'm back home but the PC is needed for recording sometimes so I can't fold 24/7. R700 seem far too inefficient really.

Onto the figures anyway:

PPD/£ is actually better on the 8800GT, at around 73.6 with stock cooling. For GTX 260 figures I've seen put it at closer to 58.9 PPD/£. Add the aftermarket coolers at around £30 for each and they both come down to 46-48 PPD/£. Some of the GPU coolers I got were only £20 so it would actually work out a bit better.

PPD/mW is 51.8 for GTX 260 but only 22.5 for 8800GT 512. In hindsight I should probably have gone with GTX260.

To compare, 9800GX2 is about 45 PPD/mW, and GTX 295 is 40 PPD/mW.

Not seen anything that beats a £55 8800GT for PPD/£, or that beats GTX 260 (216) for PPD/W. Aftermarket coolers complicate things though. I guess people should aim to get the most efficient GPUs to reduce waste, and not support inefficient products, but it's difficult to work out. Wish I'd done these calulations properly before I purchased!

BTW it says I joined Anandtech Forums in 2009, but I thought it was 2008 :s

Disappointment both sides of the Atlantic today with the football. ITV HD didn't even show us the first goal, they ran an advert 4 minutes into the game!

 

[Assimilator1]

Yea I heard about that, dumb ITV!

So the 8800s do well on ppd/£ but not ppd/mW, conflicting requirements. I wonder how long it would take to make back (via leccy savings) the extra money spent if you bought a 260?
How many ppd do the 8800 & 260s(216) get?

 

[Peter Trend]

Oops forget about the mW part! I did my maths wrong in Excel. The figures are 44.4 PPD/W for 8800GT 512, 51.8PPD/W for GTX 260 (216), 45.0PPD/W for 9800 GX2 and 40.1 PPD/W for GTX 295.

This means the 8800GT isn't as bad as we previously concluded.

That's assuming 4053 PPD for the 8800GT 512 and 6778 PPD for the GTX 260, from this: http://forum.xcpus.com/xtreme-folding-home/12939-gpu-ppd-comparison.html

It's a bit dated but the comparisons are probably still useful.

Unfortunately I had to pull my 4870x2 out to fit my TI firewire card back into the PCI-e x1 slot for my second audio interface. Can't reliably have both on one firewire chip. Have to able to use this PC for the job I intended it, so I'm pausing folding for a while. I also still use XP x32 for recording.

Just updated to ATI 10.5 (XP x32) so I could get the ATI Stream SDK 2.1 to work with OpenCL. Now Youtube videos cause white and black vertical lines that won't go without a restart. Strange. I don't know if the driver or the SDK is the problem. Think I might not fold until my power bill comes, the Kill-a-watt says £34.48 over 28 days (344 kWh @ 10p). Wish I'd got that wind turbine to work!

 

[Assimilator1]

Lol
~£34/mth is a fairly hefty bill, did you really try a wind turbine?

 

[Peter Trend]

Lol
~£34/mth is a fairly hefty bill, did you really try a wind turbine?

Yep that's 4870s for ya, a waste of energy! I did build half a wind turbine but I struggled from lack of any metal-working tools (i.e a welder), and I doubt I would have got planning permission anyway given the proximity of my garden to a public footpath. I did carve some 3' diameter blades, and make a 3-phase permanent magnet generator. Bearings were from a skateboard wheel, I should have used something more substantial like car or bicycle wheel bearings though.

One day I will move somewhere remote and build a couple of 15' turbines for a folding farm, haha!

 

[Assimilator1]

That would be cool

Btw I have a MIG welder , although it's a rather weedy one, think it's max is 80A.