Quietest, most power eficient GPU for Folding

[dkm777]

Hi guys,

Since it's summer now I had to stop all production because of the heat, but as soon as autumn comes I'll be crunching in full swing. During this period of downtime I was thinking of putting together a dedicated DC rig from parts I have lying around. I managed to piece together a combo of P45 mobo with an E8400, a total of 8GB RAM and an old OCZ 500W PSU. Very weak setup, I know. So I got an idea that this could be a core for a GPU cruncher. What kind of GPU (new or used) would be best for such a system? I'm mostly looking for power efficiency, low noise and heat. Is this at all possible? Are all the worthwhile crunching GPUs power hungry, fire spewing monsters? I know my GTX570 is 😀.

 

[ZipSpeed]

Something in the GT 240, GTS 450 or even GTX 550 Ti range would be my choices.

 

[dkm777]

GTX550 Ti looks interesting. The MSI Cyclone II in particular - has a big fan that looks exactly like ones on my Twin Frozr III. I imagine it should be whisper quiet on such a low power card. Also, regarding crunching only - are there any tricks to reduce power consumption without affecting PPD much? I read somewhere that Bitcoin miners underclock the VRAM on their cards.

 

[ZipSpeed]

Like CPUs, you can scale down the clocks and voltage until you hit a PPD and power consumption you are comfortable with.

Or you can try running the card with stock clocks and see how far you can undervolt while retaining stability.

 

[blckgrffn]

I would look for a DDR3 GTS 450 - it should be cheap and offer 5-8W power savings out of the box compared to a DDR5 equipped model at least. You don't need the extra ROPS and memory bandwidth provided by the 550 Ti, likely.

Also, the GT 640 looks might interesting. Slow for gaming, but might be decent for crunching. Haven't seen any PPD numbers for it. Low power/noise.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5969/zotac-geforce-gt-640-review-/11

Looks like a bit of a compromise - it is more powerful than the GT440, but slower than the GTS 450 by a nearly equal amount in F@H. On the flip side, it is ridiculously power efficient by comparison.

I'd still keep a look out for the 640.

BTW, freaking awesome of Ryan and Ganesh to realize how important F@H is when talking about video cards! 🙂

 

[Sunny129]

Also, regarding crunching only - are there any tricks to reduce power consumption without affecting PPD much? I read somewhere that Bitcoin miners underclock the VRAM on their cards.

underclocking the VRAM is certainly an option. how much it reduces power consumption (and therefore temperature) will highly depend on the project/application you're running on the GPU. also, please note that underclocking the VRAM can seriously reduce crunching efficiency of your GPU, again depending on the project/application you're running on the GPU. i think the reason bitcoin miners can get away with it is b/c bitcoin mining requires very little memory bandwidth.

as an example, Milkyway@Home requires very little memory bandwidth due to the fact that the GPU only communicates w/ the CPU at the very beginning and end of a task - for the time period that elapses between those moments, the entire task is crunched on the GPU. as such, the VRAM can be underclocked significantly without sacrificing crunching efficiency. right now i run Milkyway@Home on my HD 6950, and the VRAM is underclocked from the stock 1200mhz to 675mhz (using MSI Afterburner). before the latest version of MW@H Separation tasks required an AMD driver update, i was able to use CCC to underclock the VRAM all the way down to 200mhz or so.

now take either Collatz Conhecture or POEM@Home for instance. downclocking your VRAM on a GPU running either of these projects will result in significantly reduced efficiency (and therefore dramatically increased run times). obviously they require quite a bit more memory bandwitdh than MW@H. also, please be aware that GPU stats monitoring software doesn't always tell the whole story. for instance, a single POEM@Home task only consumes 3-5MB of VRAM on my machine according to MSI Afterburner, but run times suffer noticeably if i downclock the VRAM. so while an individual POEM GPU task consumes very little memory at any given instance, the GPU must constantly be communicating w/ the CPU for the duration of the task.

BTW, freaking awesome of Ryan and Ganesh to realize how important F@H is when talking about video cards! 🙂

now if only they put more emphasis on other major DC projects like SETI@Home, Einstein@Home, GPU Grid, etc. AnandTech has been putting compute benchmarks in their video card reviews for quite some time now, and yet the results they show do absolutely nothing to help us crunchers...

 

[dkm777]

I'm mainly going to fold with this GPU and sometimes will do PrimeGrid whenever there's a race. Well, it's time to start saving monies for a quiet case and a graphics card.

 

[blckgrffn]

I'm mainly going to fold with this GPU and sometimes will do PrimeGrid whenever there's a race. Well, it's time to start saving monies for a quiet case and a graphics card.

:thumbsup:

You'll probably want to make sure that the card you choose also has Cuda 1.3 (I believe?) so it can fully participate in any of the PrimeGrid events, then 🙂

If someone knows more about that, please chime in!

 

[dave_the_nerd]

With a 500w PSU and a C2D, you should be able to run a ~200w TDP GPU. Depends on the PSUs 12v rail, of course, amperage and age.

List of AMD and nVidia cards by TDP.

http://www.eggxpert.com/forums/thread/493743.aspx

List of AMD and nVidia cards by F@H PPD.

https://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=rb3KvyPVHqPNLcXWI6gMcBg&w=100&h=750

The PPD sheet is sadly incomplete. Looks like a 460 will do 100 PPD/Watt. 560Ti will do a little better.

Alternatively, a pair of low-draw midrange GPUs could work, if you have 2 x16 PCI-E slots. A pair of 450s should (barely) work w/ your PSU, and would do about 24k PPD.

 

[dkm777]

I only have a single PCIe 16x slot. I'ts an MSI P45-C51 mobo. The GTX560 might be too noisy, at least my Asus DirectCU II 560 Ti is. But some say that the reference cooler as used by EVGA and Zotac is relatively quiet.

 

[Sunny129]

The GTX560 might be too noisy, at least my Asus DirectCU II 560 Ti is. But some say that the reference cooler as used by EVGA and Zotac is relatively quiet.

even if by chance the single-fan coolers on reference EVGA's and Zotac's are quieter than your ASUS Direct CU II's dual-fan cooler at idle, there's no way that'll be the case under load (while folding).

in my experience, the only OEM non-reference coolers that are truly quiet enough for noise freaks like us are the Windforce coolers from Gigabyte's line of GPUs. everyone raves about how effective MSI's Twin Frozr II, Twin Frozr III, & Hawk series of coolers are, and i can't argue with that...but i will say that while they may do an excellent job of keeping GPUs cool, they sound like leaf blowers while in action. i can't speak for the coolers on ASUS's DCII & DCII TOP series GPUs b/c i've never experienced them myself. that said, if you want your GPU to remain virtually silent, you're going to have to invest in a beefier cooler (such as a triple-slot multi-fan cooler from Arctic Cooling)...and even w/ a guaranteed-to-be-quiet GPU cooler, you still might not be happy with your temps if your case doesn't breathe well enough.

 

[blckgrffn]

Yes, we need Kepler mid-range GPUs for folding ASAP. Even if the PPD factor doesn't change much, power consumption looks to be almost half for the same performance. Needing to move that much less energy away from the GPU is what we really need for budget friendly quite and cool operation.