Any benches of the ATI 2900XT & GPU client?

griff30

griff30

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All I hear about is how the 2900XT is a FLOP but has there been any benches of the GPU client of folding@home?
I would love to see a price per folding power too, including a comparison of the PS3's Cell and the AMD and Intel procs.
A folding power per watt and folding power per $ would be nice.
Anyone else think this would be nice? I think with power usage this summer the power per watt would be beneficial to the "green" folders out there.
Maybe the 2900XT is a FLOP, but if it folds like 10 Cray computers then I might buy one or two in crossfire when the price lets up.
Tell me what you guys think. :)
 
Maybe all companies can put up or shut up! LOL
Really what point is having the fastest work units computed if your processor costs ten times more than the next to fastest and only marginally faster or if your processor costs more to run than the GNP of a small third world country?

I would love to see a set of benchmarks to find out what is the most "cost effective" DC farm and cost per wattage. Thus we could decide between a green DC farm and a mean DC farm! :D
If we get a poll running to see if enough interest is out there we can probably find someone to bench them all to exhaustion: GPUs, CPUs, Cell's, Hell even PPUs if Agiea wants to join the game. Lets throw them all in a cage match and see which one's Kung-Fu is better! :cool:

Anyone else have any ideas for a DC Bench Brothel Royal? I remember I used to wait up late into the night to read 3D Card bench tests the minute they were announced! Maybe someone can bring that kind of excitement back to hardware reviews.
I think I will post a poll of what anyone would like to see in the Bench.
My personal idea would be a Green prize, Mean prize and and Lean prize. (Power per watt, Most powerful and Most cost effective)

Any other ideas?
 
At the moment if you don't need a top of the range vid card then the GPU client is not worth running.
For the cost of the card you can probably get a nice C2D system the will pull a lot less power from the wall.
The numbers I've seen in the reveiws show the card pulling around 200 watts so add this the +150 watts for the rest of the system and your looking at around 350 watts minimum for the system.
At the moment the card gives around a 30% increase in points per day so thats around 1000 PpD.

A C2D system can easily do that and will only pull around 150 watts.

Once they get the drivers & client get updated for the new card then hopely the PpD will show a nice increase.
Also we need to see what Stanford does points wise when the release v6.

At the moment Dx9 is only single threaded so both client slow down by around 10% when running two copies of the GPU client.

The card I would like to see how well it folds once the drivers & client get optermized is the 2600.
It looks likes its going to be around 1/2 the price and 1/4 of the power draw of its big brother.

Luck ........... :D
 
griff30 said:
I would love to see a set of benchmarks to find out what is the most "cost effective" DC farm and cost per wattage. Thus we could decide between a green DC farm and a mean DC farm!
Click to expand...

Thats easy at the moment.

A C2D system running the SMP client under Linux64.
Depending on the overclock, Points per Day will be around 1,400 and power draw around 140 watts.
So your looking at around 10 PpW.

An AMD system running the same client will pull around the power but only get around 800 PpD.
So only around 5.7 Points per Watt.

A PS3 pulls around 200 watts and does around 900 PpD.
So thats 4.5 Points per Watt.

Looking at the GPU client means you need to add an extra 100 watts to the power draw per card for a 500 Points per Day increase in output.
So your looking at around the 4 Points per Watt mark.

For the classic CPU client your probably looking at around the 2 Points per Watt.

The only systems that could out perform the C2D's will be the Intel quad core ones.
But then the cost of buying them goes up a lot.

But that could all change when the clients get upgraded to v6.

Luck .............. :D
 
man, i don't even want to know how many watts my system pulls, guess i'll have to wait for this month's electric bill...

p4 2.4@ 3.4ghz...(down from 3.6, temps peaking over 50C, still well within limits though)
x1950pro...(the sapphire version which will not run correctly on less than 500 watt PSU with 32+amps on the 12v)

 
Tigerbiten said:
At the moment the card gives around a 30% increase in points per day so thats around 1000 PpD.
Click to expand...
Are you referring to the HD2900XT or the 1900 series? I haven't seen anyone post F@H results for the 2900 yet.
 
APOLLO said:
Are you referring to the HD2900XT or the 1900 series? I haven't seen anyone post F@H results for the 2900 yet.
Click to expand...

http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1031066106&postcount=13
Got it wrong.
Looks like a 45% increase in points over the x1900.
Going off 660 PpD for a x1900 then your looking at ~1000 PpD for the card.
Looks like the card will max at 110% increase so you'll be looking at ~1450 PpD.
Thats still going to be around 4.5 PpW.

Luck .......... :D
 
Thanks Tigerbiten!
Looks like C2D is the meanest and greenest.
Still like to see what that 2600 does PpW and maybe the next AMD incarnation we keep hearing about.

Now was that a 64 bit linux client or does it matter? I've heard of a linux client made speacially for DC, I will have to look into it.
 
Tigerbiten said:
Thats easy at the moment.

A C2D system running the SMP client under Linux64.
Depending on the overclock, Points per Day will be around 1,400 and power draw around 140 watts.
So your looking at around 10 PpW.
Click to expand...

wait a second... isn't a Watt, based on a per hour basis? so if you are producing 1400 PPD, and using 140 watts/hour... then you are actually only producing .42 points per watt per hour.

or do folders always compare PPD to Watts per hour? it just logically doesn't make sence to compare a daily number to an hourly number.

but either way, 10ppw or .4ppw, if you use the same method for each system it gives a general comparison. ;)
 
but for the power and price, i think it would make more sence to go the C2D route no? you can get a mobo for $50 and the E6320 is $165 on newegg... get an efficient PSU to run 2 of those combos and netboot them and you should be good to go
 
FLECOM said:
but for the power and price, i think it would make more sence to go the C2D route no? you can get a mobo for $50 and the E6320 is $165 on newegg... get an efficient PSU to run 2 of those combos and netboot them and you should be good to go
Click to expand...

Not to mention that add a gard drive and you have something that is actually overly useful. That is my biggest drawback right now in GPU/PS3 folding. I have SLI 8800's that just sit there drawing power 99% of the time. My PS3 with the exception of an occasionaly bought of God of War or an occasional movie just sits there folding. (IF I had an ATI card) both of these would have been money better spent (for doing nothing but folding) with a simple C2D setup that produces better PPD, lower Wattage, a bit cheaper to purchase, and I use my PC about 18 hours a day (vs 18 hours a month on the PS3 and 8 hours a month with the 8800s)
 
griff30 said:
Maybe all companies can put up or shut up! LOL
Really what point is having the fastest work units computed if your processor costs ten times more than the next to fastest and only marginally faster or if your processor costs more to run than the GNP of a small third world country?

I would love to see a set of benchmarks to find out what is the most "cost effective" DC farm and cost per wattage. Thus we could decide between a green DC farm and a mean DC farm! :D
If we get a poll running to see if enough interest is out there we can probably find someone to bench them all to exhaustion: GPUs, CPUs, Cell's, Hell even PPUs if Agiea wants to join the game. Lets throw them all in a cage match and see which one's Kung-Fu is better! :cool:

Anyone else have any ideas for a DC Bench Brothel Royal? I remember I used to wait up late into the night to read 3D Card bench tests the minute they were announced! Maybe someone can bring that kind of excitement back to hardware reviews.
I think I will post a poll of what anyone would like to see in the Bench.
My personal idea would be a Green prize, Mean prize and and Lean prize. (Power per watt, Most powerful and Most cost effective)

Any other ideas?
Click to expand...

Using what metrics? If you went with points-per-watt the entire benchmark would play to the mercy of how Stanford chooses to distribute points to the various clients, regardless of the amount of computation they produce. If you go by FLOPS (computational power), then the GPU takes the crown, but the value of the science-per-watt may be under-represented as there are some restrictions on the types of calculation the GPU can be used for. Just my two cents.
 
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