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GPU for folding

V

vaio

n00b
Joined
Sep 26, 2006
Messages
35
I have never been much interested in the graphics card side of things with computers, as I don't much play games.

However, I want to try out gpu folding as an alternative upgrade path.

Unfortunately 3 of my 4 rigs are AGP so they'll have to wait.

I have one PCI express enabled board though and was wondering:

A: What is the minimum gpu spec for a folding GPU?
B: What would be a good price/performance GPU?

I would appreciate advice as to the minimum spec I should be looking at, and if you could make recommendations for the lower and middle tiers that would be great.

Thanks for taking the time. :)

Edit: A shortlist of possibles
here
 
It's great to hear that people are interested in this. Currently Stanford is going to be releasing an open beta of the GPU folding client on October 2nd if the Q&A continues to go well. ATI is really the only GPU that the client will run on, since the program is heavely dependent on the number of shader units. Since the program isn't out yet, it's tough to suggest what is the best and most cost efficient and best price to performance GPU. Come back in a week and I'm sure we'll have a lot more information.

The gpu folding will be a nice addition to your currently folding rigs.

Edit: Here is a quote from the High Performance FAQ:
Which GPUs will be supported? We have not made any final decisions on this issue. However, our software will likely require the very latest GPUs from ATI (especially now that the newest ATI GPUs support 32 bit floating point operations). Previous work of ours used NVIDIA GPUs as well, but we have now concentrated on ATI GPU's as they allow for significant performance increases for FAH over NVIDIA's GPU's (at least at the current generation). Our GPU cluster has 25 1900XT's and 25 1900 XTX's. We find a considerable performance increase of 1900XT's even over 1800XT's, due to the architectural differences between the R580 and R520 GPU's. Our code will run on R520's, but considerably more slowly than R580. We're very much looking forward to trying out R600's.
Click to expand...

 
Thanks, I've just edited my initial post to store linky with possibles??? :)
 
I have my team :)

Looking at a Sapphire 1900XT.....Hope that's up to the job......gee these graphics cards can get pricey
 
RPhArrow said:
From Stanford's FAQ, it doesn't look like x1600's will cut it.... http://folding.stanford.edu/FAQ-highperformance.html

RPhArrow --\\\-------------------->
Click to expand...
No reason, architectually, why an X1600 can't fold if an X1900 can. Standford may deliberately lock the X1600 out of the client, but the architecture of X1600 and X1900 is exactly the same on ATI's end, the X1600 merely scaled down to 4 pipes/12 pixel shaders from the X1900's 16/48.
 
DougLite said:
No reason, architectually, why an X1600 can't fold if an X1900 can. Standford may deliberately lock the X1600 out of the client, but the architecture of X1600 and X1900 is exactly the same on ATI's end, the X1600 merely scaled down to 4 pipes/12 pixel shaders from the X1900's 16/48.
Click to expand...

I think the x1600 has 12 pipes.
 
12 pixel shaders, yes. Not to be confused with texture math units/render output pipelines, of which the X1600 has four, and those are the parts of a GPU that are customarily called "pipelines"

Unfortunately, GPU architecture is very arcane and comples in this day and age :(
 
DougLite said:
12 pixel shaders, yes. Not to be confused with texture math units/render output pipelines, of which the X1600 has four, and those are the parts of a GPU that are customarily called "pipelines"

Unfortunately, GPU architecture is very arcane and comples in this day and age :(
Click to expand...
And here you all thought Doug only knew about Hard Drives.... ;) :p
 
Ooh I just realised.......my board with onboard graphics has a PCI express slot, so I can potentially upgrade 2 rigs :)
 
DougLite said:
No reason, architectually, why an X1600 can't fold if an X1900 can. Standford may deliberately lock the X1600 out of the client, but the architecture of X1600 and X1900 is exactly the same on ATI's end, the X1600 merely scaled down to 4 pipes/12 pixel shaders from the X1900's 16/48.
Click to expand...

Does the X1600 have branch prediction like the X1900s do? Stanford seems to think this is key in order to getting a higher performing client.
 
Lyquist said:
I really hope that I can fold on my new X1600.
Click to expand...


I am waiting to see. If it puts out anywhere near as much firepower as I hope, I am going to forgoe the Conroe box and just get an X1600 AGP.



 
mwarps said:
I am waiting to see. If it puts out anywhere near as much firepower as I hope, I am going to forgoe the Conroe box and just get an X1600 AGP.
Click to expand...
I'm excited to see how this GPU folding goes. It may end up that dedicated folding machines have the cheapest processors and limited memory combined with higher-end video cards. This might mean that gamers can creep up on the big corporate farmers!
 
if it ends up that an x1600 cam put up some nice number, I may just get myself one :)
 
How would one go about join the [H] folding team, I noticed there are 33 already. I just got a new rig up and stable(Screens soon) 3.2ghz dual core, 2gig dual channel ram, x1900xt 512.
 
Set the team to 33 and pick your own user name.
ex.

33
mnscout

^
|
Those are mine.

 
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