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Noob Question - AMD or Nvidia?

H

HumanHunter

n00b
Joined
Jun 7, 2013
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Hi Everyone. I have been a regular reader of HardOCP.com for at least 15 years! About 2 mounts ago I got the chance to support Team 33's F@H efforts.

1st: a hardware question: AMD or Nvidia? I was given a former corporate demo system and I am in the process of building into a dedicated F@H box. System specs: Intel 980X Extreme Edition CPU w/Intel tower HSF, Asus Rampage II Extreme mainboard (EATX,) 6Gig Corsair 1866 RAM (3 x 2Gig,) and a EVGA Nvidia GTX470 video card. I'm looking to sell the GTX470 and get a newer card (GTX660 or AMD 7850/7870.) The software I'm running is "FAH GPU Tracker V2." I'm running SMP with 6 cores on the CPU with "Enable -bigadv" turned on. On the GPU side I've turned on "Enable GPU3" and "Add -advmethods." (Hope the is correct!) So for my setup, which video card would give me the highest output - AMD or Nvidia? Currently I'm generating about 40 WU's per week. (291 with four failures so far (bad SATA cable.))

2nd: A little about myself: Born in New Orleans, currently residing in Beaverton OR (just outside of Portland.) I have been running SETI for at least 20 years and have over 6.1 million credits! Do to health issues (myself and family members) its time to do some DC for something that has a much better chance of finding something in my lifetime. So I hope that by generating units I can become a valued member of "Team 33!"

Thanks in advance for helping me out.

HumanHunter:cool:
 
seems like AMD is what is all the rage, but i couldn't tell you either way.

980x can't run bigadv and it should be 12 threads - 1 for each GPU you plan on running.

if you are running ubuntu/linux, i would recommend you look into the musky install in the guides section.
 
Are you stuck with windows, or are you willing to give Linux a try?
 
Welcome to [H]. I see you are new to the forums, and not just the DC sub-forums.

We are happy to help you, and we are glad that you will be DC'ing to improve humanity. Again, we are glad to have you with us.
 
Welcome to team [H].

wrt to your question some quick comments based on my initial experience:
Highest performance: NVidia GTX Titan
Highest performance per $ over 3 years (with my energy prices): NVidia GTX 780
Highest performance per purchase $: AMD 7970

regards,
Andy
 
The answer to that question is a little in flux at the moment. With the GPU cores currently in public release, the answer would be Nvidia hands-down; I think the point disparity between a 660 and 7870 on those cores is something like 20k Points Per Day vs. 10k, respectively. However, there's a new GPU core in open beta testing that runs on both vendors' cards and which significantly levels the playing field. A 7870 should beat a non-Ti 660; a 7850 probably will as well. Have a look here to see the relative performance of a bunch of cards running the official GPU folding benchmark program, in particular the OpenCL Single-Precision list, as that's what F@h runs. Note that clockspeeds weren't put on the list itself, so it's not necessarily a stock-to-stock comparison; if you click on the links to the posts containing the raw results, people should have listed the speeds there.

Note that running beta units is technically only supposed to be done by those who have joined the official beta team, but most people don't pay that much heed. You won't be able to get help with beta WUs from the official folding forum if you aren't a beta team member, but that's not a huge detriment. The beta core has been rumored to be moved out of beta soon, but that's a very imprecise term for folding purposes.
 
I think AndyE and Zagen30 hit the nail on the head. Right now things are at a moment of turmoil in the F@H world.

Pound for Pound GPU folding goes to Nvidia on Core_15 (which is the normal core used by most). AMD have always had fairly weak GPU's when it came to folding, until now. Unfortunately, Core_17 is still in its Beta phase and until it's released to the public this question is in an odd state.

Nvidia would be my immediate NOW answer, but AMD is the future until Nvidia gets there drivers together and start pushing their weight into full OpenCL 1.2 support, something AMD has been relatively strong at.


tl;dr

Nvidia - NOW (Core_15)

AMD - FUTURE (Core_17)

At this point you can't go wrong though, both should be very even in the near future and it'll be hard to justify a 150-170K PDD Titan/780 compared to a $400 7970 when you get buy two for the same price and pimp out way more points than a single overpriced Nvidia card at the moment.

That damn 8xxx or 9xxx Series can't come soon enough. The numbers shall be interesting so long as they aren't the rumored specs we're seeing with virtually nothing changing from the 7970 > 8970.
 
Liger88 said:
I think AndyE and Zagen30 hit the nail on the head. Right now things are at a moment of turmoil in the F@H world.

Nvidia would be my immediate NOW answer, but AMD is the future until Nvidia gets there drivers together and start pushing their weight into full OpenCL 1.2 support, something AMD has been relatively strong at.
Click to expand...

These points sum it up nicely. If you're going to fold smp units on the CPU and core 17's on the GPU then AMD will be a better choice as their drivers use almost no CPU time vs NVidia. Rumors have Kepler performance improvements on the horizon for core 17 so for GPU only folders it will probably become more of a price or power consumption consideration but if you're loading up both the answer now is pretty clear.
 
I just built a cheapo 7970 rig (except for the 7970, obviously). It is making 90k+ ppd with no OC, and has been rock solid for 10 days now. I don't have the option to monitor closely with my work schedule, so I don't push it...

Question for the experts: I have a GTX 660Ti that I just removed from my main machine. Built in HD graphics on i7 3770s are enough for what I do (so far). If I build another cheap combo, what can I expect roughly from this card?

More "D" is the objective. Stable and not requiring any care is best.
 
0ldways said:
I just built a cheapo 7970 rig (except for the 7970, obviously). It is making 90k+ ppd with no OC, and has been rock solid for 10 days now. I don't have the option to monitor closely with my work schedule, so I don't push it...

Question for the experts: I have a GTX 660Ti that I just removed from my main machine. Built in HD graphics on i7 3770s are enough for what I do (so far). If I build another cheap combo, what can I expect roughly from this card?

More "D" is the objective. Stable and not requiring any care is best.
Click to expand...

There are a few BOINC projects now using Intel GPU's from Intel IB and Haswell chips...You could help the Commandos out with the DC Vault. Just sayin'.

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=70717#1332850
http://boinc.thesonntags.com/collatz/forum_thread.php?id=1019#16790
 
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I think AMD's a safe bet but if you're buying used cards Nvidia can often be had for less because bitcoin and litecoin miners are gobbling up all the AMD cards since Nvidia is basically worthless in those.
 
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