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PCI folding cards

M

mrmylanman

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jul 13, 2008
Messages
1,484
Hey all,

I am going to be building a dual core Atom-based home server within the next week or so and all the Atom 330 boards I could find that fit the bill (mostly gigabit ethernet and also costs less than $100) have only PCI expansion slots. Can one fold using a PCI video card? If so, what are my best options? Also, just wondering what kind of PPDs I'd be getting, I may decide it's not worth it.
 
osrk said:
not worth it
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Agreed.

If you want a low power CPU and a folding rig an AMD based 45watt chip is the way to go, and then you can use what ever you want.

The atom system is for ultra low power, as soon as you add a GPU and fold on it, that go right out the window.

Even the atom boards with Cuda capable onboard gfx only have 16 shaders. It will take forever to chew though a WU and might now even get them in on time.
 
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^^ what he said, my N10 is ecactly that, 16 shader CUDA, and while its not bad for gaming, the CPU puts out more PPD (read, not many either) than the GPU
 
Kendrak said:
The atom system is for ultra low power, as soon as you add a GPU and fold on it, that go right out the window.
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Good point to consider.



And if you are looking for a quiet system, consider a low speed dual core celeron or pentium dual core processor. The oem heatsinks they come with are rather quiet and would certainly be quieter than the vid card fan running to keep a GPU cooled during folding. A Micro ATX motherboard and processor can easily be had for under $100.
 
for what its original use is.. the atoms perfect for a home server.. but thats it.. nothing else.. hell even the chipsets on the atom based boards use more power then the cpu.. so stick with using the system as a home server.. theres no point in adding more power draw to a system like that.. even 4 hard drives added to it will use more power at idle then an atom processor at full load..
 
I'm not quite so concerned about the power draw as much as I was the PPD value. I saw some 9500s and crap that are offered in PCI I wasn't sure if they could get any halfway decent PPD amounts. Lately I have been using my PC more for gaming again so my PPD values have been plummeting. I already bought all the Atom stuff by the way so another build probably won't happen, but maybe in the future. It would be kinda cool to have a small folding rig that just chugs along.

Not a huge disappointment if I can't make the Atom fold, I was just curious if I could.

Another problem is I would be using Linux on it, but I heard you can get GPU folding working in WINE?
 
maybe the 330 could get a respectable number (still low tho) but my 270 cant. Ive used ti for folding, back when I made my first ramp to break 20k, and it only did like 300 PPD, and dont even think about running SMP on it....
 
I was talking about putting a PCI card (like an nVidia 9400 or 9500) on it and folding on that, not the Atom itself.
 
mrmylanman said:
I was talking about putting a PCI card (like an nVidia 9400 or 9500) on it and folding on that, not the Atom itself.
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its just not cost effective.. the 9400 and 9500 are basically 8400GT and 8600GT's.. so that will give you some idea of what actual PPD you will be getting..id say enjoy your games.. save up some money.. and but cheap folding system.. either with a cheap 45w AMD dual core.. or one of the 35w amd single cores.. get an amd board with either 3 or 4 pci-e slots.. and start loading that puppy up with cards.. which most of this stuff you can find cheap on either in the DC F/S section or the main F/S section..
 
mrmylanman said:
I was talking about putting a PCI card (like an nVidia 9400 or 9500) on it and folding on that, not the Atom itself.
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There was mention of folding on these cards last year, but don't remember what kind of PPD you would be looking at. I also remember someone posting that the 9400-series wasn't even to be considered, but a 9500-series card 'might' be worth looking into if you can find one for cheap. Keep in mind, this was with last year's WUs and might not be possible to run that hardware with today's WUs. If a 9600-series card for the PCI slot was available, that would be something to look into.
 
Yeah I was looking at a thread about folding on PCI-e X1 slots over at OCN, evidently on his 8400GS it took about 60 hours for a work unit or something ridiculous.

I'll just pass, as I'm sure a 9500GT ain't a whole lot faster, given the bandwidth limitation, etc.
 
mrmylanman said:
I'll just pass, as I'm sure a 9500GT ain't a whole lot faster, given the bandwidth limitation, etc.
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It's probably a bit faster but not by much. For whatever slot you're considering, I would look at x600-level hardware and higher.
 
mrmylanman said:
Yeah I was looking at a thread about folding on PCI-e X1 slots over at OCN, evidently on his 8400GS it took about 60 hours for a work unit or something ridiculous.

I'll just pass, as I'm sure a 9500GT ain't a whole lot faster, given the bandwidth limitation, etc.
Click to expand...

the bandwidth actually isnt that much of the problem.. a lot of it is just the shader limitations on the cards..
 
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