CUDA card advice, A dangerous question
21 Sep 2013 4:11:29 UTC
Topic 197199
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Because everyone and his brother will jump in. However I have a cost productivity question. Given gamers, cards can go from a single card under $50 to a crossfire pair running $800 or more.
Considering I just found a bargain hex-core for $350 but that is the price of new quad-cores what is the point of diminishing returns on the price of a CUDA card?
I have been assuming most all of the benefit is in the first $50. I further assume a $100 is not twice as fast.
CUDA card advice, A dangerous question
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Nope. The performance vs. price curve is actually very steep at the beginning. For each 10$ more you get significantly more raw horse power. Above 100$ it starts to become proportional: for 50% more money you get 50% more performance. That's where you should buy, depending on how large of a card you can and want to afford (and your system can handle). After 200 - 300$ you enter high-end territory, where you pay a significant premium for every additional piece of performance.
The current price/performance champion is the outgoing GTX660Ti, although I heard it's not as discounted in the US as elsewhere. GTX660 is also a quite good deal, whereas GTX760 is still overpriced. The smaller cards down to GTX650 Ti are also OK, below that you hit the region of diminishing returns (as in, for the money saved with even smaller cards performance drops off far too much).
BTW: which AMD card was in that box? Maybe it's actually useful for Einstein?
MrS
Scanning for our furry friends since Jan 2002
RE: RE: RE: RE: I
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Radeon HD7570
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?objectID=c03639067&prodSeriesId=5330773
boinc_client comes up saying no usable GPUs found.
BTW: Profile updated to reflect current four machines currently online.
RE: I see that for $226 on
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You mean the GTX660Ti? You don't seem to have a proper price comparison engine in the US, or at least not that I heard of anything. I'd certainly look at Newegg, too. But last time we checked (>1 months ago, I think) the 660Ti didn't have the same "sale" price as in Europe. Still, even if it costs the same as a GTX760 it's the better card for BOINC.
Regarding actual throughput, dskagcommunity put together a nice table. Here GTX660Ti and GTX660 are pretty much equal at 40k RAC, which in part is caussed by Einstein not running well on cards with relatively lower memory bandwidth (GTX660Ti). The gap between both is bigger in other projects, though. GTX660 would also be a good choice, whereas GTX650Ti is already noticeably slower at 25k RAC. GTX650Ti Boost should sit between these two and wouldn't be bad either.
That GT430 should still almost hit 10k RAC, although the DDR3 will hurt it at Einstein.
The Radeon HD7570 should be about half the speed of the listed HD7750, again be hurt badly if it's DDR3 instead of GDDR5. It should still almost hit 10k RAC as well. Power efficiency will be better than the GT430, although both cards don't consume much.
Using it should "only" be an issue of linux and driver installation. Can't help you there, sorry!
MrS
Scanning for our furry friends since Jan 2002
Without the Ti they run $250
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Without the Ti they run $250 Amazon and Newegg.
And no one can help with the Radeon linux drivers. I can't find anyone who has had any luck installing them. The driver direct from AMD won't even compile. And it doesn't work right even as a plain card. It does not have a 16:9 option. I may be switching to the CUDA card sooner than I expected.
Thanks for the table. Now I just have to figure how to read it.
RE: And no one can help
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I've installed and crunched on them, they "work" with the massive caveats that I haven't tried on anything outside mainline debian distributions AND I have had no luck with more than one card, dual cards produce weird errors and system freezes. However, the fglrx drivers do support opencl, and probably should be used unless you want to get very technical.
That said, there doesn't seem to be much question that NVIDIA provides much better driver support for their products, but Radeon is giving the biggest bang for the buck, in no small part because they're debuting new cards in the next month or so. In the I have unlimited money and want the most performance per dollar fantasy world, I'd vote for the 7970, in the real I have to deal with my boss again at 9AM world, but have some money I'd vote for the 7950 or 760, if you're just looking to add a GPU to your box as you turn it into a space heater for winter I'd look for a 7770 or a 550Ti (if you can find one). And that's the real danger in your question, the answer is going to shift depending upon many other things.
Maybe you can deal the AMD to
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Maybe you can deal the AMD to David from the "EINSTEIN: Power/Production Ratio" thread? He seems to have quite a few GPU-less boxes standing around right now :)
Anyway, after my recent post over there I feel a bit stupid for recommending the GTX660Ti. Sure, it's better at other projects.. but for Einstein it seems too unbalanced (lack of memory bandwidth). For this reason alone the GTX760 may be better: a bit more raw horse power than the GTX660, but 33% more bandwith than both 660's.
The next one in the chain downwards would be the card with the pithy and catchy name GTX650 Ti Boost Edition - and nothing less than that. It's got a few Flops less than GTX660, but the same bandwidth.
MrS
Scanning for our furry friends since Jan 2002