I own four 660Tis and my advice would be to stay away from them. They just, for whatever reason, are not big crunchers.
The cards I'm wondering about are the R9 280 and R9 280X cards. The R9 280 can be had for about $200 which is about the same as a GTX 750Ti. The R9 270X runs rings around the 750Ti at this project for the same money.
The thing is, the GTX 750Ti runs on fumes and is cool. The R9 270X is much hotter and more greedy for power.
Still, until someone deals with the development of a CUDA 5 (6 would be better) version of the program, the ATI cards are just going to be better per dollar at Einstein.
And I say that as a guy who owns almost exclusively NVIDIA cards and likes NVIDIA cards and would prefer to spend my money on NVIDIA cards AND hates, hates, hates the way AMD packages drivers.
And I say that as a guy who owns almost exclusively NVIDIA cards and likes NVIDIA cards and would prefer to spend my money on NVIDIA cards AND hates, hates, hates the way AMD packages drivers.
What he said. AMD and I are like oil and water. We don't get along at all.
It might have been awhile since tbret looked at pricing. I've seen 750ti going for $150. I have a 750 (not ti) in a machine right now doing 23k RAC. When it was in a faster cpu machine it was doing 30k. Just to give you an idea of what they can do for very little power.
It might have been awhile since tbret looked at pricing.
Well, I was being unfair.
The AMD R9 280 can be had for $199 at Newegg.
But, I was walking past the shelf at BestBuy the other day and both the R9 270X and the EVGA two-fan, overclocked, 750Ti was also $199, which I thought was weird.
At THIS project, as of this writing, my AMD R9s are smoking the 750Tis. The difference in crunch/buck is almost enough to make me buy a copy of Windows.
Well I only have one 660Ti OC's and it wasn't cheap (to me) but the RAC seems good even just running on my not so fast quad-core 40-42,000 RAC
The 650Ti OC'd (2 of those)were half the price and the RAC is aprox. 32,000 each and the two 550Ti OC'd are about the same. (excpet times like now when there is close to 90 pending tasks)
One of my 650Ti's is in a slower quad-core with not much RAM so its RAC drops easy from 29,000 down to the lower 20's if I try to run any Atlas tasks at the same time.
So after seeing that I just run BRP PAS X3 and a vLHC on that one to keep the RAC up closer to 30,000
My quad-core with the 660Ti has 12GB ram so it can run BRP PAS X4 and a vLHC and a couple Atlas at the same time and still be around 42,000 RAC here.
So the next one I add will just be going back in my older 3-core Phenom since I just put in a new HD and did all of the installing and before it had a 650Ti OC'd running BRP PAS X3 @ about 32,000 RAC (and a vLHC task)
So either a 650Ti or a 750Ti for that one unless I find a real good price on one of the cards with over 1000 cuda cores.
And I agree about those AMD drivers.
(edit:) Btw tbret have you ever ran the BRP PAS on your 660Ti ?
I see now you just have the BRP Arecibo's running on the 660Ti
(edit:) Btw tbret have you ever ran the BRP PAS on your 660Ti ?
I see now you just have the BRP Arecibo's running on the 660Ti
I've just come back after a stint at SETI@Home for a "challenge." When I left I had little choice but to run BRP5 (I think we were out of BRP4) and there was another one... in Beta at the time.
Anyhow, I'm more than happy to take whatever hints and instructions you want to send my way on which thing to run on which card.
I haven't found anything on the 660Tis that make me go "wow," but some of that could be the "situation."
I don't run any CPU tasks. The motherboard for that machine is a Gigabyte 990FXA-UD7 that runs four PCIe slots at 8x each. BUT... I'm not running 1866 RAM and those are PCIe 2 slots. I could conceivably be running them out of PCIe or RAM bus bandwidth.
But the same board and processor with a 770 and three 670s, and another with two 470s, one 560Ti-448, and one SOC 560Ti, are whipping the 660Tis (two of which are EVGA overclock models).
If I remember correctly, the 770/670 machine wasn't even as good at BRP5 as the 470s/560Ti machine.
Let's see...
The R9 270X that's paired with a 560Ti on a 990FX board (AMD 1090T) is taking about 4400 sec to do a task, two-at-a-time.
The other, identical R9 270X, on an i5, running solo, takes about 3,400. That's a huge difference.
The Phenom x4 with two EVGA OC 560s and 1 Gigabyte OC 560Ti (in the x4 slot), takes about 5000 for the 560s and 6500 for the 560Ti.
So, the bandwidth to the PCIe (the "lanes") has a very distinct effect.
When I have the time I'm going to do some swapping-around, and I thought I'd do that today, but I've picked-up more "chores" and won't get it done.
Repeating myself: I've been away. I'm happy to hear any suggestions.
Magic your 660ti I consider to be a superior card to my factory OCd 660. Your times for BRP5s are in the 8 hr range where as mine running 3 at a time are 4 1/4 tto 4 1/2 hr.
This I don't understand I would have thought you would be producing more.
It just depends on what I have running on that quad-core with the 660Ti SC'd
It always runs BRP PAS tasks X4 and also the one vLHC task but lately I have had it running a couple of those new Atlas tasks with the VB which does slow it down a little.
It will usually run BRP PAS tasks X4 with just the one vLHC task in 7hrs 35mins
And those are 3,333 credit tasks so a bit over 42,000 RAC
That is pretty much how I run all of my EVGA cards (just BRP PAS and one vLHC)
The only one I am running the other 2 Einstein CPU tasks on is one I just got running again and I took its 650Ti card out while it was down and put it in my only quad-core with a Win8.1 OS.
So tbret if you can maybe try just running the GPU BRP PAS tasks X4 here by itself since you have a better processor than mine has so you will get a better RAC with those 3,333 credit tasks.
So tbret if you can maybe try just running the GPU BRP PAS tasks X4 here by itself since you have a better processor than mine has so you will get a better RAC with those 3,333 credit tasks.
I can certainly try that on the 660Ti machine and see what happens. Can't hurt, but it "seems" to me that I remember having an issue running 3x. It's been too long. I can try it (probably not today, though).
I do use Precision X, but not 15. I mostly use it for fan control and to look at GPU usage, like GPU-Z. Am I missing something?
I'll usually just buy a factory overclocked card and then just let it do what it does.
Quote:
That is pretty much how I run all of my EVGA cards (just BRP PAS and one vLHC)
I want to be sure I understand. You are running 4 Perseus Arm Survey tasks at one time on a single 660Ti and a vLHC (unfamiliar with it) task on... the CPU?? simultaneously, right?
I can certainly try that on the 660Ti machine and see what happens. Can't hurt, but it "seems" to me that I remember having an issue running 3x. It's been too long. I can try it (probably not today, though).
I do use Precision X, but not 15. I mostly use it for fan control and to look at GPU usage, like GPU-Z. Am I missing something?
I'll usually just buy a factory overclocked card and then just let it do what it does.
I want to be sure I understand. You are running 4 Perseus Arm Survey tasks at one time on a single 660Ti and a vLHC (unfamiliar with it) task on... the CPU?? simultaneously, right?
Yeah sorry about that new PrecisionX link ....I use the previous version myself.
My 660Ti is what they call *Superclocked* from EVGA and I also use PrecisionX mainly for the fan speeds but also turn up the voltage a bit and test cranking up the numbers just a little and check the task times.
And yes on my 660Ti I run 4 BRP PAS tasks at a time along with one of the vLHC (aka T4T) tasks with VirtualBox most of the time on the quad-core.
And once in a while I even added a couple Atlas tasks at the same time which is why my BRP PAS times get a bit longer but still at 40,000+ credits here.
Right now it is back to just BRP PAS tasks X4 and the one vLHC (24 hour tasks)
And I think with your 660Ti with a better CPU than I have just running 3 or 4 BRP PAS tasks alone you would run those pretty fast with the 3,333 credit tasks.
In fact I know you can run 4 of those tasks at a time if mine can do it.
I have been tempted to try mine on one of my faster CPU's and maybe switch with one of my 550Ti or 650Ti's
(edit:) In fact you have some nice machines that aren't running the BRP PAS GPU tasks and I know they could really run those tasks pretty fast X4......unless you use them for Seti.......I retired from Seti back in 2004/2005 when LHC and Einstein started here so I don't know what is running there these days.
I'm considering to give AMD one more chance and take MSI 280X. As I can see from statistic page it is very good for BRP tasks.
The question is - makes it any sense to buy 6Gb version instead of "normal" 3Gb version? How many WUs can be run simultaneously? Or more important how many it makes sense to run simultaneously?
I suspect that 3Gb is pretty enough however 6Gb version has more good cooling system. From other side additional 3Gb has to generate more heat even if that additional memory is not used.
Probably someone has any experience or recommendation regarding 6Gb version?
RE: Maybe the 660Ti price
)
I own four 660Tis and my advice would be to stay away from them. They just, for whatever reason, are not big crunchers.
The cards I'm wondering about are the R9 280 and R9 280X cards. The R9 280 can be had for about $200 which is about the same as a GTX 750Ti. The R9 270X runs rings around the 750Ti at this project for the same money.
The thing is, the GTX 750Ti runs on fumes and is cool. The R9 270X is much hotter and more greedy for power.
Still, until someone deals with the development of a CUDA 5 (6 would be better) version of the program, the ATI cards are just going to be better per dollar at Einstein.
And I say that as a guy who owns almost exclusively NVIDIA cards and likes NVIDIA cards and would prefer to spend my money on NVIDIA cards AND hates, hates, hates the way AMD packages drivers.
RE: And I say that as a guy
)
What he said. AMD and I are like oil and water. We don't get along at all.
It might have been awhile since tbret looked at pricing. I've seen 750ti going for $150. I have a 750 (not ti) in a machine right now doing 23k RAC. When it was in a faster cpu machine it was doing 30k. Just to give you an idea of what they can do for very little power.
Phil
I thought I was wrong once, but I was mistaken.
RE: It might have been
)
Well, I was being unfair.
The AMD R9 280 can be had for $199 at Newegg.
But, I was walking past the shelf at BestBuy the other day and both the R9 270X and the EVGA two-fan, overclocked, 750Ti was also $199, which I thought was weird.
At THIS project, as of this writing, my AMD R9s are smoking the 750Tis. The difference in crunch/buck is almost enough to make me buy a copy of Windows.
Well I only have one 660Ti
)
Well I only have one 660Ti OC's and it wasn't cheap (to me) but the RAC seems good even just running on my not so fast quad-core 40-42,000 RAC
The 650Ti OC'd (2 of those)were half the price and the RAC is aprox. 32,000 each and the two 550Ti OC'd are about the same. (excpet times like now when there is close to 90 pending tasks)
One of my 650Ti's is in a slower quad-core with not much RAM so its RAC drops easy from 29,000 down to the lower 20's if I try to run any Atlas tasks at the same time.
So after seeing that I just run BRP PAS X3 and a vLHC on that one to keep the RAC up closer to 30,000
My quad-core with the 660Ti has 12GB ram so it can run BRP PAS X4 and a vLHC and a couple Atlas at the same time and still be around 42,000 RAC here.
So the next one I add will just be going back in my older 3-core Phenom since I just put in a new HD and did all of the installing and before it had a 650Ti OC'd running BRP PAS X3 @ about 32,000 RAC (and a vLHC task)
So either a 650Ti or a 750Ti for that one unless I find a real good price on one of the cards with over 1000 cuda cores.
And I agree about those AMD drivers.
(edit:) Btw tbret have you ever ran the BRP PAS on your 660Ti ?
I see now you just have the BRP Arecibo's running on the 660Ti
RE: (edit:) Btw tbret
)
I've just come back after a stint at SETI@Home for a "challenge." When I left I had little choice but to run BRP5 (I think we were out of BRP4) and there was another one... in Beta at the time.
Anyhow, I'm more than happy to take whatever hints and instructions you want to send my way on which thing to run on which card.
I haven't found anything on the 660Tis that make me go "wow," but some of that could be the "situation."
I don't run any CPU tasks. The motherboard for that machine is a Gigabyte 990FXA-UD7 that runs four PCIe slots at 8x each. BUT... I'm not running 1866 RAM and those are PCIe 2 slots. I could conceivably be running them out of PCIe or RAM bus bandwidth.
But the same board and processor with a 770 and three 670s, and another with two 470s, one 560Ti-448, and one SOC 560Ti, are whipping the 660Tis (two of which are EVGA overclock models).
If I remember correctly, the 770/670 machine wasn't even as good at BRP5 as the 470s/560Ti machine.
Let's see...
The R9 270X that's paired with a 560Ti on a 990FX board (AMD 1090T) is taking about 4400 sec to do a task, two-at-a-time.
The other, identical R9 270X, on an i5, running solo, takes about 3,400. That's a huge difference.
The Phenom x4 with two EVGA OC 560s and 1 Gigabyte OC 560Ti (in the x4 slot), takes about 5000 for the 560s and 6500 for the 560Ti.
So, the bandwidth to the PCIe (the "lanes") has a very distinct effect.
When I have the time I'm going to do some swapping-around, and I thought I'd do that today, but I've picked-up more "chores" and won't get it done.
Repeating myself: I've been away. I'm happy to hear any suggestions.
Magic your 660ti I consider
)
Magic your 660ti I consider to be a superior card to my factory OCd 660. Your times for BRP5s are in the 8 hr range where as mine running 3 at a time are 4 1/4 tto 4 1/2 hr.
This I don't understand I would have thought you would be producing more.
It just depends on what I
)
It just depends on what I have running on that quad-core with the 660Ti SC'd
It always runs BRP PAS tasks X4 and also the one vLHC task but lately I have had it running a couple of those new Atlas tasks with the VB which does slow it down a little.
It will usually run BRP PAS tasks X4 with just the one vLHC task in 7hrs 35mins
And those are 3,333 credit tasks so a bit over 42,000 RAC
That is pretty much how I run all of my EVGA cards (just BRP PAS and one vLHC)
The only one I am running the other 2 Einstein CPU tasks on is one I just got running again and I took its 650Ti card out while it was down and put it in my only quad-core with a Win8.1 OS.
So tbret if you can maybe try just running the GPU BRP PAS tasks X4 here by itself since you have a better processor than mine has so you will get a better RAC with those 3,333 credit tasks.
Oh I forgot to mention......do you use EVGA PrecisionX 15 5.0.0 ?
RE: So tbret if you can
)
I can certainly try that on the 660Ti machine and see what happens. Can't hurt, but it "seems" to me that I remember having an issue running 3x. It's been too long. I can try it (probably not today, though).
I do use Precision X, but not 15. I mostly use it for fan control and to look at GPU usage, like GPU-Z. Am I missing something?
I'll usually just buy a factory overclocked card and then just let it do what it does.
I want to be sure I understand. You are running 4 Perseus Arm Survey tasks at one time on a single 660Ti and a vLHC (unfamiliar with it) task on... the CPU?? simultaneously, right?
RE: I can certainly try
)
Yeah sorry about that new PrecisionX link ....I use the previous version myself.
My 660Ti is what they call *Superclocked* from EVGA and I also use PrecisionX mainly for the fan speeds but also turn up the voltage a bit and test cranking up the numbers just a little and check the task times.
And yes on my 660Ti I run 4 BRP PAS tasks at a time along with one of the vLHC (aka T4T) tasks with VirtualBox most of the time on the quad-core.
And once in a while I even added a couple Atlas tasks at the same time which is why my BRP PAS times get a bit longer but still at 40,000+ credits here.
Right now it is back to just BRP PAS tasks X4 and the one vLHC (24 hour tasks)
And I think with your 660Ti with a better CPU than I have just running 3 or 4 BRP PAS tasks alone you would run those pretty fast with the 3,333 credit tasks.
In fact I know you can run 4 of those tasks at a time if mine can do it.
I have been tempted to try mine on one of my faster CPU's and maybe switch with one of my 550Ti or 650Ti's
(edit:) In fact you have some nice machines that aren't running the BRP PAS GPU tasks and I know they could really run those tasks pretty fast X4......unless you use them for Seti.......I retired from Seti back in 2004/2005 when LHC and Einstein started here so I don't know what is running there these days.
I'm considering to give AMD
)
I'm considering to give AMD one more chance and take MSI 280X. As I can see from statistic page it is very good for BRP tasks.
The question is - makes it any sense to buy 6Gb version instead of "normal" 3Gb version? How many WUs can be run simultaneously? Or more important how many it makes sense to run simultaneously?
I suspect that 3Gb is pretty enough however 6Gb version has more good cooling system. From other side additional 3Gb has to generate more heat even if that additional memory is not used.
Probably someone has any experience or recommendation regarding 6Gb version?