Maximum CUDA cards per Mother Board?

Gavin
Gavin
Joined: 21 Sep 10
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David, In order to get the

David,
In order to get the best help, would you please do as others have requested and provide the full specs of the machine you intend to build, along with an idea of projected build cost.
I suspect you are basing your hoped power consumption/RAC on best case figures provided by the hardware manufacturers and fear you may be disappointed once the machine is up and crunching.
In my experience, a more targeted approach pays more dividends than muscle! Maybe not in the initial hardware cost, but over the term the ongoing costs/productivity more than make up for it.
Without knowing the spec's of your machine its hard to comment further.

Gamboleer
Gamboleer
Joined: 5 Dec 10
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Hmm, yeah, I forgot about

Hmm, yeah, I forgot about Molex to 6-pin. I have an unnatural aversion to Molex connections, so I didn't consider that. However, from experience I can verify that:

- A GTX 650 won't run without the cable; I've forgotten to hook it up on 3 different mobos and the only result was a fan screaming at 100%.

- Two GTX 650's with a 3220t i3 (a 35w TDP Ivy Bridge) and "normal" other components generate a theoretical maximum of about 20k each per day running 2 simultaneous tasks each at 8x / 8x (2.0) 24/7 (75 minutes runtime per 2 tasks), and consume about 175w from the wall with a Bronze 80 PSU. See my system called STRIKEAIR. It is actually more efficient on a credit / watt basis to run 7970s, though the 7970's are slightly more expensive for the hardware on a $ / max daily credit basis.

mikey
mikey
Joined: 22 Jan 05
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RE: Hmm, yeah, I forgot

Quote:

Hmm, yeah, I forgot about Molex to 6-pin. I have an unnatural aversion to Molex connections, so I didn't consider that. However, from experience I can verify that:

- A GTX 650 won't run without the cable; I've forgotten to hook it up on 3 different mobos and the only result was a fan screaming at 100%.

- Two GTX 650's with a 3220t i3 (a 35w TDP Ivy Bridge) and "normal" other components generate a theoretical maximum of about 20k each per day running 2 simultaneous tasks each at 8x / 8x (2.0) 24/7 (75 minutes runtime per 2 tasks), and consume about 175w from the wall with a Bronze 80 PSU. See my system called STRIKEAIR. It is actually more efficient on a credit / watt basis to run 7970s, though the 7970's are slightly more expensive for the hardware on a $ / max daily credit basis.

I would think so!!! I JUST bought a 7970 and it cost me $389(US)!! They are NOT cheap!! Now I AM getting 1 million rac per day at DistRTgen, but it gives VERY high credits per unit!! The old 5770 it replaced was taking almost an hour and a half to do one unit, the 7970 is taking 10 minutes for the same kind of units!

Oh and Alec WE cannot see your pc names, just generic numbers, 1 thru 3 in your case.

And I too have plugged in gpu's WITHOUT the power being hooked up to them and it IS a pain when you realize it!!

Neil Newell
Neil Newell
Joined: 20 Nov 12
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I do that a lot too; across

I do that a lot too; across my range of nivida cards, some don't work at all, some do work but limit their capabilities, and IIRC at least one of them popped up an on-screen message saying the power connection wasn't attached.

Gamboleer
Gamboleer
Joined: 5 Dec 10
Posts: 173
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I should add -- if you want

I should add -- if you want to run without power cables, ATI 7750's are only slightly less powerful than GTX 650's and do not require an external cable. I've run two simultaneous in one system without a problem. I don't know what would happen if you did a 4-card setup, however.

David Rapalyea
David Rapalyea
Joined: 3 Jan 13
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Hi, My expected production

Hi,

My expected production and power draw is based on actual observation of an Asus GTX 650 in my Gold Star powered machine. [I really really recommend my Reliance Amp/Watt meter from Amazon. Real heavy duty, simply, pro quality piece for not much money. I forget how much.}

PRODUCTION FROM GTX 650: 500 credit BRP is produced in 50-55 seconds. Call it 60 seconds for short and thats 24 tasks per day for 12,000 credits. Total production is 4x12000 = 48,000 plus 1,500 from the dual processor = 49,500 per day.

POWER DRAW: I put the Asus gtx 650 in my Gold Star powered machine, it added 35 watts to the total when running the BRP tasks.
ADD POWER OVERHEAD: The new MB has a 35 Watt processor, and Solid state HD. Lets round it all off to 50 Watts overhead so 50 Watts Base Power Draw plus 35 watts x 4 GTX 650 = 190 Watts. Round up 200 watts total. A total daily credit of 49,500 produced by 200 watts means 10,000 credits would be produce by 40.4 Watts.

My actual mileage may vary, but thats how I came up with the estimate. The GTX 650's were expensive. About $170 each, but similar units can be had for much much lower. So my CUDA cards cost a total of $680. I expect the minimalistic supporting platform will come in at maybe the same amount for a big total of more then $1,300.

I will provide actual details in a week or two. In this build my goal was to maximize production per Watt and the hell with cost. My machines run 24/7/365 and power draw is actually a significant consideration. This machine could unplug up to 800 watts of already fairly high efficiency HP 'life cycle optimized' office machines. DC 7600 sff core duo 2.83 ghz at 70 watts per plug base-draw plus one Express 16 slot with GT 610, 620, and 630 Card. Thats about a $1.50 per day where I live.

If all this works then next time brining down equipment costs will be the concurrent goal.

Arecibo 19 Oct 2012
Just Because The Space Alien Is Green
Does Not Mean You Should Go

mikey
mikey
Joined: 22 Jan 05
Posts: 11888
Credit: 1828048866
RAC: 206948

RE: Hi, My expected

Quote:

Hi,

My expected production and power draw is based on actual observation of an Asus GTX 650 in my Gold Star powered machine. [I really really recommend my Reliance Amp/Watt meter from Amazon. Real heavy duty, simply, pro quality piece for not much money. I forget how much.}

PRODUCTION FROM GTX 650: 500 credit BRP is produced in 50-55 seconds. Call it 60 seconds for short and thats 24 tasks per day for 12,000 credits. Total production is 4x12000 = 48,000 plus 1,500 from the dual processor = 49,500 per day.

POWER DRAW: I put the Asus gtx 650 in my Gold Star powered machine, it added 35 watts to the total when running the BRP tasks.
ADD POWER OVERHEAD: The new MB has a 35 Watt processor, and Solid state HD. Lets round it all off to 50 Watts overhead so 50 Watts Base Power Draw plus 35 watts x 4 GTX 650 = 190 Watts. Round up 200 watts total. A total daily credit of 49,500 produced by 200 watts means 10,000 credits would be produce by 40.4 Watts.

My actual mileage may vary, but thats how I came up with the estimate. The GTX 650's were expensive. About $170 each, but similar units can be had for much much lower. So my CUDA cards cost a total of $680. I expect the minimalistic supporting platform will come in at maybe the same amount for a big total of more then $1,300.

I will provide actual details in a week or two. In this build my goal was to maximize production per Watt and the hell with cost. My machines run 24/7/365 and power draw is actually a significant consideration. This machine could unplug up to 800 watts of already fairly high efficiency HP 'life cycle optimized' office machines. DC 7600 sff core duo 2.83 ghz at 70 watts per plug base-draw plus one Express 16 slot with GT 610, 620, and 630 Card. Thats about a $1.50 per day where I live.

If all this works then next time brining down equipment costs will be the concurrent goal.

MAKE SURE you make backups of the system when it is setup and running, SDD's are NOT yet as reliable as Sata or Pide drives. Actually it is usually the onboard drive controller that fails not the drive itself, but the result is the same, loss of access to the drive at all! One of the many tweaks I do to my own Boinc setup is to stretch out the time between drives writes to 900 seconds, or 15 minutes. This cuts down on system use and keeps the drives writes less, the default is every 60 seconds.

Gamboleer
Gamboleer
Joined: 5 Dec 10
Posts: 173
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David: You should set the

David:

You should set the 650's for two simultaneous tasks each (the optimal value for that card). Crunch time will increase to about 70 minutes per pair of tasks, but that's 35 minutes each.

Nobody316
Nobody316
Joined: 14 Jan 13
Posts: 141
Credit: 2008126
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I am running 3 task at 1 time

I am running 3 task at 1 time with run time about 70 mins on my 650 Ti.

PC setup MSI-970A-G46 AMD FX-8350 8 core OC'd 4.45GHz 16GB ram PC3-10700 Geforce GTX 650Ti Windows 7 x64 Einstein@Home

MAGIC Quantum Mechanic
MAGIC Quantum M...
Joined: 18 Jan 05
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This is my 650Ti running

This is my 650Ti running tasks X2

http://einsteinathome.org/host/6661572/tasks&offset=0&show_names=1&state=3&appid=0

It is one of my older 3-core hosts and runs them fast as long as I am not using it at the same time.

It is slightly better with power usage than my 550Ti's and all my PSU's are those "bronze" rated 80's with 750-850watt

My power bill is fairly high so I do make sure I have all the monitors off most of the time (just check how they are doing twice per day)

and this gets me to try to keep from running up my bill with other thngs around my place.

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