is it worth the effort
Anonymous
10 Jan 2015 17:37:43 UTC
Topic 197918
(moderation:
I just tore apart an old pc and found that it is equipped with an MSI (NVIDIA GeForce FX5200 128 MB AGP) graphics card. Is it worth the effort and cost of operation to crunch GPU WUs with this machine?
The 3 available PCI slots will not accommodate the new GPUs currently available. Like I said its an old box.
is it worth the effort
)
Cuda capable GPUs start at the 8*** series, I've yet to see any AGP Cuda capable GPUs, althrough there are PCI Cuda GPUs available.
Claggy
RE: RE: I just tore apart
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Thanks for taking the time to reply. I felt fairly sure it would not be a good investment in time but thought I should ask. Like I said in the original post the PCI slots on this MB won't take current PCI GPUs.
I think I will put the paddles away and sew the patient back up.
RE: RE: RE: I just tore
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Current GPUs use PCI-e - PCI express - slots, which are not the same thing as the general-purpose PCI bus. But as Claggy says, it is (or used to be - haven't checked recently) possible to get compute-capable GPUs in the original PCI configuration. Rare, expensive, and slow - but possible.
I have a PCI 8400 GS, as well
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I have a PCI 8400 GS, as well as a Zotac PCI GT430, that's discontinued, But if you search the web for it's part no you may find one,
looking at Zotac's website, they do two PCI GT610's, a 1Gb and a 512Mb version, as well as the discontinued PCI GT520 and PCI GT430:
http://www.zotac.com/products/graphics-cards/product/graphics-cards.html
512MB PCI GT610
1Gb PCI GT610
512Mb PCI GT430
512Mb PCI GT520
Claggy
all thanks for the
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all thanks for the replies.
Claggy,
I looked at your additional links which were helpful, but I cannot locate a local reseller for PCI-only units. I found some online with resellers I have not dealt with but I am hesitant to order from them. I think for the moment that I will abandon upgrading this box as a cruncher because it is limited in hardware upgrades/options.
RE: I think for the moment
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Yes, that's the right thing to do. The CPU & platform will not be power efficient anyway. If anyone bought PCI cards to crunch, they should be placed into more modern systems. But those cards are all too old to buy. Better upgrade one GPU to a modern one instead.
MrS
Scanning for our furry friends since Jan 2002
Just for the record, I did
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Just for the record, I did run a GT430 PCI here at Einstein and it took 13 hours for a BRP4G WU or 42 hours for a BRP5. I'd expect all the other PCI cards to do worse so it's probably not worth running any of those. Even the GT630 in a PCIe x4 slot was much slower than I had hoped for though it performs reasonably well at other projects. For Einstein I definitely recommend PCIe x16 only.