should i buy a 5850 or a gtx460 ? what would work best with gpugrid ? (and if you will say that i shouldn't buy the gtx460 use arguments)

GPUGrid does not have an app that will run on a 5850 so the 460 would be a better choice.

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Thanks - Steve

should i buy a 5850 or a gtx460 ? what would work best with gpugrid ? (and if you will say that i shouldn't buy the gtx460 use arguments)

If UR into "spicemen", math, or cryptography go with Ati, if UR into medical research go with Nvidia. If UR not interested in DC or GPGPU at all, go with Ati.

That's my POV...

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If I were you I would sell that GTX 260-192, if you have not already done so.

You might also want to buy a cheap GTX460 now and then sell your 8800 GT,
or you might want to wait for a month or two; to see what else becomes available, if performances improve and if prices drop.

- The noteworthy cards that will become available are the GTX475 and the GTS450.
- I expect performances will improve for both versions of the GTX460 and the yet unreleased GTX475 (as it is architecturally the same; just one extra core and 48 more shaders). However performances for other cards may also improve.
- While GTX460 prices may drop a bit (10 or 20%) this might be at the expense of quality rather than through competition; the cards have an open design, so look for cards with a good warranty.

ok.. thanks for the arguments everyone.. so i'll go with the gtx460 then.. now the problem is: should i wait 2 months to buy it cheaper or not?

If you decide to wait then I would ask what your price point is ... the amount they *might* drop is quite small overall ... if you really need to save $20 USD then I doubt you would be crunching to begin with ... start building up those GPUGrid points sooner rather than later :cheers:

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Thanks - Steve

i'm looking for a 25$ drop in price because it costs a bit too much for me..

Perhaps the sale of your other cards would sufficiently offset the purchase of a GTX460?
The later you leave it to sell them the less you will get, so sell that GTX260-192 now and start window shopping.

- While GTX460 prices may drop a bit (10 or 20%) this might be at the expense of quality rather than through competition; the cards have an open design, so look for cards with a good warranty.

Hi all,

the price is going down and the time to make a decision is there.

I've seen a lot of different cards, found infos about overclocking aso.
Speaking about 1024MB, GTX460 are clocked from 675 up to 815 MHz. Price difference is not that much so it makes sense thinking about that.

Some people posted, that overclocked cards are not stable, so these cards may be good for gaming but not for crunching.
Could owners of GTX460 cards please post their experiences please?

Kind regards,
Alexander

I got the MSI N460GTX CYCLONE 1GD5/OC GeForce GTX 460 (Fermi) 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP and am very happy with it. While on GPUGrid RAC was about 30k ppd. On F@H now and doing very well, looks like 9kppd or a little better. I have it OCed to 800/1600/1800 and with a 24c ambient runs at 50c with a 93% load on F@H WU. Fan set to auto is 61%. I cannot hear it and it is less than 3 feet from me in a case with an open mesh screen on the side.

I have not read of anyone not able to run these cards at 800/1600.

Cheers!

I forgot to mention concerning the PPD I mentioned, I play an MMO most nights for 1-3 hours so RAC would be a bit higher at 24/7.

Some people posted, that overclocked cards are not stable, so these cards may be good for gaming but not for crunching.

A factory OC does not increase the card's cost much but gets you a proportionally higher RAC - so it's probably worth it. If such a card is not stable as-is, you can send it back (faulty product), although that should not normally be the case. This would be expensive for the manufacturer, so they test the chips before they decide whether they should get normal or increased clocks. So you should actually get a slightly better chip with a factory OC'ed card.

A little more interesting is long term stability: all chips degrade after time, depending on (1) voltage (2) temperature and (3) frequency, in descending order of importance. The result is that after some running time the chip can only reach slightly lower clock speeds at the same voltage and temperature. And at some point this "clock speed potential" crosses the stock clock. That's where it gets unstable.
And since most chips of a batch are rather similar, they all have approximately the same clock speed potential, with a slight advantage for the better chips choosen for factory OC'ed cards. Therefore these chips may fail their factory clock speed earlier than stock clocked ones (e.g. it may be able to go 30 MHz higher but is clocked 50 MHz higher, so the "degradation margin" is reduced by 20 MHz). In this sense factory OC'ed cards may be less stable.
However, you could still downclock them after 2 or 3 years and in the end reach a longer lifespan due to the higher clock speed potential.

MrS

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Scanning for our furry friends since Jan 2002

THX, that helped!

Alexander

Some people posted, that overclocked cards are not stable, so these cards may be good for gaming but not for crunching.

A factory OC does not increase the card's cost much but gets you a proportionally higher RAC - so it's probably worth it. If such a card is not stable as-is, you can send it back (faulty product), although that should not normally be the case. This would be expensive for the manufacturer, so they test the chips before they decide whether they should get normal or increased clocks. So you should actually get a slightly better chip with a factory OC'ed card.

A little more interesting is long term stability: all chips degrade after time, depending on (1) voltage (2) temperature and (3) frequency, in descending order of importance. The result is that after some running time the chip can only reach slightly lower clock speeds at the same voltage and temperature. And at some point this "clock speed potential" crosses the stock clock. That's where it gets unstable.
And since most chips of a batch are rather similar, they all have approximately the same clock speed potential, with a slight advantage for the better chips choosen for factory OC'ed cards. Therefore these chips may fail their factory clock speed earlier than stock clocked ones (e.g. it may be able to go 30 MHz higher but is clocked 50 MHz higher, so the "degradation margin" is reduced by 20 MHz). In this sense factory OC'ed cards may be less stable.
However, you could still downclock them after 2 or 3 years and in the end reach a longer lifespan due to the higher clock speed potential.

MrS

Might I add the power consumption of the GTX460 is less than the GTX470. That some may argue that this in now ways mean that it's "green", so long as the WU's don't have a high rate of failure & the science is valid, that the work done on even the more power hungry GTX470 is much, much more than the "green" cards, CPU's, or anything else can do per watt consumed.

That some "might" still use a GTX460 after 3 years is debatable. That some might complain about too much of the CPU being dedicated to the GPU is also IMO also debatable, since no matter if the WU takes 3-4 hours more or less, that having the PC running 24/7 with the GPU running all the time, sending WU's back 3-4 hours faster or slower still uses a heck of a lot of power.

I'm testing Fedora 13 LXDE 64bit & it hogs the CPU much more than other Linux Distro's I've tried. It seams stable (I've only briefly had it running). So if it's good, I'm happy. The only thing I've noticed with Fedora 13 is that it's easier (for me) to manually upgrade/downgrade the Nvidia Driver & BOINC Client on Ubuntu/Mint than on Fedora, so I'm not sure if it's a good idea to use it with new GPU's with the constant need for the newest driver & BOINC Client.

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I have seen which books an application for GTX 460 a complete core in the CPU in the task manager. Is this normal now? Before these were only 2-6%
GPU load 84%.
Boincmanager (6.10.58) 0.12 CPUs + 1.00 GPUs.
Win7 64bit
Phenom 940 BE

leprechaun, on Linux it will automatically use a full CPU core/thread but not on Win7. Not quite sure what you are asking, so a few general things that might cover your concerns:
If a CPU core is allocated to the Fermi GPU it significantly increases the GPU speed, especially if you use swan_sync=0. This is the recommended configuration for Fermi users, especially GF100 cards.
http://www.gpugrid.net/forum_thread.php?id=2123
Make sure you are using the latest driver with your GTX460.
There are at least two light Boinc applications that you can also run. These do not register as using a CPU core/thread.

If your system settings are hidden we cannot see them. What driver do you have?
Also, you using Swan_Sync, and have you set Boinc to use all but one CPU core/thread?

Thank you, I think it lies with the variable SWAN_SYNC=0.
Driver 258.96
Boincmanager: Use of the processor 99%.
At the moment there run 3 X Simap + 1 GPUGrid.

Just crunched afew GPUGrid tasks with an GTX480.
WU 1.
WU 2 with 470.

Run 3 SETI CUDA tasks at a time and 4 SETI or Einstein on CPU.
But many projects don't allow, running more then 1 instance of the science app..
I think, it only matters if faults are being produced.
The same goes for heavy OC'ed CPU's, (of which I think it's pointless).
CUDA/OpenCL/BROOK have so much more computing power, that OC'ing your CPU, till it's 'edge', doesn't contribute not much more. IMO, it's nor worth it, a little, max 10%, but DRAM setting are more important, FSB; Timings!; Speed.

Just my 2 €0.02 ;^)

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Knight Who Says Ni N!

Before you completely dismiss CPUs please consider that if we could not crunch with CPUs there is a whole world of research that would never get done because GPUs simply are not flexible enough. GPUs are great at parallel processing but taking a look at the number of CPU projects vs GPU projects is an indicator of what the current state of GPU crunching/ folding capabilities and popularity. I consider GPUGrid the only GPU project worth any attention (well maybe F@H is OK)

but DRAM setting are more important

Could not be further from the truth. DRAM timmimgs, bandwith, etc. make almost no difference in CPU / GPU grunching. The one project I know of where DRAM makes any difference at all is climateprediction. Other than that, for CPU crunching raw core GHz is king and for GPUs it is all about the shaders.

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Thanks - Steve

Hi, you are absolutely right, I should have mentioned, which Projects benefit
from Memory timings and high CPU speed's.
And running without a CPU, isn't possible. GPUGrid has done a great job in using
GPU's and it uses the GPU quite efficient, more, if compaired to Einstein.
And I've to admit not having much experience with GPU using for other purposes then the Graphical (OpenGL; Direct X).
OpenCL; BROOK, CAL, are all new to me and I do find it hard to learn.
But it is the 'future' in parallel computing and have to do a lot of reading.
I'll keep my mouth shut, ;-) as others have far more knowledge of GPU processing.

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Knight Who Says Ni N!

One can put it this way: if an app is very dependent on memory it's probably not programmed in a good way, as CPUs are built to avoid memory access. Such programs will likely benefit from basic code optimization, using different algorithms to solve the probleme etc. A program should normally mature past this point before it's deployed massively parallel via BOINC.
That's why most BOINC apps are not heavily memory bandwidth or latency dependent. However, in former times SETI reacted quite well to improvements in the memory subsystem. And for GPU-Grid you definitely don't want to underclock your GPUs memory ;)

MrS

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Scanning for our furry friends since Jan 2002

Hello!

I bought a cheap GTX 460 768MB yesterday..

I had a GTX 275 before..

First i was dissapointed.. It seemed the 460 was slower than the 275...

04-Nov-2010 17:30:04 [---] NVIDIA GPU 0: GeForce GTX 275 (driver version 25896, CUDA version 3010, compute capability 1.3, 873MB, 701 GFLOPS peak)

05-Nov-2010 09:18:52 [---] NVIDIA GPU 0: GeForce GTX 460 (driver version 25896, CUDA version 3010, compute capability 2.1, 738MB, 363 GFLOPS peak)

EDIT:
I then also upgraded the drivers.. But still same performance..
05-Nov-2010 12:36:14 [---] NVIDIA GPU 0: GeForce GTX 460 (driver version 26099, CUDA version 3020, compute capability 2.1, 738MB, 363 GFLOPS peak)

I tested dnetc@home with the 460..
460:
first result around 23 min
second result around 50!!! min..

Then i gave up dnetc

My 275 runs dnetc at 23min unclocked

Then i tested Collatz (CUDA 31)
460 13min (Cuda 31)
460 15min (Cuda 23)
275 runs at 25-27 min
This looks better! Have not recieved the credits yet so i don't know if it will give more credits...

GPUGRID
Dont know yet, still running the first WU...

What is your experience with GPUGRID 460 vs 275? And also other projects..
I have read about your success with collatz and also seen that dnetc runs at 23 min and that seems sucky...

I dont know whats up with dnetc and the GTX 460 card???