I'm not totally sure how GTX 280 fits in here. It should have a worse price/performance ratio, the entry price is a bit steep and power consumption is higher. Still wouldn't be a bad buy, though.

MrS

Wait for 1st quarter 2009 and the GTX 295should hit the stores.

Its 2 280s sandwiched together and should sell for 500$.

Naturally, the 280 should drop in price by then?!



http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-295,2107.html

Now you tell me ... :)

No big deal ... fact of buying parts ... if I waited until then, the next card would be better and I should wait for it ...

I kinda learned early on, buy a computer and then don't look at prices for at least 6 months (after you leave the price challenge period)... otherwise you will find you can never buy anything because there is NEVEER the right time ... something better, faster, cheaper is always just around the corner. Oh, and I have waited for the next release only to find it delayed for months ... not saying that will happen here ... just too easy to never get anything because of waiting for ....

Its 2 280s sandwiched together and should sell for 500$.

I hear it's going to be 2 260s, which makes a lot of sense considering power consumption, cooling / noise and price.

MrS

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Scanning for our furry friends since Jan 2002

I've also read it's two 260's but also two 280's. Here's the quote:

"As we briefly mentioned, the GPUs strapped on to this beast aren't your stock GTX 260 or GTX 280 parts. These chips are something like a GTX 280 with one memory channel disabled running at GTX 260 clock speeds. I suppose you could also look at them as GTX 260 ICs with all 10 TPCs enabled. Either way, you end up with something that has higher shader performance than a GTX 260 and lower memory bandwidth and fillrate (remember that ROPs are tied to memory channels, so this new part only has 28 rops instead of 32) than a GTX 280. This is a hybrid part."

Here's the URL:GTX295

Pat

I kinda learned early on, buy a computer and then don't look at prices for at least 6 months (after you leave the price challenge period)... otherwise you will find you can never buy anything because there is NEVEER the right time ... something better, faster, cheaper is always just around the corner. Oh, and I have waited for the next release only to find it delayed for months ... not saying that will happen here ... just too easy to never get anything because of waiting for ....

Tell me about it! :)

I've figured this out almost 2 decades ago and lived through xts, 286s, 386s, etc, various peripherals, and Moore's law still hold true to some extent today!

But I guess I keep my budget under control, I always try to sell my current hardware and stay ahead of the curve and jump to the next gen before my current gen obsoletes. And I just might do that with my 6 month old 280 to grab the 295...

I kinda learned early on, buy a computer and then don't look at prices for at least 6 months (after you leave the price challenge period)... otherwise you will find you can never buy anything because there is NEVEER the right time ... something better, faster, cheaper is always just around the corner. Oh, and I have waited for the next release only to find it delayed for months ... not saying that will happen here ... just too easy to never get anything because of waiting for ....

Tell me about it! :)

I've figured this out almost 2 decades ago and lived through xts, 286s, 386s, etc, various peripherals, and Moore's law still hold true to some extent today!

But I guess I keep my budget under control, I always try to sell my current hardware and stay ahead of the curve and jump to the next gen before my current gen obsoletes. And I just might do that with my 6 month old 280 to grab the 295...

I still remember buying cache chips that cost more than the whole of my RAM ... And the 8087 co-processors ...

My first computer was and Ohio Scientific based on the 6502 ... I couldn't afford an apple at the time so I built mine on bare boards ... my introduction to Frys actually, I used to drive from San Diego to Anaheim to shop for parts there ... My cabinet was a wood dresser kit I modified to hold the boards ... Video was on a modified TV set when the wife got tired of me monopolizing the main set ...

Frys did run an ad in todays paper, thankfully no card of note listed. THough my current 9800 GT is still showing for $120 ...

UPS has my order in Kentucky ... if they put it on a plane today it is possible I could see the card Monday (not likely, but possible ... sometimes I think they actually hold the boxes shortstopped to try to extort the higher shipping fees ... even though they COULD get it here Monday, I won't hold my breath ...

For those not tuned in to the BOINC Dev mailing list, there have been a number of comments on Dr. Anderson's proposal to fix some of the issues with the fetch policy. I wish there were more ... alas ...

Stop!! Stop!! You guy are doing two things:

Dating yourselves (age not orientation)

and bringing back old memories. ;P

Pat

Stop!! Stop!! You guy are doing two things:

Dating yourselves (age not orientation)

and bringing back old memories. ;P

Pat

Who better to date? I know exactly how to please myself ... :)

Besides, I don't mind you knowing that I am over 21 and under 92 ...

Want more ... I remember where I was when President Kennedy was shot and the news came over the radio.

While the debate here is focused on the 'bang-for-the-buck' in general, it is also important to note that many systems require some significant upgrades to run the GT200 series...especially since no stock power supply can handle any of them (not to mention the various 9800 cards can also overload stock PS's). For those stuck with stock equipment, I would suggest that the older 9600 GSO (with 96 shaders - 384mb or 768mb) might be the best at about 84 watts. If one's system is really under-powered, a significantly factory OC'd 9500GT (at only 50 watts) might be the best. Of course, this assumes a single card install (since SLI increase PS requirements considerably).

My main interest being WU's per $$$ (no offense to our Euro-spending brethren).

Can't cut and paste from spreadsheet, so please forgive errors. All prices from pricegrabber as of today, 28-dec-2008. time/wu from an earlier forum thread, and match my experiences.

280gtx : 11k ppd, $350, 31.91 ppd/$
260gtx : 9.9kppd, $220, 45.33 ppd/$
9800gtx+ : 6.3k ppd, $200, 31.73 ppd/$
9800gtx : 5.9k ppd, $160, $37.13 ppd/$
9800gts : 5.5k ppd, $150, 37.23 ppd/$
8800gt : 4.8k ppd, $185, $26.02 ppd/$ (price is nuts, I bought mine for half that)
9600gt : 3.9k ppd, $120, $33.24 ppd/$
9600gso : 3.7k ppd, $75, $50.31 ppd/$

So, if all one cares about is the incremental PPD for the incremental $, the 9600gso STILL reins. IF you have a box with a spare PCIe slot that is already running BOINC, then the 9600gso is the best value per dollar.

BUT, if you factor in the cost of the system ... the 260gtx looks pretty good.

I myself am waiting for the 55nm 2xx gtx's to hit the street. I suspect the 290gtx will be joined by a sub 200 retail (150 street) 55nm double precision card. At least I am hoping.

Well, my card is in Oakland now (according to the UPS site) so it is looking good for Tuesday still (sadly) ... though it is still possible that Oakland will have it up so Sacrodemented in time for Monday (not holding my breath) ...

For the dual GTX, well, I will just wait to see if it is on the shelf when I build my next system. I suspect that I will top that one out as I likely will not replace my first newest one (W1) a quad (Q9300) ...

So I will suffer with that and the i7, Mac Pro and the two Dell Dual Xeons I have now ...

When the new card arrives I am not sure how I will arrange things ... at the moment I am leaning towards putting it into the i7 and leaving the 9800 GT there too ... the 8500 (or 8800 I forget) is too wimpy for GPU Grid so I may use it for SaH or the next GPU project that comes along and see how it fares there ...

I have 79 hours on the clock on the one task I have on it with 16 hours to go ... unless it is a "hanger" like the one I just finished on the i7 that took more than the expected amount of time to finish. It looks like I am going to blow the deadline, sadly, I guess I will have to look to see if it gets issued to someone else and send them a warning if so ...

Fractal,

your performance data looks right and already takes the GT200 speedup into account. The prices look a bit strange, but so what.. everyone can check against their local prices. Compared to Germany all cards except 9600GSO and GTX 260/280 look too expensive, whereas GTX 260 is cheaper. Guess they know we like to buy the good stuff.. ;)

And is your 9800GTS the 8800GTS 512?

MrS

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Scanning for our furry friends since Jan 2002

All prices from preistrend.de as of today, 28-dec-2008. time/wu from an earlier forum thread, and match my experiences. Only available cards listed to exclude "too good to be true" prices which you may never get because the cards are always out of stock.

GTX 280 : 11k ppd, 330€, 33.3 ppd/€
GTX 260 216: >9.9k kppd, 230€, >45 ppd/€
GTX 260 192: 9.9kppd, 220€, 45.0 ppd/€
9800gtx+ : 6.3k ppd, 140€, 45.0 ppd/€
9800gtx : 5.9k ppd, 105€, 56.2 ppd/€
8800gt : 4.8k ppd, 100€, $48.0 ppd/€
9600gt : 3.9k ppd, 85€, $45.9 ppd/€
9600gso : 3.7k ppd, 65€, $56.9 ppd/€

Interesting how different these prices are! Either the GF 9 series are already being phased out in the US or you're being ripped off for them. GTX 260 Core 216 is still king, although the 230€ is an exception (but available right now) .. others start at 250€.

MrS

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Scanning for our furry friends since Jan 2002

Fractal,

Compared to Germany all cards except 9600GSO and GTX 260/280 look too expensive, whereas GTX 260 is cheaper. Guess they know we like to buy the good stuff.. ;)

MrS

Try Saudi! Many shops will easily demand a 2x price for any high end and newly released stuff! The workaround I always take is a visa card and DHL from the US. :P

While the debate here is focused on the 'bang-for-the-buck' in general, it is also important to note that many systems require some significant upgrades to run the GT200 series...especially since no stock power supply can handle any of them (not to mention the various 9800 cards can also overload stock PS's). For those stuck with stock equipment, I would suggest that the older 9600 GSO (with 96 shaders - 384mb or 768mb) might be the best at about 84 watts. If one's system is really under-powered, a significantly factory OC'd 9500GT (at only 50 watts) might be the best. Of course, this assumes a single card install (since SLI increase PS requirements considerably).

I'd have to 2nd that. I bought myself a 9800GT card thinking all I had to do was put it in the box, but nooo. The power supply wasn't grunty enough and it only had SATA power connectors. Ended up replacing the power supply as well.

Another benefit of slower cards with less power consumption is that they're easier to cool. The stock coolers are probably still too loud and the cards get hotter than necessary.. but any aftermarket cooler should handle them easily.

An OC'ed 9500GT is a really bad option, though! With 32 shaders even overclocking is not going to help it that much. 9600GT with 64 shaders at 1.7/1.8 GHz already needs one day per WU. I'd rather OC a 9600GSO than get a 9500GT. If the PS can't handle the additional 30 W it probably wouldn't last long with a 9500GT either.

MrS

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Scanning for our furry friends since Jan 2002

Well, the card is her, plugged in ... and processing ... pull is now 450 some watts from the wall ... up from 290 with just the 9800 GPU ...

Now to see how it performs doing work ...

I may still move the 9800 to another machine, but, for the moment I will see how it goes ...

I'm still wondering about this 450 Watt. My self build AMD Phenom 9950 BE (2.6 GHz stock frequency) takes 185 Watt in idle mode, crunching on 3 cores without GPU 250 Watt and with GPU 330 Watt. So the GTX280 (stock frequency 602/1296/1107) takes only 80 Watt more for GPUGrid crunching, a lot less than the data sheet makes believe. I have build in a efficient PSU and 2 HDs inside (2 x Samsung HD403LJ). In the case also a 25cm fan in the left cover, 2 12 cm fans in the case in front and rear and a 12 cm fan for the CPU cooler (Noctua). With my 8800GT the same systems has used 310 Watt. SO the GTX280 use only 40 Watt more.

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My rig runs a QX9650 and 2xXFX GTX280 XXX's as well as a WD Raptor and 4x1Tb Seagates in RAID5. The PSU is a PC Power and cooling 1200 ESA. With both GPU's and 3 cores crunching my draw is around 520Watts. The GPU's run at about 82°C and the CPU at 56°C. I can complete a WU in about 4-6hrs on each GPU.

If I was to believe the specs, just my GPU's alone at 100% should be 500Watts or over so I think the specs are high.

Pat

GPU power draw is much more differentiated than "it draws xxx Watts". There are different "levels" of power draw specified and the actual power strongly depends on the software.

- nVidia specifies maximum power draw, about 230 W for a GTX 280 .. this is what a "thermal virus" could achieve, a software which uses as many transistor at the same time as possible. The heat sinks have to be able to deal with such load.

- theres a typical power draw under load, e.g. in games. That's about 170 W for a GTX 280, depending on the load (resolution, FSAA, detail settings etc.). That's what the user usually has to deal with.

- GPU-Grid does not use parts of a GPU which games do use (e.g. texture units), therefore it draws less power than in games.. how much is open to debate (or measurements).

- there is also "instantaneous power draw", which could be higher than the maximum specified in point (1), but which can only be sustained over ns or micro seconds. The power circuitry has to be designed to buffer such load.

@Paul & Koko: these are interesting numbers, thanks!

Koko, you say your system drew 310 W with the 8800GT and 330 W with the GTX 280, which is only 40 W more. Did you mean only 20 W more or 350 W?

Anyway, from your numbers we see that the GTX 280 draws 330 - 250 = 80 W (or 350 - 250 = 100 W) more than at idle, if it is loaded with GPU-Grid. That's already influenced by power supply efficiency. From Pauls numbers we see that adding a GTX 280 increased load power draw by 160 W (= 130 W for the card at 80% PS efficiency). From the measurements at XBit-labs I would have expected a lower idle power draw, but these numbers are not directly comparable anyway because we don't know the exact power supply efficiency. But they're good guidelines to get a feeling for the numbers.

MrS

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Scanning for our furry friends since Jan 2002

@Paul & Koko: these are interesting numbers, thanks!

Even more interesting is that the draw is now 380 W from the wall ... note this is an i7 Asus MB and now only the GTX280 installed. PS is 680W capable.

I have not remeasured the Q9300 where I put the 9800 GT (where is shows a really bad ghosting on the VGA cable connection, DVI looks better, but then I can't use the KVM I have to monitor the 4 windows systems I am running here.

Note that I do run 25/7 with BOINC at 99% load to allow me some room to get into and out of the system. (the older version seemed to act better getting out of the way than the later versions for some reason, not sure what it is and too ill to spend much time trying to figure it out, of course even if I did figure it out ... well, that is another story).

Anyway, I post these numbers for some to consider on their systems. Both seem to not be running too warm (hand wave test) ... the last time I looked ... lets see .. GTX 280 is running at 76 degrees C 32% memory 621 MHz and 1134 MHz

I just upped the PS in the Q9300 (to see if the ghosting was the fault of the PS) from a 400 something to a 500W ... like I said I did not check the draw on that system recently ... of course I suspended GPU Grid there because of the high CPU use from the 6.55 Application. Maybe when the new app comes out and the the CPU load goes back down I may restart GPU Grid there...

New thought ... I wonder if the high pull of the 6.55 application is affecting overall pull because the CPU though running full speed is not heavily loaded ... hard to believe that it would be a major draw but I have seen odder things in my life ... food for thought anyway ...