As I recall, some of the compute capable cards from ATI were produced in AGP (e.g., Radeon HD 2600 XT, Radeon HD 3650, Radeon HD 3850, Radeon HD 3870), though I don't know if these will work with Milkyway@home...but for other future projects???

Well, the cases are Antec type so they are pretty flexible and I have used them for several generations of computers. Though I have to admit I kinda like one of the new cases I got as it puts the PSU at the bottom so that it can have a 6" fan at the top of the case. Warm air rises so ...

We are still in WAY early days so I am not too spun up yet and there are tests yet to come... not sure if I will be able to get TOO expensive this year again... we borrowed money from one daughter to pay off the house that we had to borrow against to help another daughter. Now the wife is more eager to pay off the daughter than she was the bank ... oh well ...

I already have a 1K plus PSU so, if I see an deal on an i7 I might get the urge and splurge ... then I could retire one of the Dells move the GPU from there ...

But, I think I will just hang in with what I have at the moment as 100K plus a day is good enough for the moment. Heck, I even like the new Apple with 16 virtual CPUs ...

...
But, I think I will just hang in with what I have at the moment as 100K plus a day is good enough for the moment. Heck, I even like the new Apple with 16 virtual CPUs ...

Yeah, the new MacPro looks like a pretty good cruncher... If I had enough money I sure would get one. ;)
The only downside is that there are no GPU apps for Macs `til now.

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pixelicious.at - my little photoblog

[ Sadly, I only have one old box that has PCI-e in it, the other two I have are AGP ...

Paul,

As I recall, some of the compute capable cards from ATI were produced in AGP (e.g., Radeon HD 2600 XT, Radeon HD 3650, Radeon HD 3850, Radeon HD 3870), though I don't know if these will work with Milkyway@home...but for other future projects???

It is of topic here. But the Author of the optimized Milkyway-GPU-Apllication wrote in the german Forum, that AGP is ok for the application, There goes only a few data from GPU to CPU

As I recall, some of the compute capable cards from ATI were produced in AGP (e.g., Radeon HD 2600 XT, Radeon HD 3650, Radeon HD 3850, Radeon HD 3870), though I don't know if these will work with Milkyway@home...but for other future projects???

I have an AGP HD3850 running milkyway, was a bit of a fudge installing the drivers but it runs fine, producing ~25,000 credits per day :)

Yes, well, that is problem B ... my cards are not in that league. Those systems were dedicated BOINC crunchers in their day so the video cards are $29 specials ... no memory and no real GPU ... and they are off line ...

If I were to put another system on I have one last dual AMD 4400 that has a PCI-e slot so that would be the next system if I were that hot go trot to add another system to my pool ... keeping one fed on MW is tough enough so I am just content to wait a little bit before taking another dive into the pool.

Fun to talk about though ...

Well as i was reading to this thread i see many people forget how much processing power these ATI cards really have.
A simple 4830 has allready 640 units with loads of processing power.
If i compare the rough MFLOPS against each comparable VC the ATI beats the strongest Nvidia in double precision calculations
While in single precision the Nvidia seems to be a bit better but time will tell
And if we look at the new GPU science cards ATI beats all the best Tesla has 633 GFlops while the strongest ATI card has a staggering 1.3 Tflops
thats more then double the power.
But more important is that this enormous ATI power is provided with lesser power consumption then the Nvidia cards can do.
In my country Netherlands is compared to other countries the price of our electricity one of the highest in the world.
So when i see that such power comes fairly cheap and costs less power i think the choice when you are into distributed computing is not so hard.
As to the points i think its not the high as you can see its 0.7 points per units done in 9 seconds on the fastests cards.
Excluding the science cards since i dont know anybody who bought 1 of these cards yet not for doing science on their jobs ;)
But i guess this will change in the near future also because the prices of these cards drop also very nicely.
The Tesla costs around 1500 $ and the fastest ATI about 950 $ at newegg

And if we look at the new GPU science cards ATI beats all the best Tesla has 633 GFlops while the strongest ATI card has a staggering 1.3 Tflops
thats more then double the power.

Hmmm...your figures appear to be substantially incorrect. The best single card Tesla solution (the C1060) actual has 936 GFlops. The best internal single card NVIDIA solution is actually the GTX 295 which falls just short of 1800 GFlops. The best single card ATI solution is the 4870 x2 which falls around est. 2400 GFlops. None of these is anywhere near the best Tesla from NVIDIA, which is an external rackmount system that connects via either 2 PCIe slots (s1070) or via a single PCIe slot (s1075) -- 4300+ GFlops.

You talk about the normal videocards and other non normal products.
I am referring to the ati science cards .. i am keeping myself to the knowledge provided by these facts.
And the comparable Tesla C1060 sold to be a competition for the ati's, the given 633 Mflops are provided by newegg.

Also its to make matters simple for the price of 1 - nvidia tesla C1060 i can buy almost 2 Ati 9250 with 2 x 1.3 Tflops computation power

I am not going into debating which combinations give more performance .. too risky ;)

My buddy who works with them for computations says the tesla cant keep up with the ati's at all, they are used for computations for nuclear science and are placed with 2 each in 1 dual core machine.
The ati performs the same calculations in 1/3 the time needed by the tesla.
Since these very complex computations its ofcourse only possible to compare since both need to check each other on same results.
They also run multiple times the same project to make sure the result is confirmed, the funny thing is a super mainframe seem to calculate them to check again :D

And then Ati reports a new monster is coming to the market: Firestream

I guess if you have the money i think ATI can provide a proper responce to the external products also i guess no prices are available for these little toys ;)

Okay...not trying to pick a fight here (I like both NVIDIA and ATI cards), but I just don't get where you are getting your numbers from?

You talk about the normal videocards and other non normal products.
I am referring to the ati science cards .. i am keeping myself to the knowledge provided by these facts.
And the comparable Tesla C1060 sold to be a competition for the ati's, the given 633 Mflops are provided by newegg.

The primary difference between "science cards" and the mass market gaming equipment are special optimizations for particular science applications, not necessarily more raw power. NewEgg does not sell the Tesla C1060 (or at least I cannot find it). NVIDIA list the specification for the C1060 as having up to 933 GFLOPS single-precision and up to 78 GFLOPS double-precision.

Also its to make matters simple for the price of 1 - nvidia tesla C1060 i can buy almost 2 Ati 9250 with 2 x 1.3 Tflops computation power

There is no debating the price difference...the ATI card is much cheaper (around $850 US) compared to the C1060 (around $1500 US). Still, I do not understand where you are getting the 1.3 TFLOPS figure? ATI list the card specifications as up to 1.2 TFLOPS single-precision and up to 240 GFLOPS double-precision.

I am not going into debating which combinations give more performance .. too risky ;)

Well, I'd argue that it is just an impossible debate. With some cards including optimizations for particular software (e.g., CAD, etc.), this will vary greatly even within a single company's line of products. More importantly, the fundamental structural differences between how ATI and NVIDIA have organized the unified shaders in each of their product lines means that, even given identical theoretical GFLOP/TFLOP performance, a given application can be better performed by one or the other design.

My buddy who works with them for computations says the tesla cant keep up with the ati's at all, they are used for computations for nuclear science and are placed with 2 each in 1 dual core machine.
The ati performs the same calculations in 1/3 the time needed by the tesla.
Since these very complex computations its ofcourse only possible to compare since both need to check each other on same results.

This is to be expected since physics calculations require a great deal of double-precision operations (and as noted above the 240 DP GFLOPS of the 9250 are almost exactly 3 times more than the 78 DP GLOPS of the C1060). With single precision calculations, this difference (while still in favor of the ATI card) would be considerably less.

I'd also add two last points. First, the C1060 has been out now for quite some time, while the 9250 is just appearing. Thus, it should not be surprising that the much newer ATI card has the better performance numbers. Why NVIDIA has not lowered its price (the costs are very similar to when the C1060 was introduced) is a mystery? Maybe the introduction of the 9250 will force their hand on this...

Second, your suggestion (in the earlier post) that the power consumption for the ATI card is less does not appear to be correct. Both the 9250 and C1060 are listed as having standard power consumption numbers of 160 watts, but the Tesla actually has lower peak power consumption (200 watts) than the 9250 (220 watts).


The bottom line to all of this (at least from the perspective of using a GPU in BOINC) is that the particular project application will drive which manufacturer has better performance. The Milkyway@home app. is heavy on the double-precision calculations (as I understand it), so the ATI cards dominate performance. The brief discussions at PrimeGrid have suggested the possible use of GPUs for the sieving applications where single-precision is key. In that case (if it ever happens), the performance difference may be in the opposite direction.


Of course, all of this is mostly irrelevant since I cannot afford any of these cards. ;)
Maybe we can convince Paul Buck to buy a couple and test them. :)

Well yes i have been again just stating what is posted on the sites where these cards are sold so if they lie ... i obviously do also

And yes your right its basically huge double precision calculations, he stated that the machine with the tesla uses more real power then the ati machine.
So if anyone would be rich enough to buy these toys and test them ..... (" Paul ;) ")

Anyway we wont go any further on the subject since we need Paul to buy them and ofcourse test them all for us ;)

The brief discussions at PrimeGrid have suggested the possible use of GPUs for the sieving applications where single-precision is key. In that case (if it ever happens), the performance difference may be in the opposite direction.

That's true. In principle the sieving could really be accelerated quite easily using a GPU (the sieving kernels are just a few lines, much shorter than even MW for instance). But actually one would like to implement it with a mix of double precision floating point and 64Bit integer arithmetic (like on CPUs). Unfortunately it isn't that easy on GPUs yet.

If you look at the capabilities of current cards it may be the best to restrict it to a mix of single precision floating point and 32bit integer arithmetic for the time being. Given the fact that GPUs are much faster using single precision most probably that would even result in a faster app when compared to a double precision/64Bit implementation (opposed to the CPU version).

But I guess they are still in the initial planning stage as the layout of the app probably has to be changed a bit to accomodate for the requirements of a GPU implementation.

So if anyone would be rich enough to buy these toys and test them ..... (" Paul ;) ")

Tesla Card at $1,700 and listed as 933 GFLOPS

Well, after I pay my income tax ...

But, there is no pressing need for me to add to the 9800GT, GTX280, GTX295 (2 each) and HD4870 I have working for me right now ... even more importantly, I would have to pull a card to try anything ... and there is no pressing need to do that ...

As I posted in Milky Way, several projects are mumbling about GPU applications ... but, there is nothing definite in the wind. So, again, no pressing need to consider upgrading ... though I would like to replace the two old dells I have running ...

{edit}

Sigh, forgot the rest of what I was going to say looking for comparable cards...

The issue of which is faster is moot because there is no project that runs on both platforms. Meaning, who cares if the ATI card is faster if you want to do GPU Grid ... Or the Nvidia card if you want to do MW?

The ATI and Nvidia have swapped bragging rights as long as I have been buying computers. Now, it is more interesting to me in that I never did run games that really stressed any video card I bought.

IF and when the first project comes out with applications for more than one of the three APis, then we can start playing who is faster. But, that will only be relevant for that specific project and those specific applications ... over time that may change ...

hihihi poor us we seem not to get Paul to buy these cards yet ;)
a heck its just a matter of time if we poor guys whine long enough :D

on the other side i seem not to be able to get my buddy to donate their old 16 core opteron server to me also, so i need to find more excuses for him to do so :D
Ashame his company have a non DPC policy or we could have tested dpc projects on those machines.

hihihi poor us we seem not to get Paul to buy these cards yet ;)

Not that I don't want to ...

It is just that I can't see any reason to make a change or addition ...

I cannot keep the machine with the ATI card with a full queue and running MW full time. So, what would be the point of adding more GPUs to that system (even were it possible). And do I want to buy a 1060 card when there is likely a 1070 card coming out? :)

Heck, we have not even had EaH release its application yet, though that looks like it is coming soon to a GPU near you ... the problem is that I don't know which one yet ...

Worse, we don't know what the impact will be when the GPU version comes out and people like me start to run EaH alongside GPU Grid ... will it be better than the disaster with SaH and GPU Grid with task death on SaH corrupting the GPU to error out all tasks? Ugh ...

Heck, I need to visit the tech specs to see if the C1060 card is really that much faster than say the GTX 295 card and if so, by how much?

And do I want to buy a 1060 card when there is likely a 1070 card coming out? :)

The S1070 is already out; it is a rackmount system (basically it is 4 GTX280's with a slightly higher shader clock).

Heck, I need to visit the tech specs to see if the C1060 card is really that much faster than say the GTX 295 card and if so, by how much?

For GPUGRID, the GTX295 is considerably more powerful than the C1060, the latter essentially being a specialized version of the GTX280.

For GPUGRID, the GTX295 is considerably more powerful than the C1060, the latter essentially being a specialized version of the GTX280.

Which is interesting news ... now if only they were not having troubles stocking the GTX 295 ... :)

It is of no matter, not in the market at the moment. And perhaps the 285 is decent enough ... of course, if I wait 6 months perhaps I can expect to see a 305 or something ...

My GTX 295 OC took over a week to come into Australia. IF someone hadn't failed to pick it up in time i was going to be on back order for another 3 weeks......hope my next one doesn't take that long i want to run SLI for games and 4 GPU WU's at once.

Thanx for explaining Scott, so we need to wait till something really fast comes out.
Ok ill stop bugging Paul for now till faster will be presented ;)

...and thanx back to you Webbie for pointing out the new ATI card. I really need to find more time to keep up with developments from both companies better. I think NVIDIA will come out with some modest updates to the Tesla's soon since I think all the numbers so far are on the older 65nm process, but the GTX 285 and 295 are using the newer 55nm chips...

The successor to the 295 (GT212) is already on the stocks, due out on full production shortly - about 2 months from now - 380 shaders amongst a whole raft of other stuff), it doutless will hang out to dry the ATI - for now - until ATIs new beast comes out a short while later.

And so it goes on ........ it'll never change, they will always leapfrog each other at their respective cutting edges. I decided a while back to stay with NVidia, but frankly its just as real world effective a choice to go ATI.

Competition is a wonderful thing :)

Regards
Zy