Upgrade due: Graphics Card Specs

[rich2000k]

Ok guys nice and simple on for you.

I'm going to upgrade my GPU in Jan. I'm not going to be spending a fortune probably about £150/$250ish on a used unit to maximise my money to processing/crunching ratio. I currently have a Sapphire HD 7770 1GB and was debating a HD7950, HD7970 or paying slightly more for a R9 290 (if I can afford it).

When I'm looking at cards what makes a good crunching card is it the ram/modules/Mhz/GB etc.

If someone can point me in the right direction it would be appreciated

Cheers Rich

[chriscambridge]

Hi Rich,

Mr Mark Woodles, and Tim, seems to be the resident GPU expert's here if I not mistaken.

However I am currently running five GPUs (3x 970s, 1x 750Ti, and a Quadro4000) so I have a little understanding; albeit in NVidia cards rather than ATI cards, however I think the understanding is pretty much the same across NVidia/AMD.

The latest, and most expensive card, would be the most powerful for crunching - also it would last the longest in terms of BOINC support, and use the least energy.

Ghz and stream processors are the most important, RAM less so as BOINC never seems to fully utilise the larger amount of RAM of most modern cards anyway.

Also you want to check your machine can handle the card; If you already know all this just ignore this bit. You will need the correct PCIE slot either a x16 or open ended x8 slot. Also you will need the correct PSU PCIE connectors to power the card. Most use either two 8/6 pins, but some only require one 8/6 pin.

If you really want to maximise credits, then run Collatz conjecture, GPUGrid, and PrimeGrid. They are listed in order of most credits generated, with Collatz able to pull in over 2 Million credits per day off a single GTX 970's. I personally only run Nvidia cards so I cannot give you a more definite answer on AMD GPU potential for credits.

I will try and alert Mark and Tim to this thread so they can you give you some further feedback on GPUs (graphics cards).

Chris

[Woodles]

Hi Chris,

You do realise that this thread is two years old don't you? I expect Rich has bought his GPU by now.

However in order from most to least important so far as crunching is concerned:

1) Number of processors (compute units/shaders/cores/stream processors whatever your particular board manufacturer calls them)
2) Some projects require double precision maths so a good double precision rating is essential if that's what your pet project needs
3) A minimum of ~2GB of RAM, more is good but rarely needed.
4) Core clock speed
5) Memory clock speed

And some generalisations:
CUDA outperforms OpenCl at the moment so NVidia cards will usually give a better performance than AMD cards all else being equal.
AMD cards usually need more power for the same performance.
AMD cards have a much better double precision to single precision ratio (single precision is what's normally quoted in the specs as it looks better)

Regards,

Mark

[chriscambridge]

Nope, I just saw December..

Thanks for the info. Its useful to document this info to end of this threads for any others that view this, as well as for Google SEO.

Chris