GPU or CPU

[LAURENU2]

I got a Visiontek HD4870 Video Card W/512MB memory, and with the Help from Bigred alpha Got it to work WELL
I am doing a WU in 3:11 Min That one Card was doing the same amount of work that a Pharm of 400Ghz in size was doing.
I was so Impressed by that card did I got a 2nd one I give GPU's a 5

I went to get my 3rd card and there all gone from EVERYWHERE Darn X-Mass Bah humbug

[alpha]

They're great, huh? It doesn't seem worth running a CPU on projects where ATI GPUs are supported.

I'm particularly interested to see what the new HD 5990 will be capable of.

[Bigred]

Time to add my 2 euro cents worth. GPU crunching comes in two flavors, Nvidia and ATI. Only a few projects support this method of doing WUs.

The Milkyway project currently supports both but to run The ATI version can be a pain in the butt. You have download and manually install an anonymous application. Getting the correct mix of drivers and application can seem like a nightmare. And then there are the dreaded VPU errors. I have two HD4890s I had to take off of it because they would get VPU errors about every 4 hours. The Nvidia application only requires the correct driver and enabling the GPU in the preferences.

Collatz supports both automatically. Just install the card, drivers and enable it in the preferrences.

GPUGrid is the oldest Boinc based GPU project and is very stable. It uses Cuda 2.3 and requires a high end Nvidia card. There are also problems with the GTX260 series cards causing errors.

Seti also supports GPUs but the last time I tried it, well it was Seti.

Einstien is also working on a Cuda application but the last time I looked it was not very effective.

Aqua had a Cuda application but they have stopped using it.

The following are some examples of what you could expect from different cards on diferent projects.

Milkyway HD4850 - 70,000 credits a day, GTX260 - 30,000 credits
Collatz HD4890 - 70,000 credits a day, GTX260 - 35,000 credits
GPUGrid GTX260 - 17,000 credits a day

The bottom line, a GPU can be a cost effective way to increase the amount of work completed.

[Bigred]

They're great, huh? It doesn't seem worth running a CPU on projects where ATI GPUs are supported.

I'm particularly interested to see what the new HD 5990 will be capable of.

I run my ATIs on old single or dual core machines. If I try to run a CPU project on them at the same time I actually get less credit. So on those machines it's GPU projects only. My Nvidias are all running on quads and CPU projects don't seem to affect the output.

The HD5990 should be awesome but unless you run it on an I7 you may spend a lot of time waiting for work. Milkyway still limits you to only 6 WUs per CPU core.

[alpha]

I run my ATIs on old single or dual core machines. If I try to run a CPU project on them at the same time I actually get less credit. So on those machines it's GPU projects only. My Nvidias are all running on quads and CPU projects don't seem to affect the output.

Not sure why that is. I have a HD 4870 running in a Core 2 Duo processor machine. I run work full time on both cores of the CPU and it has virtually no effect on the production of the GPU.

The HD5990 should be awesome but unless you run it on an I7 you may spend a lot of time waiting for work. Milkyway still limits you to only 6 WUs per CPU core.

Well, if the 5970 is anything to go by you'll also need to worry about the size of your case. That thing is 32cm long (12.5") and weighs over 1kg!

[LAURENU2]

I'm getting on Milkyway with the HD4870 - 95,000 credits a day
And I to have been running other Dc projects on the 2 cores

[Shish]

I run F@H on a ATI 4850 and no real problems runing Bonk and other projects except MilkyWay which wants to take over and hog everything. Prefer projects with some real, possible benefit to mankind as I'm no longer a stats whore. After IB left, it kinda made me think about retiring from full time DC cos budgets getting tighter and other priorities have arrived as well as electric power (as well as gas) has skyrocketed in price over here and I had to sell my incomplete solar and wind powered bungalow because of planning problems. Didn't really have to sell it, just got tired of fighting.

[LAURENU2]

I'm getting on Milkyway with the HD4870 - 95,000 credits a day
And I to have been running other Dc projects on the 2 cores

I will have to retract this as I have noticed that running DD@home did add 45 sec to the GPU WU's
But these are on X2's so that may be why I get so little drop in GPU output

[LAURENU2]

I'm getting on Milkyway with the HD4870 - 95,000 credits a day
And I to have been running other Dc projects on the 2 cores

OK I see Bigred is Right
When running DD full out on the 2 CPU core it drops the GPU Daily total from 95K to 70K
I will try to cut it down to 1 CPU core and see if that helps improve the GPU load Output