picking out a card to support CUDA?

[HankB]

If I were going to look for a video card to support SETI under Linux, What should I be looking for?

On Nvidia's site (http://www.nvidia.com/object/cuda_gpus.html) they list a bunch of cards with CUDA Compute Capability (versions?) running from 1.0 to 2.1. Is there a minimum Compute Capabliity required? I see no mention of that on the SETI CUDA FAQ. (http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/cuda_faq.php)

Beyond that, I'm looking for something cheap. Is there a point in their line that provides decent performance at a low price? Ideally there's an older card with good performance that nobody wants for some other reason and they're practically giving them away. :D (My desire is to purchase something used.)

Are there any particular turkeys I should avoid?

Anything else I should know?

thanks,
hank

[PenguinsPal]

I run SETI on my 9800GTX+ & 8600GS. In 5 days of running I am already getting 2500RAC out of the GTX+ & 1200RAC out of the GS. Mind you I think they will Level out around 10KRAC .... Any CUDA card will work, of course the faster the card the more it can crunch...

[Sir-Epix]

A 460 GTX will yield around 13-15k RAC and only set you back 140 dollars at Newegg. In my opinion it is the best bang for your buck.

[PenguinsPal]

Can someone tell me how to get SETI crunching on a HD 6870?

[QuietIce]

Here's a listing of the RAC for some older cards. You can use it when you compare prices. :)
That's for Windows crunching, not sure what results you'll get on Linux.

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=617684

Can someone tell me how to get SETI crunching on a HD 6870? Sadly I started a How-To on that and didn't finish. I realized that, without a card to practice on, the result would be less than stellar.

[HankB]

Here's a listing of the RAC for some older cards. You can use it when you compare prices. :)
That's for Windows crunching, not sure what results you'll get on Linux.

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=617684
It's certainly better than no information. It does provide some idea of relative performance between cards.

Another Overclockers user has a couple GTX 260s for sale in the classifieds. Any reason not to consider one of those?

thanks all,
hank

[TomWoolford]

I run a single GTX 260 and it's good for about 10k RAC. It's a good card depending on how much you pay for it these days. It is a bit dated though.

The GTX 460 is a pretty sweet deal right now with those RAC numbers though.
I would honestly run one GTX 460 rather than two GTX 260's due to the fact that one GTX 260 single handedly heats my room up about 8* more than the rest of the house. I wouldn't want to imagine what two would do.

Edit:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127512
Nice card with a good cooler. 50% more Cuda Cores than the GTX 260 so nearly 50% more RAC.

[QuietIce]

It's certainly better than no information. It does provide some idea of relative performance between cards.

Another Overclockers user has a couple GTX 260s for sale in the classifieds. Any reason not to consider one of those?

thanks all,
hank Not at all if you get a good deal on them! :)

[Careface]

The 260s are fantastic, especially the 216SP version! Good for between 10-13k RAC depending on how you clock it :)

As others have said, I'd recommend either the GTX460 or the GTX5xx cards (depending on your budget) as these are the cards (Fermi architecture) that are still in their infancy of optimisation, and you're likely to see improvements in the coming months. Off topic, but I did a quick number crunch an hour or so ago, and it looks like I'm getting ~$3700 tax refund :o so I'll most likely be jumping on one of these cards in July-ish when it goes through.. Woot!

As for the CUDA capability question, as far as I'm aware, the CUDA app has been written assuming a capability of 1.0 (8800 series - believe it or not, the 8400GS has a higher CUDA capability than the 8800Ultra). The biggest addition to the capabilities was seen in 1.3 (GTX260 series), with the introduction of support for double-precision FLOPs, but I'm not sure how it ties in with the SETI CUDA app. The 'capability' essentially just allows for newer versions of the CUDA dlls to be used (cudart32.dll, cufft32.dll, and libfftw.dll), and thus to be used by the folks who make the optimised apps :)

[razorface]

I just bought a GTX460 from Newegg for $99.99 ($149.00-$50.00 rebate). You can have 2 rebates/household, so here's an easy 26-30K RAC for $200. Unbelievable.

Oh, and I hear you can play games on them too...

[QuietIce]

Games?????

[razorface]

Games?????

Yes, its an extremely self-indulgent pastime that squanders human potential but more importantly CUDA cycles.