Recommendations for a video card?

[bommel]

There is a new core in development for Radeons.

Currently, GPU3 is only available for NVIDIA GPUs, but we are working on a GPU3 release for ATI. For NVIDIA GPUs, we recommend GPU3. For ATI, we suggest GPU2 until GPU3 has passed through its QA testing in V7. Finally, the V7 Folding@home client (currently in open beta testing) has these functions (SMP and GPU) built in and will not require a special client.

So, Stanford is aware of this ATI vs nVidia issues and works on that. But currently, in this time, nVidia is the best.

Yes, they're working on it for quite some time now. However, I don't know how much time they still need.

IMHO the most important things to consider about FAH are:
1) Very good and optimized airflow in the case and enough space around VGA card to sufficient cooling. Two-slot coolers with no rear exhaust often require more space and airflow, but the true DHES cards (directly exhausting hot air from the case, not returning it inside) are very hard to find (and to pay for).
For example, my power hungry two-slot GTX560Ti running of nominal clocks requires ALL remaing slots free and additional cut through the (already well ventilated) case, with one more 12cm fan to operate at decent temps.

2) Stable and tested PSU that is capable to deliver required power for very long time. This is something obvious for higher priced PSUs designed for high efficiency, but deserves a little attention with the others.
If the required power is above 1/2 of nominal, I reccomend to disable the fan temperature regulation and let it run to max speed, if you are not limited by noise levels. You will be rewarded with increased lifetime and lower probability of some disastrous failure.

Yes, airflow and the power supply are very important. F@h is very demanding, more than a lot of games. I've heard of people who could play every game without a flaw but their PC crashed while trying to run f@h (due to several reasons like overclocking, insufficient power supplies, overheating, broken hardware, etc.).

[Tanri]

One last thing to consider: the dependency of GPU clients to CPU power.
From my experiences, a GPU client on Radeon HD5770 "eats up" entire core of i7-860/3,4GHz, which is definitely not a weak processor.
On the other hand, both my nVidias work virtually independent from the CPU.
Again, with the new Radeon core this maybe will change, but for now, if I want to fold without unnecessary CPU load, nVidia is the right choice.

The balance between money, electricity consumption, computing power, intended use and mechanical properties isn't a easy choice

[bommel]

I can remember having heard of that CPU issue with Radeon GPUs... I really hope the new client will perform better!

[Swoka Ikran]

IMHO the most important things to consider about FAH are:
1) Very good and optimized airflow in the case and enough space around VGA card to sufficient cooling. Two-slot coolers with no rear exhaust often require more space and airflow, but the true DHES cards (directly exhausting hot air from the case, not returning it inside) are very hard to find (and to pay for).
For example, my power hungry two-slot GTX560Ti running of nominal clocks requires ALL remaing slots free and additional cut through the (already well ventilated) case, with one more 12cm fan to operate at decent temps.

This could be an issue. The PC already has 2 cards (serial port card and USB 3.0 card). It's a full ATX board, but the serial card has to go directly below the GPU. The USB card can go, since I don't even use it (I'd gotten it planning to buy an external HDD to use with it, but I ended up with a USB 2.0 one for price reasons).

The case has a mesh-like front, and 2 monster fans, 1 in PSU and 1 in the case. Both in the back. There's also two sets of holes in the side of the case for air flow (one set has a shroud that makes it exhaust most of the CPU fan air out of the case).

2) Stable and tested PSU that is capable to deliver required power for very long time. This is something obvious for higher priced PSUs designed for high efficiency, but deserves a little attention with the others.
If the required power is above 1/2 of nominal, I reccomend to disable the fan temperature regulation and let it run to max speed, if you are not limited by noise levels. You will be rewarded with increased lifetime and lower probability of some disastrous failure.

Fans already run full blast any time I crank up the (lame) 8300 for F@H, and I don't run F@H GPU when I'm using the PC (meaning the GPU often gets 5 or more hours off each day).

I'll see about adding another fan though.

[Swoka Ikran]

Christmas has come and gone. I got a GTS450. Haven't installed it yet, but plan to do so either tomorrow or Sunday.

Does anybody here know whether the GTS450 can run alongside my 8300 at the same time (so one can do F@H while the other does the video)?

[Tanri]

Congratulations, ma Swoka Ikran.
In short word: Yes, why not.
If you use console clients in separate directories, they are practically independent from each other.

Are you already decided which card to use primarily for display and what one for FAH?
If yes, I recommend to place the display card in the primary PCIE slot, because (on most mainboards) it offers full 16 lines, unlike the secondary PCIE x16 slot, which offers mostly 8 lines only.
nVidia cores are modest in term of dependency on CPU, so IMHO the display-reserved card deserves more bandwith than fah one.

The remaining is only a question of correctly determine the GPU IDs for the cards, starting from zero for primary card, and to put the -gpu X flag to the client's configuration file (or to a batch file if you prefer).
The -forcegpu flag shouldn't be necessary, as the clients are expected to autodetect the type of GPU to which they are binded by GPU ID.

More details on this you can find here:
folding.stanford.edu/English/FAQ-NVIDIA#ntoc18

With this setup, you can control the clients independently and run them as desired - both for max fah performance, or engage only fah-reserved card to computing and have unrestricted display performance.
Note that the effect of fah-loaded GPU on overall display performance can vary from case to case, for example my 560ti causes noticeable slowdown even on 2D desktop with no DirectX applications running, but I can live with that.

[Swoka Ikran]

Are you already decided which card to use primarily for display and what one for FAH?
If yes, I recommend to place the display card in the primary PCIE slot, because (on most mainboards) it offers full 16 lines, unlike the secondary PCIE x16 slot, which offers mostly 8 lines only.
nVidia cores are modest in term of dependency on CPU, so IMHO the display-reserved card deserves more bandwith than fah one.

I forgot to mention that the 8300 is the motherboard integrated graphics. The MoBo only has a single PCI-e 2.0 x16 slot (to be used by the 450). Google suggests its not doable without Windows Vista/7 (I'm using XP for compatibility reasons).

Thanks for the info on the F@H client.

I may just run the 450 alone and hope the lag isn't too bad leaving the client running all the time. If it is, I can always just run it when I'm not using the system (which is what I do with the 8300 now).

EDIT: Just discovered that Win7 drivers appear to have finally came out for the hardware that wasn't supported. Maybe I'll dump XP.

[bommel]

The GTS450 should perform way better with FAH
And yes, using multiple cards/clients is easily possible. However, I don't know if using multiple cards requires Windows Vista/7. A few month ago I had a SLI (2 video cards linked together) running under Windows XP. At least that was possible.

[Swoka Ikran]

I just installed the card, removed a year's worth of dust (the system runs constantly for F@H), and added an extra fan.

Not sure how long it'll take to finish its first WU, but it's running. There's no lag either, which is amazing compared to the 8300. I can leave the GPU client running 24/7 while I use the system now.

The SLI won't work on XP because using an integrated card qualifies it as "Hybrid SLI", which MS refuses to support on XP. I've been researching on how to set up Hybrid SLI in Win7, but a lot of what I found is recommendations that you don't for stability reasons. The 450 is running alone.

[bommel]

AFAIK Hybrid SLI only works for certain GPU combinations. And it isn't really worth the effort anyway...