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JPinTO
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GTS450 Folding = 12,000 PPD

Sun Oct 03, 2010 6:38 am

Just added an Asus GTS450 in. They are good for 12,000PPD or 85,000 Points Weekly. That's an amazing amount of points for $130-$140.

I didn't realize that the GPU3 client supported the -advmethods flag but there is a nice 30% PPD boost for the advanced WU's.

The GTS450 is folding ~12,000 PPD with the Asus "top" factory Overclock. It's just behind the GTX460 in PPD (14,000) which is incredible because the card sucks little juice (single 6pin PCIE power adapter), is quiet, CHEAP AND runs cool.

There is no downside to running the GTS450's and they give monster PPD. I'll be cycling out my old, HOT, 98000GX2 (noisy, hot, expensive) that generated 10,000PPD for these GTS450's which are an across the board upgrade. Technology moves on.

Imagine if the top 100 TR folders spent $140 on a GTS450... Techreport would be generating an additional 8million PPW.

- JP
 
mph_Ragnarok
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Re: GTS450 Folding = 12,000 PPD

Sun Oct 03, 2010 9:12 am

JPinTO wrote:
Just added an Asus GTS450 in. They are good for 12,000PPD or 85,000 Points Weekly. That's an amazing amount of points for $130-$140.

I didn't realize that the GPU3 client supported the -advmethods flag but there is a nice 30% PPD boost for the advanced WU's.

The GTS450 is folding ~12,000 PPD with the Asus "top" factory Overclock. It's just behind the GTX460 in PPD (14,000) which is incredible because the card sucks little juice (single 6pin PCIE power adapter), is quiet, CHEAP AND runs cool.

There is no downside to running the GTS450's and they give monster PPD. I'll be cycling out my old, HOT, 98000GX2 (noisy, hot, expensive) that generated 10,000PPD for these GTS450's which are an across the board upgrade. Technology moves on.

Imagine if the top 100 TR folders spent $140 on a GTS450... Techreport would be generating an additional 8million PPW.

- JP


But then the power bill will be....
 
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Re: GTS450 Folding = 12,000 PPD

Sun Oct 03, 2010 10:02 am

mph_Ragnarok wrote:

But then the power bill will be....


If they replace existing folding bits (older CPUs / GPUs) it will be less. That's the beauty of it!
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Re: GTS450 Folding = 12,000 PPD

Sun Oct 03, 2010 11:27 am

Why is it so close to the 460? This seems a little too close, perhaps it is the factory OC?

But still, it looks like the new ppd/watt/$ king since the GT 240 (which I have for the moment, for about ~3200 ppd :-?).

mph_Ragnarok wrote:
But then the power bill will be....
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Re: GTS450 Folding = 12,000 PPD

Sun Oct 03, 2010 7:40 pm

Looks like a pretty impressive deal. I'll have to look into this, with power usage being a key datum. I still have to figure out what's making my i7 run so hot, though, since it should be producing much better than it is and with less heat and seeming power use.
 
JPinTO
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Re: GTS450 Folding = 12,000 PPD

Mon Oct 04, 2010 10:22 am

Flying Fox wrote:
Why is it so close to the 460? This seems a little too close, perhaps it is the factory OC?

But still, it looks like the new ppd/watt/$ king since the GT 240 (which I have for the moment, for about ~3200 ppd :-?).


Many of the GPU3 WU seems to require the clock speed more than the extra CUDA cores which gives the GTS450 fast clock speeds an advantage.

You'll need 4x GT240's to make the GTS450's 12000PPD. How's the power consumption for 4... and the acquisition cost? :D

- JP
Last edited by JPinTO on Mon Oct 04, 2010 10:27 am, edited 1 time in total.
 
JPinTO
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Re: GTS450 Folding = 12,000 PPD

Mon Oct 04, 2010 10:26 am

Ragnar Dan wrote:
Looks like a pretty impressive deal. I'll have to look into this, with power usage being a key datum. I still have to figure out what's making my i7 run so hot, though, since it should be producing much better than it is and with less heat and seeming power use.


It's not just yours, the i7's run HOT. I've got a GTS450 in the same box as a i7 950 OC 4.0Ghz: The 950 cores run *HOT* at 85C. The GTS450 is running 56C. The 9800GX2 that was replaced used to run a 80-82C in the same box. The GTS450 is unbelievably cool running.

The power consumption on the GTS450 is minimal... how much can it consume with a single 6-pin PCIE power lead?

- JP
 
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Re: GTS450 Folding = 12,000 PPD

Mon Oct 04, 2010 12:11 pm

JPinTO wrote:
The power consumption on the GTS450 is minimal... how much can it consume with a single 6-pin PCIE power lead?

100-110 W under load.
 
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Re: GTS450 Folding = 12,000 PPD

Mon Oct 04, 2010 12:17 pm

Flying Fox wrote:

mph_Ragnarok wrote:
But then the power bill will be....
Participating in Folding is always voluntary. If you don't like to join because of whatever reason it is fine. Heck you don't even need to post. :roll:


When you pollute the world with wasteful energy consumption that affects everybody.
And did I say I was against folding? I've folded in the past and when I feel like it I will fold again. Douchebag :roll:
 
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Re: GTS450 Folding = 12,000 PPD

Mon Oct 04, 2010 1:47 pm

mph_Ragnarok wrote:
And did I say I was against folding? I've folded in the past and when I feel like it I will fold again. Douchebag


So why did you pollute the world in the past? Maybe we feel like it too.
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Re: GTS450 Folding = 12,000 PPD

Mon Oct 04, 2010 1:56 pm

And that's more than enough R&P in this thread.

Thanks for listening.
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Ragnar Dan
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Re: GTS450 Folding = 12,000 PPD

Mon Oct 04, 2010 2:40 pm

For the catcall crowd: if you don't like folding, go abuse yourselves elsewhere. This forum is for those involved in the effort, not weak-minded, craven ingrates.

Captain Ned wrote:
And that's more than enough R&P in this thread.

Thanks for listening.
Too little, too late, too vaguely written, thus of no value. The violator of the forum policy is the person who deserves to be rebuked. You invariably join in only after someone else has started doing your job for you.

JPinTO wrote:
It's not just yours, the i7's run HOT. I've got a GTS450 in the same box as a i7 950 OC 4.0Ghz: The 950 cores run *HOT* at 85C. The GTS450 is running 56C. The 9800GX2 that was replaced used to run a 80-82C in the same box. The GTS450 is unbelievably cool running.

The power consumption on the GTS450 is minimal... how much can it consume with a single 6-pin PCIE power lead?
Mine runs too hot, though, and got worse when I moved it to a Lian Li PC-K7B case with putatively better airflow. So my problem is almost certainly the heatsink's connection to the heatspreader. I'm going to try remounting it once more at some point, and I'll use the thermal paste which came with my Noctua NH-C12P SE14 HSF (chosen for its low profile to fit in my previous case) just to remove that from the possible problems. If that doesn't work, I'll have to figure something else out. It has always run hot, from the initial boot to BIOS, and I'm wondering if the springs on the screws are keeping it from tightening enough to press as firmly against the heatspreader as it should. I'm running 1.15625 Vcore, which should not be giving me the temps I'm getting unless there's something else wrong.

If Meadows's 100-110W is accurate, that's fairly much. Too bad you didn't have a Kill-A-Watt or similar to test the GTS 450 vs. your old 9800GX2. Anyway, this Galaxy 50SGH8HX3OMJ looks interesting, though I don't know the brand. But it has 888 MHz core, 1776 MHz shader, but only 2 year warranty.
 
JPinTO
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Re: GTS450 Folding = 12,000 PPD

Mon Oct 04, 2010 7:45 pm

Ragnar Dan wrote:
If Meadows's 100-110W is accurate, that's fairly much. Too bad you didn't have a Kill-A-Watt or similar to test the GTS 450 vs. your old 9800GX2.


9800GX2: 200Watts, Hot 80C, loud, $400 = 10000PPD
GTS450: 110Watts, Cool 55C, quiet, $130= 12000PPD

That's huge Progress IMO. You can build a tri-GPU box for a cool 35000PPD for small cash and no risk of frying your hand on the GPU exhaust.

- JP
 
Ragnar Dan
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Re: GTS450 Folding = 12,000 PPD

Tue Oct 05, 2010 3:06 pm

It looks worthy of experimentation, but for the time being it looks like it's best to use these GPU's on a machine which isn't doing SMP2 projects, since according to this FAQ on the GPU3 client, specifically this section, it says:
Can I use my CPU to do calculations too?

For now, the GPU2 core uses the CPU a bit in addition to heavy use of the GPU. However, we hope to off load the calculation completely to the GPU in the future.
which makes me think it may noticeably reduce the SMP2 client's performance, and therefore I'd probably put it on a machine which isn't doing anything on the CPU. If you have information which can help determine the truth of the matter, it will be helpful. I've got one machine I've been considering replacing, but I was going to make it run the SMP2 client. I might be able to run it on my Linux machine through Wine, but that may make it perform less well, though there is an overclocking utility I found which doesn't happen to work with my 9600GSO, but might work with this GPU. Decisions, decisions. 8)
 
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Re: GTS450 Folding = 12,000 PPD

Tue Oct 05, 2010 3:49 pm

Ragnar Dan wrote:
It looks worthy of experimentation, but for the time being it looks like it's best to use these GPU's on a machine which isn't doing SMP2 projects, since according to this FAQ on the GPU3 client, specifically this section, it says:
Can I use my CPU to do calculations too?

For now, the GPU2 core uses the CPU a bit in addition to heavy use of the GPU. However, we hope to off load the calculation completely to the GPU in the future.
which makes me think it may noticeably reduce the SMP2 client's performance, and therefore I'd probably put it on a machine which isn't doing anything on the CPU. If you have information which can help determine the truth of the matter, it will be helpful. I've got one machine I've been considering replacing, but I was going to make it run the SMP2 client. I might be able to run it on my Linux machine through Wine, but that may make it perform less well, though there is an overclocking utility I found which doesn't happen to work with my 9600GSO, but might work with this GPU. Decisions, decisions. 8)

I think you just need to leave a core for the GPU client and then you can use the rest?
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Ragnar Dan
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Re: GTS450 Folding = 12,000 PPD

Tue Oct 05, 2010 4:18 pm

I'm sure it will still work, but if you're running -bigadv WU's, then I have to wonder if it would hurt performance enough to be a net loss.
 
JPinTO
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Re: GTS450 Folding = 12,000 PPD

Tue Oct 05, 2010 8:40 pm

Yes, there is probably a 20% hit on older cards when you run GPU3.

I run a GTX460 on a i7 920 and a GTS 450 on a i7 920 that run BIGADV. I set SMP priority to low, and GPU to high without allocating a dedicated core to GPU. GPU3 use of the CPU is 2-3% from what I've observed.

- JP
 
Ragnar Dan
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Re: GTS450 Folding = 12,000 PPD

Tue Oct 05, 2010 11:33 pm

JPinTO wrote:
Yes, there is probably a 20% hit on older cards when you run GPU3.
That's what I think I must have read somewhere or other, maybe even in here.

JPinTO wrote:
I run a GTX460 on a i7 920 and a GTS 450 on a i7 920 that run BIGADV. I set SMP priority to low, and GPU to high without allocating a dedicated core to GPU. GPU3 use of the CPU is 2-3% from what I've observed.
Hm. Assuming you mean idle for "low", and low for "high", I've noticed that on high producing GPU WU's, such as the 353 pointers, my SMP client declines fairly significantly in performance, which is easy to detect on BIGADV WU's. When I last updated my video drivers I found the GPU's output declined, and doing practically anything made it give up cycles, which in Windows 7 was a new experience. I finally gave up and went back to the stock drivers (197.45) and things returned to normal. How much RAM are you running? Or do you do anything unusual to set process priorities? In XP I used to set the Fah_Core exe's priorities higher than the GPU client did, and that helped a lot.

Anyway, my first thing to solve is my heat and speed on the CPU, and then I'll think about a new GPU. Hopefully prices will fall further soon anyway.
 
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Re: GTS450 Folding = 12,000 PPD

Wed Oct 06, 2010 5:07 pm

Well, now look at this: a former contributor to the Folding project, named tear on http://foldingforum.org, quit for some reason (from what I read, he thought he was treated poorly after contributing software to help improve throughput on the project), and is now selling his folding hardware. One dual Xeon system has already been sold for $800, but he still has an Opteron system
Four AMD Opteron 8356 (2.3GHz) processors, stepping B3 (WITHOUT TLB BUG) (totalling 16 cores)
with case, mobo, PSU, 8 GiB ECC RAM, &c for $700.

And a dual Xeon system
Two Intel Xeon E5520 (2.26GHz) processors (Engineering Samples) (totalling 8 cores + HTT)
with all the other necessary parts including 12 GiB ECC RAM for $800.

Hard to resist for interested folders. 8)
 
Ragnar Dan
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Re: GTS450 Folding = 12,000 PPD

Wed Oct 06, 2010 8:13 pm

Oop - I'd accidentally left out the URL for the folding boxes. :oops:
 
JPinTO
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Re: GTS450 Folding = 12,000 PPD

Fri Oct 08, 2010 8:11 am

Ragnar Dan wrote:
Hm. Assuming you mean idle for "low", and low for "high", I've noticed that on high producing GPU WU's, such as the 353 pointers, my SMP client declines fairly significantly in performance, which is easy to detect on BIGADV WU's. When I last updated my video drivers I found the GPU's output declined, and doing practically anything made it give up cycles, which in Windows 7 was a new experience. I finally gave up and went back to the stock drivers (197.45) and things returned to normal. How much RAM are you running? Or do you do anything unusual to set process priorities? In XP I used to set the Fah_Core exe's priorities higher than the GPU client did, and that helped a lot.


I run GPU priority higher than SMP priority, and use WINAFC to keep the priorities where I want them. Not sure if its the optimum to do that nowadays, but it works. I run 4Gb RAM, but could run much less, maybe 2-3Gb.

- JP
 
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Re: GTS450 Folding = 12,000 PPD

Thu Nov 04, 2010 6:51 pm

This Gigabyte GTS 450 looks like a very good deal right now when the 10% discount code "EMCZZYR24" is included, but I suspect nVidia's upcoming new GPU's are going to drop prices more than this, and Newegg is trying to generate some pre-price drop sales. This sale ends at midnight CA time, BTW.

I also wonder why the max. resolution listed is lower than 2560 x 1920 which some monitors do, don't they (I forget and haven't been thinking of one since the last 27" LCD sale was listed around here)?
 
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Re: GTS450 Folding = 12,000 PPD

Thu Nov 04, 2010 7:46 pm

Flying Fox wrote:
Why is it so close to the 460? This seems a little too close, perhaps it is the factory OC?

But still, it looks like the new ppd/watt/$ king since the GT 240 (which I have for the moment, for about ~3200 ppd :-?).

mph_Ragnarok wrote:
But then the power bill will be....
Participating in Folding is always voluntary. If you don't like to join because of whatever reason it is fine. Heck you don't even need to post. :roll:


Nvidia scaled back hardware support for GPGPU in the GF104, so assuming that the GF106 was spared from those cuts, it is not surprising that the GF106 does nearly as well the GF104.
Disclaimer: I over-analyze everything, so try not to be offended if I over-analyze something you wrote.
 
Ragnar Dan
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Re: GTS450 Folding = 12,000 PPD

Fri Nov 05, 2010 5:14 pm

Someone else signed up on Newegg's email list: do me a favor and test if that card is still 10% off with the promo code listed in my last post. I went for it since it was $129 including shipping. I'm sure I'll be irked in a week or two about having wasted money by not waiting. But the thing I'm currently wondering about is if the expiration I thought I saw was real or if I saw it elsewhere. But mainly, I'd like to reduce my power usage on my main box, so a few bucks won't bother me... too much.
 
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Re: GTS450 Folding = 12,000 PPD

Fri Nov 05, 2010 8:32 pm

Ragnar Dan wrote:
Someone else signed up on Newegg's email list: do me a favor and test if that card is still 10% off with the promo code listed in my last post. I went for it since it was $129 including shipping. I'm sure I'll be irked in a week or two about having wasted money by not waiting. But the thing I'm currently wondering about is if the expiration I thought I saw was real or if I saw it elsewhere. But mainly, I'd like to reduce my power usage on my main box, so a few bucks won't bother me... too much.

The 10% off graphics card promo code expires sometime next week I think.
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Re: GTS450 Folding = 12,000 PPD

Sat Nov 06, 2010 4:04 pm

How can a GTS450 get 12K PPD when I see GTX460s get around that figure or less?
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Re: GTS450 Folding = 12,000 PPD

Sat Nov 06, 2010 4:25 pm

Crayon Shin Chan wrote:
How can a GTS450 get 12K PPD when I see GTX460s get around that figure or less?

Please re-read the thread from the top more carefully. ;)
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Re: GTS450 Folding = 12,000 PPD

Sat Nov 06, 2010 4:26 pm

OK, were the GTX460s running with advmethods too? Without the overclock, I wonder if they would break 10K.
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Ragnar Dan
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Re: GTS450 Folding = 12,000 PPD

Wed Nov 10, 2010 9:08 pm

JPinTO: What core and shader speeds are you running your GTS 450 at? I installed mine tonight, and it's giving me ~9100 PPD (2:02 to 2:04 per frame) on a P6800 WU. It's not OC'ed, but it starts out relatively fast, with 930 MHz core and 1860 MHz shader speeds. I also noticed it eats CPU up a fair bit. It took an extra 13.5 minutes on the first full frame on the -bigadv SMP WU the processor's running, up from ~47.5 minutes/frame, until I raised the SMP's FahCore_a3.exe process's priority to BelowNormal from Low, which helped some (it's about 3 minutes per frame slower than normal, now).

It also wouldn't allow me to finish the WU the old GPU was running. It kept erroring out. I'll have to install the old card in another machine to finish its last WU. Hopefully I can run 2 GPU's on that thing's aged 430W Antec PSU.
 
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Re: GTS450 Folding = 12,000 PPD

Fri Nov 19, 2010 12:05 am

A couple of things I've learned since installing the GTS 450 in my system that I thought I'd pass along:

1. The shader clock and the core clock are, apparently, locked together at a 2:1 ratio, and you can't change that. I read that in reviews on various web sites, and have no idea whether it's really true, or if the overclocking utilities I've found which work with this particular GPU just operate that way. But, since the two agree and more than one review has asserted the claim, it seems likely that it's true.

2. Running with -advmethods set seems to be a bad idea. Almost every WU received for the GPU is a Project 6800, worth 1298 points. It's OK, but with the -advmethods flag, Project 6811 WU's also occasionally come along, and reduce output significantly. I received one which took nearly 24 hours to complete, and it's worth 7202 points. What's worse, the thing uploaded and then I got a "Server reports problem with unit." and not crediting me with any points at all, which is unprecedented.

The 6800 and 6811 are the only projects I've gotten for this GPU in 8 days, and from what I read on http://foldingforum.org/ you can't run the new GPU's or the new client software with older GPU2 Projects, and eventually they're going to remove older projects, but not for some time.

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