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How would it be comapired to an 8800GTX? Newegg has the 9600GSO's for $35 after rebate. Would it be worth having three of these on a cheap mobo and processor dedicated to folding?

Possibly something like this jewel for ~$435 after rebates: Click Me

The 9600GSO, with 96 shaders, is an OK video card for folding, though it's easy to bog it down. On 511 point WU's, mine drops down to ~3000 PPD, and mine has a stock shader speed of 1700 MHz which I've overclocked to 1850 MHz, compared to the stock 1375 MHz on the card you're looking at.

On 787 point WU's, mine does about 4200-4500 PPD,
on 353 point WU's, it can do about 4600 PPD, but it also varies a lot and can be as low as 4300.
I forget how it does on 1888 pointers, but I think it can take the thing 14-15 hours to complete one, so not great.

Of course, all of those numbers are on a Windows 7 install which is running... quirkily, and I'm also running notfred's on there, so it's not necessarily ideal.

It also looks like the $20 rebate your card advertises is applicable only for one card per household, so if you buy more than one you'll only get one rebate in total, unless you get friends/family to buy the others for you.

Hey, thanks for that first hand knowledge. I guess I will get a little more beefy of a card when I finally do pull the trigger on a new folding rig. I just saw that $35 price for these cards and thought I would ask.

Well, for $35 + shipping it is hard to pass up if you've got a machine with a slot for it. I don't recall whether one can mix card models or even settings on the same machine or not, but I do have 3 machines it might go in...

For a new machine, one has to wonder what the forthcoming new vid cards from both ATi and nVidia will do to prices of current cards. I expect nVidia will be cutting prices soon in response to ATi's new stuff, which should shove down prices some.

Still, though, a $35+ experiment...

Ragnar Dan wrote:

The 9600GSO, with 96 shaders, is an OK video card for folding, though it's easy to bog it down. On 511 point WU's, mine drops down to ~3000 PPD, and mine has a stock shader speed of 1700 MHz which I've overclocked to 1850 MHz, compared to the stock 1375 MHz on the card you're looking at.

On 787 point WU's, mine does about 4200-4500 PPD,
on 353 point WU's, it can do about 4600 PPD, but it also varies a lot and can be as low as 4300.

One has to keep things in perspective. Even at 2500ppd it is still far better than the ~1500ppd that you can get with SMP on a high-clocked C2D processor (I'm extrapolating here as my Pentium DC E2160@3GHz is doing ~900ppd). Performance per watt per dollar is still better even for an "ok GPU" like the 9600GSO. And with the recent batch of even crappier SMP WUs (even the 2665's and 267x's I'm looking at you ), the performance gap has only widened (JPinTO's farm consists mostly of GPU that's why his production did not go down as much as UGN's).

I am running one instance of the SMP client on a stock Intel E7400. My points were adveraging 1600 or so on the old work units, on the new units it is 1200 or so.

Right now it is easy to live with running the one computer 24/7 , it runs quiet and does not use much more energy than my desk lamp that keeps getting left on durring the day (at night it serves as a night light for the kids). Adding an unneeded graphics card would add noise and heat.

Anyways... as Fox said adding a 35 dollar graphics card is a great way to boost output. However it would be exclusively for the folding at home program. I may still buy a card to play games with, but I am not sure if I want to run it 24/7.

Is a 9600GSO good for Folding? It depends on which model! Thanks to Nvidia's naming problems, there are MANY versions of the 9600GSO. The 9600GSO started life as the 8800GS! This particular unit that is the subject of this thread has the full 96 shaders, but only has a 128 bit memory bus and has fewer ROPS then the real McCoy. How will it fold? Unknown, but it has quite a few strikes against it.

I folded with a 9600 GSO for a long time and it worked well. I don't think it'll be better than the 8800 GTX, but it'll be quieter and consume less power. Why are you buying three of them though? I don't think that you can use them in a 3-way SLI setup, nor would you want to.

TurtlePerson2 wrote:

I folded with a 9600 GSO for a long time and it worked well. I don't think it'll be better than the 8800 GTX, but it'll be quieter and consume less power. Why are you buying three of them though? I don't think that you can use them in a 3-way SLI setup, nor would you want to.

Each one would be running its own GPU client for folding. It wouldn't be used for gaming. But considering all the dubious feelings about its performance, I don't think it would be worth the effort. Would be interesting to find out tho if someone did happen to spend the $35 to find out. hehe

I just purchased a 9600GSO for my son's game PC. I'll run it a few days folding to see what kind of performance it gives, just in case anyone is still curious about it. Its just an Athlon X2 3800+ so I'm not sure if the CPU will create any kind of bottleneck, but I'll give it a go anyway. Should be on my doorstep when I get home this evening.

I have two 9600GSO's with 12 ROP's, 96SP's, 192-bit DDR2. One came with the RAM at 500MHz and the other with 400MHz. The shader clock was bumped from 1350 to 1797 for both. I might try bumping it up higher since their watercooled.