I'm two weeks away from massive overhaul of my system. I will be running GTX480 in SLI (as far as I'm concerned those will be real beasts in Folding). Question is: P55 chipset will support SLI, but each PCI slot will run only x8. With X58 I get both lanes x16. Whatever I get, CPU will be heavily overclocked so I'm not that bothered, but price-wise I can get really good i5 system £150-£200 cheaper then quite good i7. Now - can anyone tell me how much the performance of two GPUs is limited when running in x8 mode? Obviously not worried about gaming as that's not any issue at my resolutions but how will PPD be affected when running x8 vs. x16? I just don't want to spend too much money if I don't have to. Thanks.
Go X58 then you can get a 980X 6 core cpu to go with it, run a bigadv on it and add at least another 20Kppd depending on the overclock and OS run.
Hahaha. That would rock. But unless I get some sponsoring £800 is maximum of what I want to spend on CPU/motherboard/RAM combo . I'm sure that couple of new Nvidias will set me back another £800+.
@Zero_UK becoming the best in world (no not really), better to read this as you could make an page about what it does http://folding.stanford.edu/ @Synay 8x PCI 2.0 lanes are more then enough for GPUS, you do have more options for X58 route like 6core cpus once the lower end ones come later on next year (at the price point the 6cores are at you could make 2-3 i7-920/930 systems)
I'm sure if you were to ask each individual on this Forum we would all have a slightly different answer.... For me initially it was a low impact way of trying to advance the cause of medicine by using latent clock cycles.... but again if you ask most of the high producers I'm sure they will tell you that eventually you are "bitten by the bug" and the human competitive instinct takes over, compelling you to produce more and more points! Of course I could be wrong and my wallet has taken a hammering for absolutely no reason
If you can actually find some for sale - lots of rumours that the production yields are low. Expect to see lower specced ('crippled') GPUs come out not long after the flagship!
Its always more efficient to have multiple low end nvidia cards for a folding farm for the cost / ppd ratio.
Sounds a decent cause. But: "run software to band together to make one of the largest supercomputers in the world." Anyone?
Actually, the folding at home project is already far and away the biggest supercomputer in the world.
It pays to consider running costs; multiple GPU cards can send the electricity bills soaring, especially if you are running continuously. The best PPD/watt figures come from low-end GPUs but the nomenclature has become so muddled now, that I can't say for certain which is most efficient; around the GTS 240/250 mark IIRC.
Now I read that i5 750 doesn't support Hyper-threading. Is it something that matters or have big impact on Folding? If it does than there is little point of going for i5 800 series, because it will be almost as expensive as i7 and I then can as well get a "full fat" i7.
If you want to score big points from the CPU hyperthreading helps a lot as you can run 8 core bigadv units (if you OC as well)
Decided! 1. Asus P6TD Deluxe 2. Intel Core i7 930 3. 3GB (3x1GB) Corsair Dominator, DDR3 PC3-12800 - will be enough to start with and can add 3GB more if I will need to. I reckon this will be stable enough platform for 2xGTX 480s. Just want to get this one set before I get GPUs. Pix to follow around 27th of March. Anyone having any thoughts or is the set up good? Thanks for all the help guys, you really eased my choices.
Personally I'd go for 6GB RAM minimum (3x2GB), otherwise it looks good. Don't forget to buy a titan fenrir as well
