Next week I'm ugrading my graphics cards. Now question is, which route do I go? Do I buy 2 GTX 275 and connect them in SLI + use my GTS 250 for Physix, or do I buy 2 GTX 470's with no extra physix card. Reason why I chose to post it in this section is because my PC is folding most of the time (when I'm sleeping and working, which is most of the time ). Gaming performace is also important but secondary. I'm mostly looking to get as big PPD as possible without having to change my 850W PSU. Any thoughts highly appreciated as this forum already helped me a lot.
Given that you can't currently fold on a GTX 470 and they're not very competitive for gaming I'd wait I wouldn't buy a pair of them right now.
Thanks Lizard. As I said gaming is not my main purpose anymore and since I'm currently running a single 1080p 24" monitor, limitations of Fermi GPUs are not bothering me at all. Lack of folding possibility is a huge concern for me, though I suppose problem lays at the end of Pande's Group. Did you heard any news from them by any chance as I can't find anything "official" on their website and forum?
Sinking £600 into a pair of those cards is far from ideal, or folding efficient. That would buy a folding rig that would increase your PPD much more that the cards.
Until there's definite news about folding on the GTX 470/480 I wouldn't touch them with a bargepole. As it is, even if/when Stanford does support them they are hugely energy efficient and run ridiculously hot - you may well still be better off with other graphics cards/CPUs.
Remember as well there seems to be in lw of diminishing returns in play once you hit around the 100 shader mark.... IE a GTX 295 is not 4.2 times the speed of an 8800 GT etc etc.. You would be better, spending more on a board with loads of PCIE slots..... and then tooling up with cheap second hand cards (if PPD / PPW is your objective)
Even worse, top end cards get exponentially more expensive for less extra shader power. For example, you can buy 9600 GSOs for around £35-£40 on eBay. They give 3.5K PPD. A 480 GTX is 11 times more expensive, and 11 GSO's would pump out 38.5K PPD. I know its not that simple, because you'd need a lot of rigs with PCI-E slots for those cards, but the point remains the same. If your a reasonably small scale folder, it makes a lot more sense to slowly buy cheap cards off eBay and add them to your farm, rather than buy a monster like Fermi.
