What is currently considered the best GPU for folding? Is the GTX 980 better than the GTX 780 Ti? Are AMD cards worth looking at these days?
The 980 is substantially better for f@h than previous gen/AMD offerings, but the 970 will net you nearly as many PPD for a lot less outlay - you could probably pick up a pair for not that much more than a single 980.
I think GTX 970 will be the most cost effective way to go (avoids the premium on the flagship GTX 980). The 9xx's are much better (read higher PPD, lower power) than the 7xx's ... or they will be; At the moment, however, GTX 9xx owners are getting a lot of Core 15 WU's which have a poor PPD compared to Core 17 WU's (Core 18 was pulled for Maxwell cards for bug reasons, but when they ran, they had the same poor PPD as Core 15) - for a GTX 970, a Core 17 can give around 230k PPD, while Core 15 gives about 70k PPD.
Cool, thanks. I may just get a 970 at the end of the month and hope for core 17 then Should play nice with the 2600K I'm buying this week.
I'd agree with the 970's. Good ppd when you get a core 17. I have my gaming server running on an i7-2600k with 2 x zotac 970's. Code: Running 54% Game-Server Slot 00 GPU 00:02:25 184287.3 (5.959 WUs) 01:51:10 ZETA 17 P9201 (R899, C4, G91) 30927.8 15 0 scorpuk (35947) 15/01/2015 05:18 17/01/2015 19:42 Running 47% Game-Server Slot 01 GPU 00:02:02 239401.1 (7.082 WUs) 01:47:46 ZETA 17 P9201 (R832, C3, G99) 33804.3 17 0 scorpuk (35947) 15/01/2015 05:55 17/01/2015 20:19 Amazingly got a core 17 wu on both at the moment. So getting between 180k and 230k ppd.