http://www.aria.co.uk/SuperSpecials...R3+PCI-Express+Graphics+Card+?productId=37845 Thought folders maybe interested.
I bought the same card, brand new OEM from an ebay seller for £41.50 inc delivery. Go ebay if you want the 9600 GSO cards. Be warned, my XFX 9600 GSO is a whiney beast at full load.
Is this a DDR2 or DDR3 card? Mine just came through with DDR2 on the box, but DDR3 on the invoice. If anyone has one with DDR2 on the box what ppd are you getting on the 353pt WUs for example?
The DDR2 ones are rather pony. I had 2 and got rid quickly as I was getting a couple of thousand ppd less than I should've
The older 348Mb (DDR3) ones are by far the best, if you can get a 680/1700/950 over-clocked one even better, however they will all take a 1718 shader freq, even the 8800GSs. I have; 12 x 580/1450/900 3 x 680/1700/950 3 x 580/1450/700 (8800GS) All have the shaders over-clocked to 1718 and all run pretty much identical PPD anywhere from 3500-4500 depending on WU. With the 3469/70 units they will do 6500-7000 but they are rare as hens teeth.
I've been trying to ge through to Aria for the last 2 days to return this item as it's misadvertised (ie crap for folding) but they won't answer, they just keep you on hold racking the money up. Having started to search the net for a non 0844 number I found a couple of review sites for Aria and they were slated by alot of people, so I would suggest anyone else avoids this firm. Looks like I'm stuck with this card now.
As I said above. It's shown as DDR3 on the site, but on the box it is DDR2. That makes a big difference to folding performance.
Ive never really done folding before wouldnt it hammer my leccy bill and have my missus wanting to moan at me even more?
Welcome to the team then That depends on what hardware you're running, i.e. just a single PC with a single graphics card? If so, it won't have much of an increase on your electricity bill. It's only when you're running multiple PCs do you really see a big increase.
My currebt PC, an I7 860 with one 8800GT was using somewhere around 220W including 40W for the monitor I think. Overclocked and with 4 8800GT it can use over 600W with the monitor on. So it could add say £25 to £70ish per month to your electric bill if you left everything folding 24/7.
96GT V 86GT HI guys with the demise of all the decent Nvidia cards, I have been looking at running 3 or 4 smaller cards to replace my GTX295. Have come a cross these 86GT's going cheap: http://www.easypc-uk.com/graphics-cards/93-new-xfx-nvidia-8600gt-ddr3-pci-e-zalman-cooler-.html @ £28 and with the Zalman cooler it looks like a good alternative. What do you think?
I'm not sure what PPD they produce, but at £28 they should be decent value. A guy on the marketplace is selling a 8800GT for £40 inc delivery, which is another very good £/PPD ratio deal.
From the picture they don't have a separate power supply cable, so all the power will be coming from the motherboard slots. 3 or 4 of these may be pushing the board hardware to cope. Otherwise they look like a bargain, you won't get very high PPD (2-3000 each perhaps) but good PPD/watt. And you could try overclocking the shaders a bit.
Good point re mobo power. So if a board is using an 8pin CPU and a 24pin ATX, what can it push out the PCI-E's? I have two spare at present a Striker Extreme Celeron 3ghz, and a P6TSE i7 920. These are just used for folding. Cheers!
IIRC the PCIe standard calls for 75 watts through the motherboard slot, so with 4 cards the total would be heading for 300W. Again, IIRC, the 8-pin EPS12v supplies up to 300W but is meant primarily to supply modern PSUs. If you are asking board/CPU would best fit your plan, I'd try out Celeron first. Let us know how you get on
