Hardware What is the Best Graphics Card for Folding 2011?

you mean cards that need the GPU3 client such as 5**...

And for an article the compares the merits of older cards you didn't throw many in there. A few people I know have farms of 9600GSO's or 8800GT's (because they're single slot etc) and I think It would have been useful if you had of included a few more legacy nvidia cards and a few less pointless ATI's. We all get it, they fold teh rubbish.

 

I Apoligise now for the following stupid question.

Looking at the "folding cost efficiency" graph a GTX460 1GB is at 65 ppd per £ and a 460 1GB produces around the 9000 ppd mark, surely that it does not just divide into each other otherwise that would be £138 a day? surely this can not be correct?

 

Releasing a article just after the new AMD client is released comparing nvidia and AMD and not using the new client?

Wow, just wow...

 

It means PPD per £ as in - you will get 65ppd for the lifetime of the card for each £ you spend.

£138 is the price of the card to start with. It's not every day, it's 65 points per day per pound, not 65 points per pound per day, if you see what I mean.

 

Now i do thanks for the answer.

 

That was my reaction, I was surprised Bit-Tech didn't even make mention of it.

 

Well I just fired up my gtx460 1GB that's been dormant for a couple of months. It's pulling 11500ppd on the current wu and even more strangely, the pc has been running at 237W for the last few weeks and earlier it was using 231W when I turned folding on, but now it's back to 237W, so folding is using no electricity for me.

Forgot to say, the best gpu for folding is now......intel 2600K by a mile. Gpu for now is pointless in comparison.



Errr, edited to add, some numpty has been messing with my power meter and it was 237V It's 330W, I'll get a non folding figure when this wu finishes. (227w after.)

In reply to the post below, my 460 is running at 1680.

 

Gah, an overclocked GTX460 pulls around 12000ppd.

 

What about a Quadro?

 

All the talk about 480 GTX being crappy, and power hungry, and not worth it, have now gone to hell!

 

Thanks for the report
May go with two 560 Ti cards

 

No, all that talk is still around, because all of that is still true for the card's intended purpose.

 

And under £200 at Scan currently...

 

Should I go for one 580 or two 560s for folding?

My MB is an MSI 890FXA-GD70 the ps is a Modular 1000W Corsair HX Series

Thanks

 

I'd say the two 560s, as they will net a hell of a lot more points (26k versus 16.5k) and cost about the same.

 

Thanks do you think they would be both fine with my hardware? The case is a coolermaster 840

any particular verson of the 560ti I should look out for?

Thanks

 

Should do, that's a good motherboard and that case provides good cooling.

IIRC, this MSI card is the best 560 TI that we've reviewed.

 

Much appreciated, will set my sights on two of those

 

Doing this article the way it is after the core 16 for AMD came out is pretty bad. I'm doing around 6000 PPD on my underclocks Radeon 5850. NVIDIA is still better for folding, but I would have expected an article meant to provide a guide to folding to test the new AMD core.

 

au contraire, mon ami

FahCore_16 for ATI is being suppressed by those fanboys who ran this test. OpenCL makes a big difference. It does require an HD5000 or better, though, so at least the very old GPUs are compared objectively since they still use FahCore_11 with CAL and will be deprecated in September.