Lost an GTX 1070 last night - seems the power circuitry has failed. It has been Folding continuously for nearly 3 years, which fortunately means it is within the 3 year warranty period I have on the card
Mmmm ... I would like to go down the RTX 2080 Ti route ... but I'm not paying over a grand for a GPU ... well, at least not at the moment
Since I've been folding on two of these... I can't really recommend them at this stage. They thrive on high atom count work units (which will see you 2-3M ppd), but due to the constraints set/not set by the project managers they often pick up smaller units which regularly dip to 1.5M or lower - 2070 Super territory. In the past couple of days I have been in communication on the official forum regarding 5000 atom projects being assigned to my RTX hardware, which at one point saw less than 700K ppd on the 2080Tis. They have since corrected this project as the assignment logic was faulty, but there are a few others which Pande believe to be fair game to RTX hardware which halve the potential output. Not worth the 100% price hike over the 2070 Supers imho. Nice when they're nice, but hamstrung from time to time. Of course, if you're in it solely for the science then fair play, but if there's even an element of willy-waving then it may leave you cold. EDIT: Of course, in moments like these they feel like they're worth it:
That's some nice output - and on only 6 GPUs (That's why I was toying with moving to the RTX 2080 Ti's - essentially using one of these to replace two GTX 1070's in each case. It would save heat and electricity and generate a higher PPD ... sounds like I'm trying to talk myself into it )
Two grand is a monster outlay for anything from 3-6M ppd, but then just about everything is! Hoping that OPENMM_22 might bring some proper support for big shade counts, I've seen some reports in the wild of over 3M on a single 2080Ti. If that were a frequent occurrence then they would make much more financial sense. I won't keep the second one folding indefinitely as I've only borrowed it from my gaming rig (in exchange for a 2060) whilst I'm busy at work and in my push to hit the billion mark. 2070 Supers are still where the smart money is at, a pair should see a reliable 2.5-2.9M (possibly nudging 3M on Ubuntu) and if you catch an eBay special you're only looking at a shade over £400 per card. At that point the only benefit of a single Ti is 100-150 fewer Watts at the wall.
And as if designed to prove my point, take a look now: Top card is a 2070 Super, bottom is a 2080Ti 160,000 atoms vs 13,000. It's not efficient folding.
My replacement GPU is in, and I've had a core rebuild of the 9yr old Folding machines. That in itself has upped the PPD (and reduced the electricity usage), and I haven't even changed the GPUs ... yet
Nice. In related news, something has definitely changed in the last day or so. I know there have been a few issues with uploads/downloads in the past few days. I'm not sure exactly what they've done but I am now receiving much more appropriate work units. The net result is that I seem to be producing around 1.3M ppd more than I was before the change was made. I'm not complaining. The 2080Tis have exceeded 3M each on certain WUs on several occasions. Maybe that has had a bearing on your ppd as well? Any solid plans on the replacement GPUs?
Is it really ok to claim warranty on a gpu that's been run 24 7 at full pelt. You wouldn't buy a car and then stick a brick on the accelerator and expect it to run at 6500rpm for ever. Just wondering!!
Not at the moment. Perhaps AMDs supposed 'nvidia-killer' cards will bring prices down to more digestible levels at some point ...
If it meets the warranty requirements, then I have no issues in replacing failed equipment - PC parts or otherwise. If you bought a TV and watched it 24hrs a day and it failed in the warranty period, would you not replace it under warranty then bcause you felt you had watched it too much?
You have a point but its not really the same thing. I suppose its testament to how well the cards are made that they can be driven that hard and almost last the full length of the warranty.
I was only thinking of an electronic alternative to your analogy, since the car analogy is less applicable because there are in fact a number of stipulations in regard to warranty. I could have used a washing machine as an example - there is no stipluation on how many times you can use it in a given period, so you would expect a repair/replacement if it failed in ithe warranty period.
Perhaps a closer example would be a hard drive in a NAS/SAN that is in constant use. Spinning super fast all day long, for years on end, with the drive head constantly darting around. Pretty sure the 5 year warranty on those has no stipulations, and it's much older/less reliable tech. Or a monitor that needs to display 24/7 at maximum brightness...
I suppose the manufacturers are fully aware that people will mine or fold on these cards and that they are capable of lasting in general otherwise they would have put a clause in warranty and some sort of monitoring system in the card itself so show its level of use. The amount of cards that fail due to this is probably negligible.
Speaking of hard drives ... I have had a WD HDD, with a five-year warranty, that failed after four and a half years - that was replaced under warranty ...