What would give me the most PPD ... and more

[ADay2Long]

Hey guys,

Seems I trust you folders more and more and the "others" less and less but here goes.

What would give me more PPD, 2 x GT240 or a GTX260?

Also ... I have a NAS, but my plan is to move it downstairs and upgrade the board and CPU, heres the question. Which board CPU combo could give me a lot of SATA ports (6 or more) and that I could use to fold on 2 cores, fold on 1 or 2 GPUs, and run FreeNAS on a VM with the other core.

Thanks for suggestions guys! The cheaper the better!

[Arinoth]

I'm not sure what the ppd for a GT240 is but i can tell you that a GTX260 overclocked can yield you 8-9k ppd and will use less power then 2 GT240s.

[Soultribunal]

Originally Posted by Arinoth

I'm not sure what the ppd for a GT240 is but i can tell you that a GTX260 overclocked can yield you 8-9k ppd and will use less power then 2 GT240s.

Sorry to have to correct you Arinoth but that is incorrect.

1) GT240's if you get the EVGA SC ones will net you 4.2-5.3 depending on WU(Estimated). I've run quite a few WU's through different GT's and they are decent, though not a lot of headroom they do have some play with their shaders.

2) GT's pull about 45-52W each. And I have yet to see a GTX260 Use less than 100W while folding. So in that regard I would opt for a pair of GT's over a GTX.

My thoughts and experiences.


ST

[Arinoth]

Huh my bad then, for some reason i was thinking the GTX260s drew less power then 100W.

[Soultribunal]

No worries. Its why they have twin PCI-e Connectors. 125W each are capable of. So if it took less than 100 it would only need 1.

ST

[_dangtx_]

max output for a gtx 260 should be more than 100 watts..i think around 130-140+depending on process voltages and clocks.

[ADay2Long]

The GPU folding client requires 1 core from the CPU .... is it for one client or one per card? Or something else?

For my plan, a small quad AM3 with 2 cores to SMP, 1 to GPU and 1 to FreeNAS work?

[Arinoth]

Thats a misconception actually, you dont need 1 core per gpu folding client. You can actually run multiple gpu clients on the same core (since it doesn't use as many cpu cycles as one would think). This is at least what i experienced when i folded with 2 gtx 260s, (when i had them locked to the same or had them choose whatever one they wanted)

[_dangtx_]

yeah it doesnt take much cpu wise. trouble with amd chips is that they put out way less than intel ones ppd wise :(

[Soultribunal]

Originally Posted by Arinoth

Thats a misconception actually, you dont need 1 core per gpu folding client. You can actually run multiple gpu clients on the same core (since it doesn't use as many cpu cycles as one would think). This is at least what i experienced when i folded with 2 gtx 260s, (when i had them locked to the same or had them choose whatever one they wanted)

In this you are Correct 100%. I ran 3 Clients without Any other things going and 1 core was hovering between 2-8% depending with the others idling.

It is still good though from experience to not overload it because you do need some CPU cycles and I found that limit when I was building my Trio of F@H Rigs.

ADay2Long I don't see a problem with what you want to do. Have the SMP on Idle Proceess only, the GT's on More, and then leave a core for your NAS and you should be okay so long as the last process doesn't become too demanding on your system resources.

ST