Comment Thread for ALL Launch-Day GTS 450 Reviews

[SKYMTL]

105W for the GTS 450.

[ilya]

Originally Posted by chriskwarren

In the meantime, if the 460 goes down in price at all, then it would still be the card to go with....right now, its a toss-up in my books.

In terms of a pure PPD/W perspective I think the choice is very clear. 450 all the way. The 460 is honestly overrated in terms of PPD/W IMO. A GTX 470/480 would be a better choice if you can handle the heat, power consumption and price.

For reference:
ZOTAC GeForce GTS 450 AMP! Edition 1 GB Review - Page 26/32 | techPowerUp

<119W maximum power should be a good relative figure for F@H consumption. The core is clocked to 873Mhz which is 52Mhz shy of the 925Mhz tested for F@H here at HWC and 90Mhz higher than the stock clock tested. So you can expect at LEAST 8k PPD for <120W, the 460 does ~8-9k PPD for 160W. (stock clocks) Of course that figure can scale up if you OC, but remember power consumption also goes up.

Compared to a typical GT240 which should be around 60PPD/W (depending on design/clocks) a 450 should be closer to 70PPD/W. That's a higher efficiency than every other GPU out there to date. Still it's nowhere near bigadv efficiency, but the price difference speaks for itself.

Obviously this is all based on my own speculation after scouring through reviews that just popped up all over the web, so YMMV.

[_dangtx_]

sorry was referring to gf108. 70-80 watts, looking for the slide.

[sswilson]

Originally Posted by LarkStarr

well not many people look at folding farms as compared to gaming. and only because AMD and stanford, for some reason which I'm not aware of, do not work well with each other. I personally would still wait for the GF108 (the 5670 competitor) before refreshing a folding farm, seeing as down scaling fermi doesn't seem to downscale the points equally.

In a perfect world, the folks over at AMD/ATI would be looking through comment threads like these and reacting to something that is obviously affecting their bottom line. Seriously.... AFAIC the only reason the 8800/9800/250 line of Nvidia cards has lasted so long has been the folding community. That might be a bit of a stretch, but it would be interesting to see how many of these cards (and the 9600 GSO) were sold in batches of 3 or more.

Even if for some reason (and I'm sure there's a thread over on the FAH forums discussing the architecture differences that cause the problem) FAH and ATI will never play nice in the sandbox together, they could at least put some effort into something like the current boinc GPU client, and make some noise about it. Didn't the Cat drivers at one time ship with the FAH client???? This really is a sorry state of affairs, and it's been ongoing for so long that I honestly don't see a light at the end of the tunnel.

That aside.... who would have thunk that the comment thread on a newly released budget video card would focus so much on a secondary application like FAH????? ;)

[LarkStarr]

Originally Posted by Sagath

That is just a FUD guess at best unless you can provide proof. As far as I know no one has g108 folding numbers so saying they'll pull 6 or 7k is the same as saying they'll produce 100k.

of course it's a guess, hence why I said "if" and "wait to see" in my previous two posts - and how am I creating FUD at all? Look at the 460 -> 450 folding numbers and extrapolate instead of pulling something absolutely retarded like 100k out of your butt. I think once GF108 comes out and the cores are overclocked, at least 6 - 7k ppd could easily be achieved.


I also doubt folding has any spark of a thought in the bottom line of ATI/AMD products unfortunately.. and Yes I do believe the drivers did once ship with f@h. Then again Nvidia has been pushing their CUDA initiative quite heavy... I guess it's more just a shame then anything, but the directcompute material is available for Stanford or someone to look at and use, isn't it?

[Zero82z]

Originally Posted by sswilson

Seriously.... AFAIC the only reason the 8800/9800/250 line of Nvidia cards has lasted so long has been the folding community.

I very much doubt that. The reason they lasted so long is because they were reasonably-priced and reasonably-affordable products.

[_dangtx_]

you would be surprised. not sure if you noticed, but nv cards tend to keep their value longer. you may think the few hundred or so thousand people folding wouldnt make a difference, thin kagain. all those people are computer literate, one way or another they prefer green goblin's cards because of the folding abilities. hell if i have to get a new(or for that matter) used card it will be nvidia, just because when its in a system it will be folding for sure

[Sagath]

Originally Posted by LarkStarr

of course it's a guess, hence why I said "if" and "wait to see" in my previous two posts - and how am I creating FUD at all? Look at the 460 -> 450 folding numbers and extrapolate instead of pulling something absolutely retarded like 100k out of your butt. I think once GF108 comes out and the cores are overclocked, at least 6 - 7k ppd could easily be achieved.

You want extrapolation?

GTX 460 Overclocked
12k ppd / 338 cores.
36.1 ppd, per core.

GTS 450 Overclocked
7k ppd / 192 cores
36.4 ppd per core

so we have somewhere in the neighbourhood of a 1% (see edit) improvement, and somehow you think the g108 is going to push equal to a gts450 by you magically creating some folding numbers because you had some divine intervention? And you have the audacity to say I'm the one pulling shit out my butt?

I stand by my statement. Show us proof of your magic g108 6-7k ppd number crunching statement please. Otherwise 7k and 100 000 PPD for all intents and purposes are the same, some made up numbers.

[Zero82z]

You are really overestimating the importance of the F@H market. The vast majority of enthusiasts have no interest at all in folding, which is evident at any larger technology forum. This is a small community and the F@H team is a big part of that, but elsewhere the situation is completely different.

[sswilson]

Originally Posted by Zero82z

I very much doubt that. The reason they lasted so long is because they were reasonably-priced and reasonably-affordable products.

I did say it was a bit of a stretch.... ;)

And yeah.... 19 thousand active GPUs probably isn't that big of a deal in the big scheme of things, but a 2 - 1 ratio between ATI and Nvidia for those folks who are involved is fairly definitive, and I'm sure every GPU manufacturer would still like to get a piece of that pie.....

Folding@Home