BOINC on a 8800 GPU
17 Feb 2007 0:08:23 UTC
Topic 192443
(moderation:
Quote:
Nvidia today released the first public beta of its CUDA, software developer kit, which so far has only been available to a limited number of developers. The company promises that the software will allow full access to the 128/96 cores of GeForce 8800 graphics cards and leverage their floating point capability, not only for graphics, but other applications that rely on number crunching performance as well.
They go on to say:
Quote:
graphics cards are running on 32-bit and not 64-bit, providing only single-precision data capability - instead of the required double-precision capability ... Nvidia graphics cards scheduled to launch later this year will go 64-bit and offer the double-precision feature.
Here's the whole article
http://www.tgdaily.com/2007/02/16/nvidia_cuda/
There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers. - Richard Feynman
BOINC on a 8800 GPU
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the R600 is comeing out soon folding@home is going to take advatage of that
I wonder what effects the
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I wonder what effects the permanent workload will have on the Video Card (its typically volunerable Cooling components in special) and the Power Consumption.
Those new Video cards really draw alot of Power, so their effective performance when used for DC better be very good.
nothing. every card made
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nothing.
every card made by any compny has been engineered to work under full work load for as long as you like. cooling and everything has been engineed to stay within primeters.
RE: nothing. every card
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...assuming you have decent airflow in the case. One of the kid computers I cobbled together largely out of spare parts/salvage for my uncle is a athlon XP1800, with a ancient TNT2 card. I suspect the case it's in dates back at least a decade since it had apalling airflow, and no room to add a fan to the back panel. Even after cutting a hole to put a fan in the side, I had to replace the stock aluminum heatsink and 60x10mm low fan with a copper one topped with a 60x25 delta screamer to maintain stability. Modern cases are much better, but I'd still worry about an oem box that was designed for integrated gfx only. A DX10 class GPU could easily double the system's thermal load.
Indeed, at 140-170W these
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Indeed, at 140-170W these cards are capable of producing a large amount of heat; any system they are used in will have to handle the added thermal load.
I would have to hope that anyone spending $600+ on a video card would also invest a few dollars in some good case fans.
Makes you wonder when you're going to need a dedicated power supply just for the video card!
There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers. - Richard Feynman
There're several companies
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There're several companies that sell 150-350W auxilarly PSUs that take a 5.25" bay or two. The price premium for them is high enough though that it's generally cheaper to replace your old 350-500W unit with a 700+W model, there're several kilowatt or greater capacity PSUs on the market now. Ones that powerful are somewhat longer than standard, and baring some sort of materials change/break through to increase density won't be able to grow much larger and still fit. OTOH 99% of hte people who have a PSU that large also have an oversized case with more space to fit it.
Not forgetting PSUs like that
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Not forgetting PSUs like that generate a lot of heat themselves too.
An article I was reading the other day talks about the G80 chip is very much an x86 chip. Was even some ATI engineers who looked at it and said it was [almost] similar.
http://news.softpedia.com/news/G80-Is-Actually-a-CPU-44724.shtml
RE: Indeed, at 140-170W
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The folks at ClimatePrediction.Net will have to update their climate model to account for the increase in CO2 emmissions because of higher electricity demands
:-).
Seriously, when considering the cost for the card and the cooling, you should also figure in the electricity cost which is significant when this kind of setup is run 24/7 ).
(For a little serious math on the ecological impact of BOINC style projects, see http://www.climateprediction.net/info/part_faq.php#q3.1 )
CU
BRM
interesting analysis even if
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interesting analysis even if they seriously lowballed thier numbers. 50W isn't that unreasonable for a laptop, but the average desktop chip from the last 4 or 5 years probably averages half again as high before you look at all the other hardware in the machine. Then factor that depending on quality PSUs are only 70-85% efficient in converting AC to DC. 200w for the average desktop's hardware probably a more reasonable number, with the hoarde of lowend OEM systems with 200W PSUs pulling down the impact from the highend gamer boxes running twice as high.