Looking to get started with GPU processing

Well this forum has some very knowledgeable people who visit, so i have learnt a lot here.

It's not that simple, over time applications and hardware changes it swings one way then the other. Bugs get fixed, and my specific troubles may no longer exist. Currently its seems more Green then Red in my opinion - i will be replacing my trusty reliable GTX-460s at some point in the next 12 months, i'll probably replace them with nVidia if the status remains the same.

No, you haven't said what your budget is or what you want to build. I have a certain preference for hardware (and what i buy new or used) but that has nothing to do with Ubuntu - if that makes sense. Almost all the linux distros run well on modern hardware - the current AMD driver issue is a bit of an exception so i would probably avoid the latest AMD hardware for the moment, which is a shame (I secretly crave AMD Gemini but the driver issue will halve its performance)

I just took delivery today of a Intel Celeron 1037U CPU fanless 17 watt minicomputer. I would not recommend that! I'm not sure i should even crunch on it at all.

I am in the US and have a local "Microcenter" store near me where I can get a 6 core AMD cpu, motherboard and 8gb of memory for around $200 to $250 dollars. Add in a power supply of say 650 watts or better, I buy 750 or 850 ones but they are closer to $100 each for the Bronze ones. The higher rates power supplies put out less heat. If you can reuse anything it will help, otherwise Newegg sometimes has decent large cases on sale for under $35 with free shipping. That put's you around $400 or so with no hard drive, but if you are JUST crunching a used one will work just fine, just setup a backup system and any crashes are easily recovered from. There are several free backup systems you can use, Acronis even has a free one for most major harddrives, but it only works for one brand at a time.

To be honest most projects are faster if you use an Intel based cpu, but the AMD ones are cheaper, in most cases, and will last just as long.

John,

I've started to respond several times and stopped because there is just so much to consider that it is really hard to "just recommend something."

If you will look at my computers (which are not hidden) you will see that I have a "farm." Some is at one office, some at another, some at home, and some in another location, but they are all mine, stuck-together by me (or at least a GPU added in a couple of cases), and maintained by me.

My observation is: Building machines incrementally is the most expensive and frustrating way to do it. Let me give you some examples of why.

First you say, "This 550w power supply is $30 cheaper than this 850w power supply," and you buy it. Then you say, "I'd really like to add a card to that empty PCIe slot," and you have to go back to the store and buy the 750w you find on sale. Then, you notice that there is another PCIe slot, but you don't have another set of PCIe power plugs, so now you go back to the store and buy the 1,000w power supply that does have enough power. Then you put the third card in the machine and realize you can't keep the cards cool.

Now we start the same process with cases and fans... First you buy a marginally more expensive and larger case, then you get a bigger one, then a bigger one, and you add fans. Alternatively, you might go for a "hybrid" cooling solution you have to buy and add to each card separately, only to find that because of hoses you don't have as much room as you thought you did.

Oh, and you discover that "x" card that produces 60,000 credits per day cost you 70% of "y" card that produces 110,000 credits per day would have cost when you "settled and compromised," but now it's on sale for $10 more than you originally paid for "x."

...and gosh... a little overclocking...if you just had that mammoth CPU cooler that once you purchase it you discover hits the RAM and won't let your top GPU sit in its slot...

I'm not suggesting that you will really go through every one of those steps, but I'm just trying to illustrate that a build that "creeps" toward your goal is ultimately more expensive than setting your sights high and slowly building that monster-cruncher you really wanted in the first place.

As a second point, it is also easy to "aim low" and end-up with that leftover 500w power supply, a left-over motherboard that only has one PCIe slot, a case and fans, and now you "might as well" spend the money on a cheap CPU and RAM to go into it and put your less-able GPU in there because that is the least expensive route to having another machine to crunch with.

Before long you are surrounded by semi-okay crunchers, nowhere to put them, and you spend far more time keeping them all running and managing them than you meant-to.

If I were re-starting crunching, I would appreciate someone telling me a few things.

Look at the Statistics at the Top Hosts, and keep moving down the list until you are happy with the cost to build it (some are not that expensive to build) and set your sights on a similar build.

Everyone has a prejudice. Some people will only use "z" cases. Some people will only buy "w" GPUs. Some people are a little insecure and have to believe that what they have is "the only way to go," because they need to reassure themselves. There are dozens of ways of getting to the same place, so take all of that with a grain of salt, if it happens.

If you look at my machines you'll see almost exclusively AMD CPUs and some of them are very old. That's NOT because I think they are superior (the Intels are better), but because they are cheap. They have to be (for me) because I bought so many and couldn't afford a bunch of "good" CPUs. Also, the motherboards were cheap. It was simply the cheapest way to drive video cards.

...and that's almost exclusively what I do because the video cards are so much more productive than the CPUs.

So MY reasoning goes like this: If I spend money on a really nice CPU/motherboard combination, that's less money that I have to spend on GPUs which are going to out-produce the CPU 10-20:1. Seems like a bad trade-off to me; I'd rather have more or better GPUs. So, I bought cheap CPU/motherboard combinations.

OTHER people's reasoning might be that they are about to spend huge dollars on GPUs and don't want any excuse for the GPU not to perform at the very top of its game, so every piece of support hardware needs to be the best, fastest, most up-to-date hardware they can find.

I can see either train-of-thought as legitimate. I have to opt for cheap.

The whole GPU choice issue is related, but different.

If you had looked at the top hosts a year ago you would have been hard-pressed to find a NVIDIA-based machine in the top 40. Now that list is dominated by NVIDIA cards. That's not because the NVIDIA cards got better, but because pieces of the NVIDIA programs we run got much better. Right now, as you have already read, I'm sure, the top AMD cards are being hamstrung by some combination of code/architecture/driver issues. Once those get ironed-out (if they do), there will probably be a mixture of AMD/NVIDIA cards in the Top 50 machines.

But whether you choose to go AMD or NVIDIA, you should at least have a vague "plan."

My GUESS, and it is only a guess, and I'm only trying to be "conservative" in my guessing, is that you are going to very quickly realize the limitations of a bare-bones system and will wish you had done something else and not spent the money on a half-measure.

As to individual component selection... I hesitate to get involved. As I said earlier, there are a dozen ways of getting where you want to be.

But before you pull the wallet out of your pocket, I would look at the Top Host list and decide where you want to go. You don't have to copy one of them, but if you are comfortable with (hypothetically) three NVIDIA 970 cards in your system, then you need to be thinking FROM THE VERY START about cooling them, getting the right motherboard to support them, how much CPU you really need to feed them, what kind of power supply you'll need (even next year), etc.

That will keep you from buying three power supplies at a greater total cost than buying the right one to begin-with. "ABC" case on sale may look great now, but will it be large enough to house all three cards when you get them next year?

So... a couple of concepts:

The very top-of-the-line GPUs are the best, but not necessarily at the top of the price/performance curve. A couple of steps down is usually the better cost/unit output. Often, two of those will out-produce one of the very best cards for less cost BUT... they do take-up two slots instead of one. So now you have to ask whether the money saved is more valuable, or if the extra PCIe slot is more valuable so you don't have to build another computer to run another card. You had said you were comfortable pulling 500w, so I can tell you that two cards are probably your better choice. You're going to be able to get to 500w in a single system pretty easily.

The LEAST important thing is the speed of the hard drive. The next (in my experience) is the speed of the RAM. The next would be the speed of the CPU (within reason). The next would be the case. The next would be the power supply. THEN the GPU(s) is most important.

The case ranks so high because you *MUST PAY ATTENTION* to heat dissipation. If the case won't move the heat, it really doesn't matter what else you buy, it won't work.

That's my long, boring story, and I'm sticking to it.

We can help you narrow choices, but we need to know what compromises you are making in order to guide you.

I would encourage you NOT to spend ANY money on anything to start-with which is going to build a brick wall in front of your intentions. My fear is that a cheap bare-bones may do that.

Please go look at the Top Host list. I think you may be surprised by what you find.