I did a post on Facebook recently, asking all my friends who build their own (note most of Hull University Computer Society, of which I was Vice-President for two years) where they get their stuff from, just in case I missed a big UK e-tailer. General consensus was Scan, Overclockers, eBuyer, Aria, MicroDirect and Novatech. From those, eBuyer generally had the lower prices, and I've ordered several times at 5pm one night with free super saver 5-day delivery, and got it by 2pm the next day. Though eBuyer have been known to have bad customer support if they screw up your order.

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Is there an nVidia equivalent in performance and price to the Asus ATI HD4850, locally this is priced at £130?

The performance of a GTX295 may come close to that of a HD4850. I guess that answers also the question about the price ;)

That is of course only a guesstimate, depending on the efficiency of the CUDA implementation. Maybe there are some changes to the algorithm with the announced new GPU version that shifts this relation.

Though eBuyer have been known to have bad customer support if they screw up your order.

Ah yes, I had that knowledge. I got a HD4870 from them which required two internal power leads; with just the one they supplied it didn't work. It took them over 2 weeks to get the second to me. Thankfully I managed to get a lead from Maplins so was able to get crunching straight away.

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Thanks for the considered replies.

The reason I raised the ATI HD48xx versus nVidia GTX26x GPU thing was driven by Travis's home page comments -

we should be meeting with lab staff to get the MilkywayGPU@Home project up and running. I'll also be posting CPU code for the GPU application this afternoon so the people who have made the GPU application for the ATI cards can get their hands on it and modify it so it works with ATI cards. We should have the CUDA code out sometime this week.

This seemed to place an emphasis on CUDA and not the ATI side of things, but I may just be reading in what I might want to see.

One advantage that CUDA holds ATM is the graphic cards can be used on a wider range of projects than the ATI GPUs, which are limited to MW.

In my case I purchased one ATI GPU, for an old AGP slot PC.

With my newer machines, with PCI-E slots, I can now choose either nVidia or ATI, depending on the graphics card software released by Dave and Travis, and what other crunchers post on their experience of application/speed of MW work being crunched.

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Go away, I was asleep

nVidia, with CUDA, is well supported and publicised, and are in a better position software wise to be utilised. Hence why more projects support it.

ATi with Stream is getting there. Don't forget, the ATi app here was developed independently by Gipsel/Cluster Physik by rewriting the CPU code and improving efficiency. MilkyWay's code is open source, whereas most other projects aren't, meaning that users of MilkyWay can recompile it for their own machines, or rewrite it for other hardware (like ATi cards).

The CUDA development for MW looks like it will be done by the project staff, whereas the new longer WU side of MW will have it's ATi app done (I presume, if he wants to do it) by Gipsel. All us ATi crunchers, and the project staff too most likely, are very appreciative of his abilities!

In terms of what can be used, one of the reasons MW only uses 38xx and 48xx cards is for double precision. That means, for nVidia, only GTX 2xx cards will be able to run MW. Other CUDA enabled devices will not, as they do not support double precision (like my 4670 cards I have here).

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Is there a consensus on what nVidia cards would run the client, and the best bang for buck (like the HD4850 for ATI and MW).

Someone over at GPUGrid made a list about Credits per €, have a look here. :)

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Member of BOINC@Heidelberg and ATA!

My BOINCstats

nVidia, with CUDA, is well supported and publicised, and are in a better position software wise to be utilised. Hence why more projects support it.

No, I think what happened was that Nvidia gave the BOINC devs some money and a couple cards to implement CUDA first. Nvidia also wanted it to coincide with a press release from them, which is why BOINC 6.4.x was released in such a sorry state, but with CUDA crunching.

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nVidia, with CUDA, is well supported and publicised, and are in a better position software wise to be utilised. Hence why more projects support it.

No, I think what happened was that Nvidia gave the BOINC devs some money and a couple cards to implement CUDA first. Nvidia also wanted it to coincide with a press release from them, which is why BOINC 6.4.x was released in such a sorry state, but with CUDA crunching.

Another reason why dearest David should spend more time on QA and development and less time on Social Networking and Credit Fixing...

No, I think what happened was that Nvidia gave the BOINC devs some money and a couple cards to implement CUDA first.

Cards yes, money no. And the cards only to make sure the code they implemented into BOINC actually worked.

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Jord.

The BOINC FAQ Service.

nVidia, with CUDA, is well supported and publicised, and are in a better position software wise to be utilised. Hence why more projects support it.

No, I think what happened was that Nvidia gave the BOINC devs some money and a couple cards to implement CUDA first. Nvidia also wanted it to coincide with a press release from them, which is why BOINC 6.4.x was released in such a sorry state, but with CUDA crunching.

nVidia give out CUDA Fellowship Awards to academics who are promoting the use of CUDA within universities. As such, I'm in the process of acquiring a (free) GTX260 to help learn.

ATi do not do such 'awards', as far as I know.

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DP

But the 4890 is compatible for sure. The relative crunching speed should be the same as I speculated a month ago.

Has the HD4890 been tested as working? Has anyone got it working yet? Does it perform better than the HD4870 for MW crunching?

Has anyone found any MW WUs to test it on?

I did get the 4890 to work & run 2 WU's with Credit Granted with the newly released 9.4 Drivers from ATI/AMD, I posted about it in the zslip.com Thread.

But the 4890 is compatible for sure. The relative crunching speed should be the same as I speculated a month ago.

Has the HD4890 been tested as working? Has anyone got it working yet? Does it perform better than the HD4870 for MW crunching?

Has anyone found any MW WUs to test it on?

I did get the 4890 to work & run 2 WU's with Credit Granted with the newly released 9.4 Drivers from ATI/AMD, I posted about it in the zslip.com Thread.

Thanks for letting us know PoorBoy. Not only the first 2 WUs cruched on MW with a HD4890, but the most expensive at $125 each ?

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Thanks for letting us know PoorBoy. Not only the first 2 WUs cruched on MW with a HD4890, but the most expensive at $125 each ?

LOL ... Got that right ... :)

It's running the WU's or at least I thought it was anyway but it's not Stable @ all so far. I did get a few more WU's on the Box but every 3 or 4 WU's it goes into VPU Recovery Mode and the WU's Hang & give a Computation Error. The Stock Factory settings are 850 GPU & 975 Memory, I backed it off to 825 GPU & 950 Memory & the same thing happened after 3-4 WU's.

So I backed it off to 800 GPU & 925 Memory & when I restarted BOINC again all the rest of the WU's just gave a Computation Error. Heats not an issue as far as I can see as the Cards only getting up to about 52c when running the WU's & 35c @ Idle.

Trying to get more work on that Box now to see if the WU's error again or what. Did get more & apparently they all erred out so I set it to NNW until I can check a few thing and try a few things ... I Re-booted the Box & shut the CPU WU's off & ran only the MWay WU's at the 800GPU 925 Memory Speeds, it seemed to run okay that way until I tried to run the Default speeds again, then it locked up again and the WU's hung again.

So I reset it back to 800/925, it ran about a dozen WU's okay & then locked up again...Sigh...Technology Advances once again ... :)

I shut it down for now as it won't even run the WU's @ the Stock 4780 Speeds of 750/900 for more than a few WU's without Locking up. I don't have time to mess with it anymore right now but will later this afternoon. I'm going to put it in another Box with a Higher Wattage PSU, the one that's in this Box should be okay because it was running the 4780 just fine. But for some reason it won't run the 4890 even with the CPU WU's shut off.

It has to be the Card & or Drivers I would think, if it won't work in another Box this afternoon I'm calling TigerDirect & try to get a Shipping Label to return them for Free.

So I backed it off to 800 GPU & 925 Memory & when I restarted BOINC again all the rest of the WU's just gave a Computation Error. Heats not an issue as far as I can see as the Cards only getting up to about 52c when running the WU's & 35c @ Idle.

If heat was the issue it would more likely that the card simply stopped running, and even reset yor PC. Those computation errors are a symptom of a wrong driver - a software incompatibility between the card drivers and the opp app.

As for reducing down from the stock 850 GPU - I would have thought that there should be no need for that, but scope to increase up from 850 to clock it.

I'd be interested in getting a HD4890 myself to play with, but not a good idea just yet based on your experience and the lack of WUs to play with.

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The Box may look like it's running okay right now but that's because I threw the 4870 back in it so it's ran 40-50 WU's okay with that in there, in a few hours I'll try the 4890 in another box but have other things to do right now.

You have a life outside of MW? :p

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Doesn't expecting the unexpected make the unexpected the expected?
If it makes sense, DON'T do it.

You have a life outside of MW? :p

No, he does not.

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me@rescam.org

+3

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Well I was going to keep Reporting on the 4890 & maybe save somebody a few headaches but since everybody wants to get cute about it you can all Kiss the Sunny Side of my Rear End & go & buy one for yourself if you want to see how they run. So I'll have no more to say about the Card from now on.

That Invitation to Kiss the Sunny Side of my Rear End goes out Doubly to Misfit of course, I wouldn't want him to feel left out ... :)