Should I get one of these for Folding

Pilgrim57

Pilgrim57

Pilgrim57

Associate
Joined
20 May 2006
Posts
1,029
Location
London
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-131-XF

As title, seems a good price & I seem to recall it is the shader clock that has the most impact. My current 8800GT 256MB won't run SETI & runs up to 84C with the 511 pointers but have got that down to 79C with Riva tuner. I think a lot og the "unstable machine" & "Nans detected" is down to heat - although I've had a bad run yesterday.

The only flaw I can spot is that the card is long at 266mm.
There is another GPU on the horizon so should I wait for that? I've heard that some of the 200 series have a whine due to capacitors or something.
Almost forgot - I have a 620w PSU (SLi) with an o/ced Q9550. Will that be enough for the new card?
Thanks
 
It would be an excellent card for folding. The GTX260s are almost as fast as the GTX 280s, and with overclocking, i imagine you would be looking at between 5000-8000 ppd depending on the work unit. I have found my GTX280 to be pretty cool whilst folding (or at least not hugely noisy - im looking at you 9800GX2!), so i imagine that whilst the 260 could very well reach 80C, it should be pretty quiet.

I have been running a GTX280 + OC'd Q6600 for quite a long time now on a 650 watt Be Quiet! PSU, so i imagine you would be absolutely fine with that setup.
 
Thanks Chrissy TBB, good to know. Missed the deadline today so might shake the piggy bank & order one next week.
Loads of EUE's today:(
 
:(

I had a load of EUEs a few weeks ago - could not do anything to get rid of them... It only seemed to happen on the 353 point units, but for some reason after a reinstall (one of many!) of the client, the problem just disappeared... I feel your pain!

Have you tried running the stanford memory checking utility?

http://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=9767

Its a good program (although you have to sign up to a US site), and should give you an indication if the memory on your card is knackered...
 
ChrissyT88 said:
I have found my GTX280 to be pretty cool whilst folding (or at least not hugely noisy -
Click to expand...

I have found the GTX280 to be absolute <insert expletive>

I had to RMA my first one, and not the replacement has done exactly the same, failed halfway through a TF2 match last night at 3am, i now have no faith in these cards and im in the process of RMA'ing the RMA replacement. /me sighs



Now is your time ChrissyT88 to gain some ground. ;)
 
Just started folding again on a Gainward GeForce GTX 260 Golden Sample "Core 216 55nm" 896MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express)

Overclocked to 685/1477/1160 55% fan 59c :D and silent ;)
Curently getting around 8400ppd from the gpu client and about 1500 more from three smp clients (not sure if I set them up right though??) Funny how quickly you forget things when you get to my age! :(

Fold on

Steevo38
 
Sorry to hijack the thread :o

How noisy is noisy? Might be interested in picking up a card for SETI (up to GTX260; can't afford anything above that), but only if the noise isn't really noticeable - my (air-cooled) PC can hardly be heard at the minute and I don't want to ruin the peace and quiet!
 
Last edited:
Corsair 850TX

Its got 4 x 6+2pin PCI-E Power, so I used 2 x molex to 6pin converters for the other two
 
I cant understand it, 2 GTX 280's have failed in 6 months or there abouts. Neither of them have been overclocked or tweaked, the only thing i can think is that the do not like folding 24/7, both times they have failed playing TF2 during a spamy moment, so perhaps they dont like spam :)

Ive got an 8800gts 320mb, had it since launch basically and it has been used/abuse and overclocked to silly figures, that folds 24/7 too and i have never had any problems with it. Didnt have with the gtx280 either, no unstable machine or Nans detected, no warning signs as it were it just died.
 
Biffa said:
How does the failure manifest itself?
Click to expand...

The screen generally lock's up with either a pink and blue checkerboard overlay, or pink and blue wavy lines. Rebooting the PC gives either a solid blue screen or a vivid green screen, followed by a reboot several seconds later.
I can see why the GTX280 disappeared and the GTX275 and 285 took the place of the 280 going by my dealings. It is a good card when working, but given it's reliability im gutted with it.
 
There was an article posted in the graphics section a while back, basically some big foreign e-tailer released RMA figures over a period of X months, and it was staggering at the amount of GTX280s that were RMA'd compared to other cards. I think it was 10% of all that were sold were RMA'd. I'll try to find the thread.
 
Here we go:-

Hardware France managed to convince a major un-named French retailer to give them some RMA numbers in comparison to the number of units sold. The data was collected in the period of seven months from August 2008 to March of this year. The breakdown is vendor & product specific, which will give us a better idea on the reliability of brands as well as individual products.
Click to expand...

http://gpucafe.com/2009/03/modern-graphics-card-failure-rates/
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom