Pretty much as the title say's. Right now I am running two GTS 250 cards.
I would like to upgrade for some where around 250 dollars. I could get
two 550 cards, or one 560TI cards. I guess my question is what would
give me the most RAC for the money? I know I could run two units on the
560 at a time. And probably use less electricity doing it. But if the
550's have enough power to do two work units at a time as well, I would
think they would be the way to go??? Heat is also a MAJOR concirn for me.
I was under the impression the 560's ran cooler than the 460's. If that
is not true, would a single 460 be a better choice? Keeping in mind if
and when I got a little extra money down the line I will get a second 460,
or 560 if I go with one of those.

Sorry to ask so much but I would rather ask than regreat my purchase!!

Thought's?? Thanks for any advice!!!

I´d suggest the 560 if you are able to control the card.
You can easily run 3 units a time with it.
But i would buy a non overclocked version.

Check the speed of different cards first.

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With each crime and every kindness we birth our future.

Also check the power cables in your PC. Do you have enough 6 pin plugs to supply two GTX550's. See my GTX460 driver thread, I have just spent an afternoon solving that problem for even one graphics card. I now realise that there is no way I could put two powerful graphics cards in my system, even though the PS (850W) could cope and I have 2 PCIe slots. There just are not enough connectors on the PS cables.

Also check the power cables in your PC. Do you have enough 6 pin plugs to supply two GTX550's. See my GTX460 driver thread, I have just spent an afternoon solving that problem for even one graphics card. I now realise that there is no way I could put two powerful graphics cards in my system, even though the PS (850W) could cope and I have 2 PCIe slots. There just are not enough connectors on the PS cables.

You can use converters if your PSU is strong enough.
Shouldn´t be a problem.

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With each crime and every kindness we birth our future.

Thanks!!!

My power supply shouldn't be a concern. It's a 1000 watt Coolmaster with
4, 6 pin conectors.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817171056

I've read about the problems with the factory overclocked 560's here on the
boards, so I was leaning towards this ASUS 560 TI.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121424

It's just 20 MGH overclocked from the factory and I would have no problem
undercolocking it or raising the voltage till I found the happy place.
I was hopeing with the duel fan set up it would help with the heat issue.

I´d suggest the 560 if you are able to control the card.
You can easily run 3 units a time with it.
But i would buy a non overclocked version.

Check the speed of different cards first.

Wow, I did not know that!!

That brings up another question. If the 560's can easily
run 3 unit's can the 570's run 4? If they can I might as
well save the extra 100 bucks. Get just one of those, and
call it good. Would probably use less power. And if I got
one of those 3 slot 570's I would think cooling would be a
non-issue.

I would be happy, in fact that is my goal. Crunching 8 units
at a time. 4 on the gpu. 4 on my 1090T cpu, with the other
two cpu cores feeding the gpu.

Any other thoughts, anybody?? I am open to any and all sugestions!!

You can use converters if your PSU is strong enough.
Shouldn´t be a problem.

Yes no need to buy a new one. I disassembled a lot of PSUs and most of them have all the yellow cables soldered to one contact inside. All you need is enough juice (Ampere) on that rail and converters.

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You can use converters if your PSU is strong enough.
Shouldn´t be a problem.

Yes no need to buy a new one. I disassembled a lot of PSUs and most of them have all the yellow cables soldered to one contact inside. All you need is enough juice (Ampere) on that rail and converters.

Good deal! When I bought that power supply I spent more than I wanted.
But I was looking towards future proofing and the long term use. I know
power supplies loose some ability as the years go by.

Also check the power cables in your PC. Do you have enough 6 pin plugs to supply two GTX550's. See my GTX460 driver thread, I have just spent an afternoon solving that problem for even one graphics card. I now realise that there is no way I could put two powerful graphics cards in my system, even though the PS (850W) could cope and I have 2 PCIe slots. There just are not enough connectors on the PS cables.


You can use converters if your PSU is strong enough.
Shouldn´t be a problem.

Yes I have just beeen out to buy one of those this afternoon to get my GTX460 running. However, you need 2 x 4 pin connectors to make one 6 pin as per the photo. Having used 2 of them to power the GTX460 I now have no spare 4 pin connectors left, certainly not the 4 I would need to create two new 6 pin connectors.

However, as Phil has 6 x 6 pin connectors on his PS it clearly wont be an issue for him.

[/quote]However, as Phil has 6 x 6 pin connectors on his PS it clearly wont be an issue for him.[/quote]

Yea, my power supply is really a nice one. Cost WAY more than I wanted, LOL!!
It has 4 six pin PCI connectors as well as 4 six plus two PCI connectors.
I don't foresee any problems in that area no matter what I decide for my GPU's.

I guess I really just need to find out if the 550's will run two work unit's
at a time. That would be the cheapest upfront cash outlay route?

Or if the 570's will run 4 units at a time. That would be next cheapest cash right now outlay solution?

Or if I will have to go with two 560's, bought over time, to reach my goal of
having a system able to do 8 work units at a time.

You can use converters if your PSU is strong enough.
Shouldn´t be a problem.

Yes no need to buy a new one. I disassembled a lot of PSUs and most of them have all the yellow cables soldered to one contact inside. All you need is enough juice (Ampere) on that rail and converters.

And enough copper in the existing cables plus good enough contacts in the connectors that splitting them doesn't cause problems. The general specs for power supply cabling do have typical engineering margins, splitting cables in effect reduces those margins by 1/2.

It can be much like putting too much load on an AC power strip, working well for awhile until the buidup of heat causes eventual degradation and failure.

Current ratings of the contacts in Molex style connectors are somewhat dependent on the gauge of wiring used, some of the heat is conducted away by the copper in the wires. The pins are crimped to the wire which is very effective if done correctly, but a poor crimp causes issues for both electrical and heat conductivity.

IOW, if you're going to risk splitting cables it makes sense to use only the best quality hardware and even then check for any signs of overheating.

                                                                  Joe

How many units at a time you can run is based on how much video ram that card has.

768=2
1024=3

ect...

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How many units at a time you can run is based on how much video ram that card has.

768=2
1024=3

ect...

"Thank You" That's just what I needed to know!! After reading enough to
completely confuse myself I think I am going to go with two Asus 450 GTS
DirectCu OC's.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121415

Little bit cheaper and uses less power according to the reviews I read. And
they have enough memory that I should be able to run two work units on each
card, WooHoo!!!

Thanks again!!

My little GTS 450 1024MB is a great card. Right now I am running two MBs at a time or one MB and one AP. If you don't run APs on yours it will easily do three MBs at a time. You might want to take a look at the 460s though. They are a much faster card for not much more money.

Just to give you an idea what you would be looking at, I'm running an Intel E5400 dual core and just one GTS 450 and getting over 10K in RAC.

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PROUD MEMBER OF Team Starfire World BOINC

Reading through these threads, I become a little confused.

Based on the following: More recent motherboards have room (or slots, more exactly) for two monitor cards.

Can two such monitor cards be put in to run simultaneously (at least for BOINC, or to be more precise, CUDA)? I have only one screen monitor, but two connectors on the rear of the PC makes it possible to connect two different ones, if space allows me to do so.

In many cases conflicts between different devices in a PC when you put more than one active to be used at any given time.

But many older systems had two floppy stations (possibly two different types or sizes). Newer systems have room for 3 or 4 discs (hard drives).

As far as I know, the PC keeps tab of these things by assigning such things as interrupts, DMA, memory and the fourth thing lost out of my mind for some reason.

Please explain this two (monitor) card principle to me.

Reading through these threads, I become a little confused.

Based on the following: More recent motherboards have room (or slots, more exactly) for two monitor cards.

Can two such monitor cards be put in to run simultaneously (at least for BOINC, or to be more precise, CUDA)? I have only one screen monitor, but two connectors on the rear of the PC makes it possible to connect two different ones, if space allows me to do so.

In many cases conflicts between different devices in a PC when you put more than one active to be used at any given time.

But many older systems had two floppy stations (possibly two different types or sizes). Newer systems have room for 3 or 4 discs (hard drives).

As far as I know, the PC keeps tab of these things by assigning such things as interrupts, DMA, memory and the fourth thing lost out of my mind for some reason.

Please explain this two (monitor) card principle to me.

There is little to explain your PC will be able to cope with a graphics card in each slot you have available. In addition, SETI will be able to utilise all of your graphics cards at the same time. If the cards are identical then the default is for SETI to use them all. If they are different then the default is to use just the most powerful, though I believe you can change that.

Having multiple graphics cards lets you attach multiple monitors to your system which can then display different things. For example you can use one monitor to track your SETI downloads and another to read the message boards.

Until recently my main cruncher had two GT9500 graphics cards in it and SETI happily used both of them at the same time. Yesterday I changed one of the GT9500 cardss to a GTX460 and had SETI crunching on the GTX460 card whilst my monitor was attached to the GT9500. All combinations worked fine.

Perryjay thank you for that information. That pretty much sold me on the two
450's!!

When I first starting thinking about doing this upgrade I had thought of using
a pair of the 460 cards, when I was ready to do this upgrade. But then I saw
the 560 cards ran a little cooler. And used a little less power. Since then I
have come to the conclusion, in my little mind at least, they under volt the
560's so Nvidia can make that claim to appear more "Green". Anyway, before
that conclusion, I just assumed all the 500 cards used less power and ran a
little cooler than their 400 little brothers. That's why I was trying to
decide between two 550's or a single, for now at least, purchase of a 560.
After reading all that I could find I think I will be very happy with the
two 450's. They use less power than the 550's and considerably less, under
full load, than the 460's. If the numbers are true that I found, 140 watt's
V/S 212 watt's that's a big difference. Even more so when I got up the funds
to add a second 460. Might add up enough to buy a gallon of gas by the end of
the year, LOL!!

Musicplayer.

You should have no problems using two graphic cards running Cuda applications,
if your motherboard has two or more PCIe slot's. And your power supply can
handle the extra loads. I ran a set of 9800's. Then moved up to the set of
250's when I found a pair of those for REALLY cheap. Seti found and began
using both cards for work units without anything needing to be done on my
part.

Now when I do get the two 450's I know I will be back on the board begging for
a STEP, by STEP tutorial on how to set up the cards to run 2 work units at
once. I've read about the changes you make in the Lunatic program some time
back. But I only remember as far as you have to change something from 1
to .50. Hopefully somebody will take pity on me again then, LOL!!

No problem really in changing your app_info to do either two or three at a time. In your app_info you will see something like the following..

<file_info>
<name>cufft32_32_16.dll</name>
<executable/>
</file_info>
<app_version>
<app_name>setiathome_enhanced</app_name>
<version_num>610</version_num>
<platform>windows_intelx86</platform>
<plan_class>cuda_fermi</plan_class>
<avg_ncpus>0.040000</avg_ncpus>
<max_ncpus>0.040000</max_ncpus>
<coproc>
<type>CUDA</type>
<count>.5</count>
</coproc>

At the bottom there you will see where it says <count>.5</count>. That will show as <count>1</count> in the app_info Lunatics gives you. Just change the 1 to .5 for two at a time or .33 to run three at a time. On a 64bit system you will find six places that need to be changed. On a 32 bit system only three.

Later you may want to try out Raistmer's Open CL app to run APs on your NVIDIA GPUs. On my 450 they complete in about two and a half to three hours depending on blanking. Once you get things running good just check back if you want to try it and we can point you to the right thread and help you get it going.

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PROUD MEMBER OF Team Starfire World BOINC

I'm using A Sparkle 550 Ti. I have it running two WUs. This recent shortie storm convinced me to give it a try.

GPU Temp @ 61C
FanSpeed @ 55%
Mem Used @ 503MB/1024MB
GPU Load @ 99%

GPU Core Clock 900MHz
GPU Mem Clock 1026MHz
GPUshaderClock 1800MHz

Watts being used don't seem to be anymore than when running 1 WU

Running 6 out of 8 CPU cores on a 2600K

Cyberpower Software w/Monitor on showing 218-275 watts(cpu is constantly downclocking from 3800MHz to 1600MHz and back to 3800MHz-love the power savings)

Subtract the watts the monitor uses and it is ~150-200 watts running a total of 8 WUs(6 CPU + 2 GPU)

CPU Temp 32-49C using Corsair H70

Dull

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May we All have a METAMORPHOSIS. REASON. GOoD JUDGEMENT and LOVE and ORDER!!!!!

I had a GTS250, but it's a good card and about as fast a half GTX470, cause I
run two WUs together. In about the same time as a ~0.35 AR WU.
That is with SETI MB work, a GTS250 is no good on GPUgrid,
And Einstein should work.

They do get very hot, which defenatly isn't good for it's life-cycle, so use
After Burner or EVGA Precision, to control the card.

And, as Josef pointed out, watch split cables, or don't and use solid MOLEX connectors. Cables also should be as short as possible.

GTS250 draw not very much but 10Amps on +12V rail, a GTX470 draws 19Amps
and has 2 , 18 Amp rails, it won't start if one is connected. 18 A +12V is the minimum power requirement for this card, but you certainly want some headroom to avoid, throtling down, errors, resets, etc.

The 250 is 'history', worked about 20 month 24x7, last measured temp was 102C. But it's quiet, no GPUs are used, atm.
Heat, caused by well almost everything you can think of ;-) , is bad for the card.
The FERMIs are quite big monsters, but have a good cooling body and fan(s).
(My HD5870s have a factory (default) setting of 104C, to trigger, power-down.)
I usally turn it 10 degrees lower. And fans are set so temps are ~72C
(This 104C also killed my 4850!) None of these cards are build for continued use
and temps above 100C, it'll probably reduce the lifetime by 10 to 50%, atleast.

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