I have a Dell precision 670 with a 3.0 ghz xeon processor and 2 GB ram that is just too slow for the amount of power it draws. with linux or windows 2012 I have average about 200 rac

I was thinking about adding this card http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121725 it is a nvidia 650 TI with 2GB ram, its a little more than I wanted to spend, but I think with the rebate it will be ok.

My biggest concern is will the xeon processor be able to utilize this card to its full potential and just overall, do you guys think this is a good video card that in the future I could maybe move to a faster machine and still get good numbers.

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Dell has precision???

Forgive me for giving a LOL.

Carry on.

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"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

lol, yeah, it was a good machine in its day.

also thinking maybe going up to a 660 might be a good idea, this seems like a nice card http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127699

its a MSI N660 TF 2GD5/OC GeForce GTX 660 2GB 192-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card

so more cuda cores, little faster and if the 670 precision cant feed it, I will atleast have a good card for future machine.

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Does the machine have a pci-e slot?

Also, you might want to check out how powerful the psu is. My sister had a dell desktop a while ago and it had the least powerful psu i have ever seen.

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Part of Dell's 670 spec sheet,
"Support for ISV-certified PCI Express graphics cards up to 150 watts and with up to 512MB graphics memory including: nVIDIA ® Quadro ® FX 4500; nVIDIA Quadro FX 3450; Quadro FX 1400; ATI™ FireGL ™V3100; nVIDIA Quadro NVS 280; All graphics cards support dual monitor configurations",
so the GTX 650Ti should do fine in there so long as the case isn't an oven.

Cheers.

My host 2901600 is a Dell Precision 490 dating - as that link says - from November 2006. It was supplied with, I think, a PCIe Quadro FX 1500: unfortunately, just too old to be cuda-capable (it would have to have been a 1700 for that).

For a while the host ran with my GTX 470 Fermi, before I settled on the 9800GTX+: the Fermi proved to be more productive under XP.

Note that mine is a dual-Xeon 8-core model: it's never shown any sign of being low on power.

It has a pci-express X16 slot and is a 650 watt power supply

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Richard Haselgrove how much of your processor is being used by that card, are you only doing gpu crunching?[/quote]

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I have a dual core 3060 Xeon from around the same time-frame running with a GTS 250 on XP. I did notice a large difference with the GPU times when running CPU Astropulses on 1 or 2 cores in Ubuntu. In Ubuntu, the GPU times were twice as fast when only running one CPU AP task. That's not the case in XP. In XP I can run Two CPU AstroPulses and the GPU time difference between one or two cores is only about 4 seconds per GPU task. I don't think you have anything to worry about. The old dual core is maxed out with two APs and it's only slowing down the 250 by a few seconds per task...in XP.

Richard Haselgrove how much of your processor is being used by that card, are you only doing gpu crunching?

At this precise moment (it varies from day to week to month), I'm running:

2x SIMAP (both jobs will finish within 10 minutes)
2x NumberFields@home (several hours to go)
2x ClimatePredictionDotNet (a week in, 3 more weeks to go)

and the other two cores run Windows, anti-virus, networking, and whatever office work I need to do.

The GPU switches between SETI and Einstein, somewhat erratically, according to my mood and my reading of the runes on the respective messages boards.

On the subject of reviving old machines, last Dec. I put a PCI GT430 into a 9 year old retired Dell. Previously it would get a rac a bit over 100 now it is doing apx. 2500. For $38 incl. S@H, that's a lot of credit per dollar.

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I run a dual Prestonia Xeon (4 core) under XP pro x86, and the system sports an AGP main slot for the graphics card. Two of the empty PCI slots are filled with NV 9500GT GPUs which are CUDA capable and currently crunch PrimeGrid.

The MoBo is an Intel server board, and the PC was built around 2004.

I suspect that it was around this time (2006) that AGP gave away to PCI-E?

Certainly the PCI versions of the NV 430GT could run comfortably in this rig, as well.

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It's good to be back amongst friends and colleagues