Following on from advice on a thread of a while back, http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=73118 I've invested in a new set of PC kit, and ended up with an AMD A10 6700T APU, on a dual slot motherboard, with 16 gigs of RAM and Win 7 Pro 64-bit.

Now, I was tempted to acquire a suitable 'matching' graphics card for the APU; a Radeon HD 6670, which seemed to be clearly superior to my existing GTS 450 for seti, with 480 shader units over 192, and a higher floating-point performance (from techpowerup.com).

Now I'm worried, since according to videocardbenchmark.net, the Older Nvidia card has an actual 3d 'rating' about 50% higher than the slightly less long in the tooth ATI card. Have I wasted my £53?

Also... two PCIe slots... two cards. What are the chances of getting them both working for seti at the same time? Nvidia and ATI on the same machine?

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Have I wasted my £53?

Also... two PCIe slots... two cards. What are the chances of getting them both working for seti at the same time? Nvidia and ATI on the same machine?

Second question first - You can get both cards to run in that machine. I have a 7770 and a GTX 560Ti running on the machine I am typing on.

First question is not so easy.

The A10 is about (in benchmark tests) about the same as an Athlon II x 4 (which I also happen to be running).

I don't run CPU work because an Athlon II is really bad at it compared to anything Intel has made for a long time.

So my ASSUMPTION is that if you put two GPUs in the machine AND you run the built-in graphics in the APU, that you, too, will not want to run CPU work.

I do not know why you were worried about "matching" the graphics card to the built-in graphics on the APU. If there's a reason to-do that, I'm not aware of it.

I also own a 6670 and find it is pretty slow, but I've never had a NVIDIA 450 so really don't know anything about how it compares to that.

I assume that you have one PCIe x16 slot and the other is a x4. Check that, but I'm guessing that's the way you'll find it. The slower card should definitely be in the bottom, slower, slot if that's the case (although, depending on what work you run it can make very little difference).

The trick is to get AMD video and NVIDIA video drivers to co-exist peacefully.

If I had the hardware you have I'd probably spend an evening trying to use it all. When I said the 6670 is "slow," it is still much faster than a CPU and much, much faster than an AMD CPU.

Thanks for this.

I do not know why you were worried about "matching" the graphics card to the built-in graphics on the APU. If there's a reason to-do that, I'm not aware of it.

I did have an idea of using the APU and GPU as the linked entity for games, as they were designed for. A more powerful GPU would be too powerful to link, as well as being outside my price range. I'm an infrequent player of games that require a decent GPU, but it does happen. I also was also reading on another site (link has been lost) that the combined 'entity' could perform as a combined 864-shader GPU for Seti.

To be honest, it was an impulse buy - The box the APU came in listed three GPU models to match is with, and the most powerful was also the cheapest, at my preferred supplier. At 66 watts for 480 shaders it seemed a good buy - I've learned that heat is an issue since my 8800GTS days.

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