Hello, just got back into SETI@HOME and I'm looking to upgrade my GPU...I currently have a Radeon HD 4830 512MB PCIe 2.0 x16 card. I'm looking for something under $50 in Canada...so far I've found a ZOTAC GT 710, EVGA GeForce 8400 GS and ASUS Radeon HD 5450 all 1GB memory that fit the bill. Which is the best choice and is there something else out there that is better? What is the most important feature? Core clock, memory clock, CUDA cores, memory size???

A GTX 750 is what you want if you can stretch your budget that far (a "Ti" version would be better though) as that will give you the best output per watt available ATM. ;-)

Cheers.

...so far I've found a ZOTAC GT 710, EVGA GeForce 8400 GS and ASUS Radeon HD 5450 all 1GB memory that fit the bill.

I'm not familiar with AMD video cards so I don't know how much of a boost over your existing cards the one's you mentioned will give; the fact is that they are still very low end cards (I wouldn't even consider the GS 8400 IMHO).

As Wiggo suggested a GTX 750 (or 750Ti) would be a good choice as they pump out plenty of work, but don't use much power (60W maximum). If you really want to boost your output, but not your power bill it would probably being worth holding off till you've saved enough for a GTX 750, either new or even second hand.

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Grant
Darwin NT

Hello, just got back into SETI@HOME and I'm looking to upgrade my GPU...I currently have a Radeon HD 4830 512MB PCIe 2.0 x16 card. I'm looking for something under $50 in Canada...so far I've found a ZOTAC GT 710, EVGA GeForce 8400 GS and ASUS Radeon HD 5450 all 1GB memory that fit the bill. Which is the best choice and is there something else out there that is better? What is the most important feature? Core clock, memory clock, CUDA cores, memory size???

The most important value to use in comparison is generally the GFLOPS rating. Think of it like the horsepower rating for the GPU.
Wikipedia is a good resource to quickly look up those values
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AMD_graphics_processing_units
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nvidia_graphics_processing_units
For the GPUs you listed.
8400 GS - 43 GFLOPs, 40W Released 2007
HD 5450 - 104 GFLOPs, 19W Released 2010
GT 710 - 366 GFLOPs, 19W Released 2014
HD 4830 - 736 GFLOPs, 95W Released 2008
Compared to your current GPU they are all lower powered, but if that is what you are looking for then the 710 seems like the best choice. It is also the newest out of all of them.

If you are shopping for lower end cards like these look for ones that have GDDR memory instead of DDR. Also the memory bus width. Higher is better. As far as the amount of memory 1GB is more than sufficient for running SETI@home.

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I am using a Geforce GTX 750 OC on Einstein@home and my RAC is rising to almost 3000. This is the first time I use a graphic board.
Tullio

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As Wiggo suggested a GTX 750 (or 750Ti) would be a good choice as they pump out plenty of work, but don't use much power (60W maximum). If you really want to boost your output, but not your power bill it would probably being worth holding off till you've saved enough for a GTX 750, either new or even second hand.

Hi Grant,

I have been looking at GTX750 TI cards and they seem to need an external 150W rated PCIe 6 pin power connector. I am trying to tweak up a HP Core2 Duo machine with 2GB ram and I don't even know the rating of the power supply or which level of PCIe it is using. The GTX750 TI cards specify PCIe V3.0, will they even work in a PCIe 2.0 or worst case 1.0 slot?

There is a GT730 card using 2Gb GDDR3 memory at half the price and it is low profile (must) and is rated for PCIe 2.0 would that be a worthwhile cruncher?

I hope you can offer some advice on this, I would like to get away from using this Intel GPU if I can (HD 530).

Stephen

Further on that;

GTX 750 TI - 640 CUDA cores

GT 730 - 384 CUDA cores

How much of a hit does that mean in crunching ?

Stephen,

There are some low profile 750s out there. MSI and Gigabyte make them.

Here's an example of some

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125680


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127836

No extra power needed.

Of course you would need to check what you have locally

I have been looking at GTX750 TI cards and they seem to need an external 150W rated PCIe 6 pin power connector.

Not so, I am running NVIDIA 750Ti's and none of them require external power. They draw their power from the MB bus, running off the PCI-E socket.

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Same here. My Geforce GTX 750 OC does not have a 6 pin connector and is getting power from a 300 W PSU. GPU temp running Einstein@home Arecibo binary pulsar tasks is 43 C.
Tullio

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My EVGA GTX-750 TI SC does NOT have a 6-Pin Connector. Like others here, my card pulls its power straight from the PCI-e slot.


TL

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As Wiggo suggested a GTX 750 (or 750Ti) would be a good choice as they pump out plenty of work, but don't use much power (60W maximum). If you really want to boost your output, but not your power bill it would probably being worth holding off till you've saved enough for a GTX 750, either new or even second hand.

Hi Grant,

I have been looking at GTX750 TI cards and they seem to need an external 150W rated PCIe 6 pin power connector. I am trying to tweak up a HP Core2 Duo machine with 2GB ram and I don't even know the rating of the power supply or which level of PCIe it is using. The GTX750 TI cards specify PCIe V3.0, will they even work in a PCIe 2.0 or worst case 1.0 slot?

There is a GT730 card using 2Gb GDDR3 memory at half the price and it is low profile (must) and is rated for PCIe 2.0 would that be a worthwhile cruncher?

I hope you can offer some advice on this, I would like to get away from using this Intel GPU if I can (HD 530).

Stephen

Hey Stephen. You are looking at wrong GTX 750s. Look for models with single fan, these models usually don't need external power so they don't have the 6 pin connector. I bought two refurbished GTX 750 Ti SC, they usually go for 90 USD:
750 Ti http://www.evga.com/Products/Product.aspx?pn=02G-P4-3751-RX
750 Ti SC http://www.evga.com/Products/Product.aspx?pn=02G-P4-3753-RX

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Hi Grant,

I have been looking at GTX750 TI cards and they seem to need an external 150W rated PCIe 6 pin power connector.

My Gigabyte cards require the external power connector, but my Asus card (which is factory overclocked even more than the Gigabyte cards) doesn't and it comes with 2 fans & and a oversized heatsink.
Generally if it's running at stock speed, no extra power connector is required. If it's overclocked then it may or may not require the extra power.

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Grant
Darwin NT

Further on that;

GTX 750 TI - 640 CUDA cores

GT 730 - 384 CUDA cores

How much of a hit does that mean in crunching ?

It would be a huge hit.

The GT 730 comes in 3 versions, and there are 2 versions of the 384 core cards.
One uses DDR3, the other GDDR5.
One has 14 GB/s of bandwidth, the other 40GB/s. The GTX 750Ti has 86.4 GB/s bandwidth.

Add to that, as well as less CUDA cores, the GT series has a lower base clock speed (902MHz for the card you're looking at) & doesn't support any clock boosting.
The GTX 750Ti has a base clock of 1020MHz & a boost of 1085. Most of the retail cards actually run much faster than that (mine are at 1176 & 1280MHz- stock speeds).
As I said, it would be a huge hit.

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Grant
Darwin NT

Generally if it's running at stock speed, no extra power connector is required. If it's overclocked then it may or may not require the extra power.

On my ASUS 750Ti it doesn't need the power connector for video, but BOINC doesn't recognize it without the extra power plug.

Generally if it's running at stock speed, no extra power connector is required. If it's overclocked then it may or may not require the extra power.

On my ASUS 750Ti it doesn't need the power connector for video, but BOINC doesn't recognize it without the extra power plug.

To clear up any confusion in my previous statement. I meant that the connector would no be required to be present on the card if running at stock speeds. At it is rated for 60w. Some of the OC versions have power connectors and some do not.

Many GPUs will power up without their PCIe power connectors attached. However they tend to only run in their lowest power mode. Which is enough for basic OS desktop needs & troubleshooting.
Looks like Asus has configured that card to only run at P0 unless it has additional power. Does it have a high factory OC? Perhaps they just configured it that way expecting people to push it further.

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From Grant:
The GTX 750Ti has a base clock of 1020MHz & a boost of 1085. Most of the retail cards actually run much faster than that (mine are at 1176 & 1280MHz- stock speeds).

I didn't realize my cards were overclocked. Both of my 750TI's are running at 1228Mhz in P0 state.

Just a couple of small icons on box say OC version, GPU Boost. No indication of speeds.

Thanks everyone for the great insight. Looks like I need to go with the GTX 750 Ti and spend $150CDN to get a worthwhile performance boost. Some thinking to do.

Thanks everyone for the great insight. Looks like I need to go with the GTX 750 Ti and spend $150CDN to get a worthwhile performance boost. Some thinking to do.

My main goal in upgrading is better performance and lower power usage. If I can't get both. Then I choose between same performance for lower power usage or better performance for same power usage.
After deciding on the part to get I figure out how much I need to spend and if that is what I want to do. Normally I wait until tax refund time and use that money for any fancy upgrades I want to do.

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You could take a look on GPU benchmarks to see how various GPU cards compare
I bought a G-Force 210 but kept using the older card as it had much better performance (plus cuda cores)
http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/compare.php?cmp[]=1169&cmp[]=101
http://www.passmark.com/index.html

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