I need to upgrade my R9 280X as it won't do some of the VR stuff I am using. I need a budget GPU and the GTX 1060 and RX 480 are both around the $250 mark in the USA.

They both will run all the APs I need but which one will give me the best boost in Seti.

Ideas.....

Thanx
Bob

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Sometimes I wonder, what happened to all the people I gave directions to?
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SETI@home classic workunits 4,321
SETI@home classic CPU time 22,169 hours

Do you pay for your power consumption? If so, or if you just feel responsible for it, than an element in favor of the 1060 is likely to be significantly lower system power consumption per unit BOINC production. Possibly you might wish to guess time in service (2 years?) and include the price of system added power consumption to the card purchase price in making cost comparisons.

By the way, while cards near the published MSRP were a problem for the 1080 and 1070, and are not truly common for the 1060, I was able to place a pre-order with Amazon today for a $250 dollar 1060, which on Prime is the true total charge for delivery to my state. So the MSRP 1060 cards do exist and availability seems likely to get better.

On the other hand, I don't know the relative SETI productivity at all between the two cards, and as simple tests without tuning seem unlikely to answer that, I probably won't try out my 1060 here. Some results over at Einstein seem to suggest that the RX 480 may be appreciably higher credit rate production than the GTX 1060 with current code there.

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i think the 1060 is supposed to use max 120W and 480 is 150W? may need to double check and may vary between cards. so as archae86 noted, the electricity cost might also make a difference in long term cost.

my room is hard to cool down in the summer so if it were me i'd probably get the 1060 since they have somewhat similar performance and price. if temp wasn't an issue, then i'm not sure which one is better for boinc projects.

I have been leaning toward the 1060 because of the lower power draw and comparable performance in most games.

I was wondering how the whole CUDA / OPEN CL / Vulcan thing is going to play out. Will SETI@home be more efficient on AMD GPUs in the next few years?

Right now both cards are hard to find at MSRP pricing. I am using NowinStock.net to send me notifications of when cards are in stock at Newegg and Amazon. From what I have read on the forums they sell out fast usually way under 30 minutes.

I think both of these cards are decent if bought at normal pricing. Was just curious on how they related to Seti@home.

Bob

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Sometimes I wonder, what happened to all the people I gave directions to?
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SETI@home classic workunits 4,321
SETI@home classic CPU time 22,169 hours

I think a 480 would perform better for seti.
Considering whats coming in the near future.
On gaming the 1060 might be slightly better.

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With each crime and every kindness we birth our future.

I think a 480 would perform better for seti.
Considering whats coming in the near future.
On gaming the 1060 might be slightly better.

I see it otherwise since Petri's new app in dev right now is doing great for nvidia 900 and 1000 series.
Is there some app dev going on for recent AMD GPUs?

My initial scans of work units done by RX480s turned out some disappointing stats -- I'll run another scan next weekend to see if there's enough of them in use to get an good average.

Well I am about to drink the koolaid and go to the Dark Side. I will pull out my R9 280X and replace it with a Nvidia GPU.

NowinStock.net sent me an alert and I found a Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1060 G1 GPU for $289 US on Amazon. A few more bucks than I wanted to spend but the lower power usage and lower temps should help me recoup the difference quite quickly. Living in Arizona in the summer and any savings on the AC is good.

I should get this on Wednesday or Thursday. I also ordered some display port to HDMI cables as my two 27 inch monitors do not have display port and output only has 1 HDMI on it. (Will use the HDMI output for the Vive I got a couple weeks ago). The R9 280X struggles to run the software for this but I was surprised that it did manage it.

Still a good discussion to continue on as they are both budget GPUs and each has it advantages. It will interesting to see what is chosen for those who want to move toward one of these cards.

Bob

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Sometimes I wonder, what happened to all the people I gave directions to?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SETI@home classic workunits 4,321
SETI@home classic CPU time 22,169 hours

Well I am about to drink the koolaid and go to the Dark Side. I will pull out my R9 280X and replace it with a Nvidia GPU.

You were on the dark side; Now you're on the Kool side!

I should get this on Wednesday or Thursday.

Can't wait to read your updates :-D

Still a good discussion to continue on as they are both budget GPUs and each has it advantages. It will interesting to see what is chosen for those who want to move toward one of these cards.

My guess: it all depends on Petri's magic/mojo! lol
I just hope he releases a Beta1 version before the S@h WoW event 2016 that's starting on the 15th.

Cheers,
Rob -D

Hi,

I'm sorry, but I do not make public release, not even a beta yet,

TBar can release, if he wants to, the alpha version he has tested in Linux and in MAC. MrKevvy is testing my version too and jason_gee is doing his magic.

But with a high rate of inconclusives (and low rate of errors) it is not ready. It only works with some cards (Kepler, Maxwell, Pascal), runs preferrably one at a time, needs a lot of memory, and does not get it's full potential out of the box without setting a parameter or two.

I keep on developing and experimenting with new things.

Petri

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To overcome Heisenbergs:
"You can't always get what you want / but if you try sometimes you just might find / you get what you need." -- Rolling Stones

Yeah, for the Windows side, experiments went very well for the performance side of things, but quickly fell flat when considering general release needs.

Because of the dated code structure and build system, some line has been crossed where implementation, testing and debugging become far more difficult than they should be (all platforms). That's not helped by a massive influx of new cards, and multiple deprecations, of compilers, libraries and techniques, that differ by platform.

So while others are able to use the alpha code submission on small scales, my own energies are directed to new infrastructure.

That does mean X-branch temporarily drops out of the race with new applications, but also that so much has been learned from Petri's and my own work, that among us the picture of how the final result will be is pretty clear.

'we can rebuild [it], faster, stronger, better...'

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"Living by the wisdom of computer science doesn't sound so bad after all. And unlike most advice, it's backed up by proofs." -- Algorithms to live by: The computer science of human decisions.

'we can rebuild [it], faster, stronger, better...'

Sumpthin' like good 'ol Steve, eh? :-)

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Sumpthin' like good 'ol Steve, eh? :-)

Yup, except probably more than an arm, leg and eyeball :)

On the surface I'm seeing that both the RX480 and 1060 seem to have learned from the 750ti successes. I think the next year for both breeds could be interesting.

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"Living by the wisdom of computer science doesn't sound so bad after all. And unlike most advice, it's backed up by proofs." -- Algorithms to live by: The computer science of human decisions.

Is there some app dev going on for recent AMD GPUs?

Of course cause OpenCL app is multiplatform one.

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