Oh, also does anyone have a firm idea as to when the new 400 series is going to be released? I've heard maybe next month, maybe later, and the guesses of $ are anywhere from $3xx to $6xx+! Quite a price range, should be interesting...

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[...]
While at Microcenter today, I grabbed a EVGA GT220 for around $75-80, but since I got home, I started reading up, found this thread, and hit Neweggs' site comparing cards. I like the thought of perf/watt, and while doing the research, found that the 240 Superclocked does idle/full load of 146/203 stock, a little more when OC'ed, and the GTX 260 Core 216 Superclocked is at 159/274 stock, at least at the review sites I found. I guess the main question now would be RAC/watt, because in the long haul, that has to come into play for utility budgetary reasons. I'm all for a higher RAC, all things being somewhat equal, but they can't be _too_ far out of whack.

Does anyone have a good idea as to the RAC/watt ratio of these 2 cards? I'm pretty sure at this point I'll be returning the GT220, it doesn't look like much of at folding card anymore, especially since the 240 Superclocked is under $100, and looks to be quite a bit better performer. One thing I noticed, there are 2 240 cards, one labeled Superclocked and the other not, Superclocked version has 512 meg, the other has a gig, both nearly the same specs (clock, DDR5, stream procs) though the Effective Memory Clock was 3588 MHz (Superclocked) and 850MHz (3.4Gbps effective) for the 1 gig model. Does more memory (after a certain point, whatever that is) necessairly equate to better performace in CUDA?

Any thoughts are appreciated.

A GT240 and 203 W at full load?
I couldn't believe.
From the nVIDIA site a GT240 use max. 69 W.

From my experiences if CUDA, my manufacturer OCed GTX260-216 use 3/4 of the max. W.
My 5 OCed GTX260-216 use ~ 140 W/GPU (in AMD 940 BE & 4 OCed EVGA), ~ 170 W/GPU (in Intel QX6700 & OCed GIGABYTE).

If a GT240 ~ 46 W with CUDA (~ 5,000 RAC) and a OCed GTX260-216 ~ 155 W if CUDA (~ 15,000 RAC) so you could decide very easy.. same performance/wattage ratio.
Depend of your money.. ;-)


In past nVIDIA said GTX3xx will come.. they said it over 1/2 year.
And now, they don't publish..

If a new GTXX*xx (*whatever) will come, I believe it earliest if you can buy it.

Maybe make a Inet search about.. and look if you could find info about.

If it's the same story like with GTX3xx GPUs, they should have the double performance like the current GTX2x series GPUs.

So, same wattage but double performance.


You speak about EVGA?
The SuperClocked is the manufacturer OCed 'SC'.

AFAIK..
GTS250 - SC
GTX260-216 - SC, SSC
GTX275/285 - SC, SSC, FTW
That's the max. level of the EVGA manufacturer OCed GPUs.
AFAIK, but the GIGABYTE SOC is the highest OCed GTX260-216.


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[Optimized project applications, for to increase your PC performance (double RAC)!][Overview of abbreviations, which are used often in forum and their meaning.]

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Oh, also does anyone have a firm idea as to when the new 400 series is going to be released? I've heard maybe next month, maybe later, and the guesses of $ are anywhere from $3xx to $6xx+! Quite a price range, should be interesting...

Not sure when they will realease new cards latest rumor I saw was March for 2 cards. They sure are helping ATI with their missed deadlines and total silence about it....

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Official Abuser of Boinc Buttons...
And no good credit hound!

That and ATi is making their top card while Nvidia killed the 295 production, I wonder what the supply of 260, 275, 280 and 285 cards is like?

Drying up, unfortunately. I've been looking for them and the best I've found recently are the 260's, at least from reliable sources, as opposed to Fleabay...

Sutaru, you're right, those voltages were off, the comparisons I saw were between identical systems configured with the different cards, that being the only difference.

If a GT240 ~ 46 W with CUDA (~ 5,000 RAC) and a OCed GTX260-216 ~ 155 W if CUDA (~ 15,000 RAC) so you could decide very easy.. same performance/wattage ratio.
Depend of your money.. ;-)

You pretty much summed it up for me there. Thanks for the info, time to see what I can squeeze outa the piggy bank, that'll tell me which way I can go...

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Well outside of ebay, I know of one or two resellers who might have a few of the 295's left, But of the one I know of, I'm not telling, Besides in June It may be only ebay, But I'll find out when I get there. You may not like ebay, But I've gotten some great deals from there and the QX6700 cpu that I'm using now came from there in October of 2006, Before Intel started selling the retail versions(Bleeding edge back then). :D

Actually, sadly, I quite like ebay, sometimes a bit too much. Many good deals to be had, sometimes too good to pass up, which can wreck havoc with the budget... :) I think I may be leaning towards the GTX 260 Core 216, seems to have similiar perf to the 280, but 50w less. Just have to get over that inital 110% bump in price over the 240, and I'll be ok... Then again, I know the 400 series cards are coming out _sometime_ soon, and if I save the $ now by getting the 240's, and spend it in 6-8 months on the lower end of new style series. Arrgh! This is a tough decision.

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My latest research revealed some interesting points about old grannie - 8800GT.
Some assumptions about these:
1.Most of them reach OC levels as high as 700/1728+/1000 (core/shaders/memory)
2.Max power consumption(if well cooled) do not exceed 90 W(in idle they suck anyway, but they are not meant to stay idle)
3. Computing power(when overclocked) of two 8800GTs exceeds fairly overclocked GTX 275, and its about same if no overclock at all. And they consume same amount 2x8800<=1x275
4. Computing power of two 8800GTs exceeds by far even well OCed 260, extra power consumption is about same like computing power, in percent. Keep in mind, 260s cannot reach that often OC levels as 275/285 can. Average OC for SETI crunching it around 650 core and < 1500 MHz for shaders. Memory is even worse. There are, of course, exceptions.

So far nothing interesting, except some more computing power, neglectable. Here comes biggest advantage - here u can find them for like 50-55 EURO, second hand. Which makes them far more better investment than still 150 EURO second hand GTX260s. Not to mentions price of new GT240s and their far weaker computing power. 8800GT is so much cheaper than new GT240 - u need to save power with 240s for over year to get same TCO(total cost of ownership) and 8800GT will still net u many more GFLOPs.(Electricity in Bulgaria is ~9 eurocents daytime and ~6.5 eurocents at night, per kW)
+8800GT are SLI capable(for GT240 I find controversary opinions, and if they get SLI, it will be slow, because of communication travelling thru PCI-e). Its kinda tricky to get SLI on X48/X38/P45/P35, but its not 7th level magic.

Still remains problem of having motherboard, capable of holding many of them. My old DFI X48-T2R will take 3 of these(8800GT) at x16, x16, x4. This MoBo can be still be found, new, with warranty for 75-80 EURO here.

U can also keep in mind, that being low level products laready, their price, when time to resell them, will drop insignificantly, while GT240s, second hand , will have huge drop as being new product atm.

P.S. Almost same apllies to 9800GTs, but they have a bit higher power consumptions(even 55 nm pieces) and are expensier than 8800Gts.

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Thanks for the info on the 8800's, was a good read. I ended up buying the 260 216's, mostly because the Intel boards in my farm only have one PCI-E 2 slot in them, and I wanted to get the most cost effective card in terms of perf/watt and cost. It was a little more than I wanted to spend, but since they are going to be going into stock Intel boards w/no OC'ing, I felt that this was the best way to go at this time.

Of course, when the 4xx series comes out, I will probably be sitting there thinking, Now if only I'd waited, I could have gotten x% more perf for only y% more money.. But I'll fight that thought off, as these are going to just be sitting and crunching for a long time, hopefully without much interference from me. :)

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