I resurrected a P4 machine with an open PCI-E slot. I want to add it as a second machine running SETI. It has Windows XP installed but could install Linux. What do you think would be the best video card for $75? (which is all I am willing to spend)

Thanks for your input.

The only ones around that price are GT 630, and GT 640.

Tim

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Depends on a few things. Do you only want Nvidia? Is this only for Seti? Is the $75 purchase price or total out of pocket?
I have an old Dell machine that someone gave me that I put a HD7700 into that is doing only Einstein, it's getting almost 25K for a RAC over there, so that's a decent card for Einstein. It's a $70 card after a rebate, there's a similar one on Newegg right now for the same basic price, ie. $100 out of pocket but a $30 rebate.

-Dave

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The AMD 7700 series doesn't work in XP, but it does work in Ubuntu. My 7750 finishes an unblanked AP in around 1.1 to 1.2 hours. That should give you an RAC of around 14-16000 in SETI. The PowerColor AX7750 is currently only $55 after rebate and is a single height card. That one is a little slower than mine. With just one of them, you might even be able to make it through most AP outages...

How big is the power supply?

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I resurrected a P4 machine with an open PCI-E slot. I want to add it as a second machine running SETI. It has Windows XP installed but could install Linux. What do you think would be the best video card for $75? (which is all I am willing to spend)

Thanks for your input.

If your AMD Turks card is a series 6 card, you can move that to XP and use the Series 7 card in Windows 7. Looking at the Turks card, I see it's having trouble with the cal_ati app. The driver you're using, 1.4.1734, didn't work with the cal_ati app for me either. You might want to update your Windows 7 driver. Better yet, you could run the Lunatics v0.41 Installer, install the ATI AP & MB Apps, and just not install the cal_ati App. The 7750 should be a nice upgrade over the Turks card.

Thanks for the great replies. Initially, I moved the Radeon 6670 into the P4 machine (with Windows XP) and then loaded BOINC. It would not detect a "usable GPU" according to the log file. The card was functioning correctly according to Windows and I have the latest drivers from AMD. I returned it to the Athlon II machine (Windows 7) and it works fine.

Do you think this might be a problem with running Windows XP?

Thanks again for the great information.

the latest drivers from AMD...

Well, which XP driver did you try? The Latest you can use for BOINC in XP is 12.1. Most people find Catalyst 11.12 works better. Anything newer than 12.1 doesn't include OpenCL. Anything older than 11.12 doesn't met the AMD-APP requirements. You can see a printout here, ATI Driver Version Cheat Sheet. AMD changed their Driver links a while back, so, you need to look here for the Cat 11.12 links, Drivers. You would need this one, http://www2.ati.com/drivers/11-12_xp32_dd_ccc_ocl.exe, but, it seems they changed their links AGAIN!! You might have to settle for Catalyst 12.1, if you can get the download to work. If you installed a newer driver, you need to Uninstall it and use Driver Sweeper...

The SETI server will probably try to give you the cal_ati App again. It should work with the XP driver, but, you might be better off using the straight ATI AP App from Lunatics. Your card can also use the ATI MB App, but, it will be slow. Not much you can do about that until more APs are loaded.

Thanks for the primer. I didn't know that OpenCL was not included in the latest versions of the AMD drivers.

I will take your advice and try the different drivers.

If BOINC still doesn't see the 6670 after installing the correct XP driver, make sure you didn't preform a Protected Application Execution (Service) Installation, GPU detection and Windows XP.
"Due to problems with up-to-date GPU drivers causing BOINC to crash or hang, it was decided that for all versions of Windows the GPU detection will no longer work when BOINC is installed as a service, or protected application execution. This may change in a future version, but only after the GPU manufacturers have adjusted their driver code. So even in Windows 2000 and XP you can now no longer install BOINC as a service yet still have it detect your GPU(s) and run work on it. This change is present from 6.12.38 onwards."

Tbar -- Sounds like a speech or talk or a lecture from an expert! Thank You - even if I do not own an Amd video card.

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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

The only ones around that price are GT 630, and GT 640.

Tim

My host 5181163 is using a GT 630 and not using its CPU for crunching, and BoincStats says its average credit is 4969 (combined for Seti and Einstein, with Seti getting a much larger work share, 110 vs. 30).

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David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.