SETI MB CUDA for Linux

[riofl]

does look promising.. however it wont help me now since there is no linux driver.. ill just look for new/used gtx 285 or 295 and hope the seller is honest and took care of it.

[Tye]

In one of my systems I have a 8800 GT, 9600 GSO, 250 GTS all working together - very nice.   Still, I'm thinking of picking up a 460, but I did hear that the 400s weren't doing CUDA so well.  Any advice/thoughts/benches?

[sunu]

Still, I'm thinking of picking up a 460, but I did hear that the 400s weren't doing CUDA so well.  Any advice/thoughts/benches?

Don't do that. Fermi cards are useless in linux as there isn't a seti client for them.

[riofl]

In one of my systems I have a 8800 GT, 9600 GSO, 250 GTS all working together - very nice.   Still, I'm thinking of picking up a 460, but I did hear that the 400s weren't doing CUDA so well.  Any advice/thoughts/benches?

for the forseeable future i do not recommend fermi for seti. there are no applications to support them yet in linux. i need to get one and i have found a new gtx295 made by galaxy for $445 which is not a bad deal... i recomend looking for one of the gt200b products.

[riofl]

any word if there is even a fermi for linux in the works?
eta guesses?
any clue if it will be backward compatible to be able to mix say gtx480 and gtx295 in the same machine?

[sunu]

Unfortunately nothing is known at this time. A wild guess is that if/when it's done, it should be backwards compatible.

[riofl]

how does ati compare to nvidia for number crunching? faster / $ spent? slower?

xfx is giving me a hard time. they say they cannot fix my 285. they have no parts available. they have no replacements. so i told them ill take a 295. they dont have them either. they want to replace it with a 280 or 275 both of which chew more power/gflop than the top 2 do.

[sunu]

It's sad that xfx has essentially quitted using nvidia and it's not their fault, it's nvidia's.

As far as I know ATI has many problems in linux, not to mention it's completely useless for seti@home.

What problem does your card have?

A 285GTX is a 280GTX with a smaller process and higher clocks. Nothing else.

If xfx gives you an ATI, especially a 5xxx card, you could sell it and buy something else. Likewise with a 280GTX. They will be new (not used), so you'll be able to get a higher price from them. You'll have to find out which card will give you the biggest return.

[riofl]

the second video port will no longer go to 1920x1200 resolution. it maxes out at 1600x1200 which is useless to me.  the reason i am not liking the 280 is it is a power hog for its performance plus it is not a 200b gpu. the 275 is better.. it is a 200b  but still draws more power than the 285 does... if anything i would want a 295 replacement. if they cannot or will not do that then i would settle for the 275 since it performs better than the 280 and draws power in the middle between the 280 and 285. i just dont like the fact that if they cannot actually do a 'board repair' on it, i have to possibly settle for less than the flagship single gpu product i paid good money for. i am finding out lifetime warranties are almost useless after 'end of life' of the product. with my luck they will only offer a fermi product in which case i will demand the flagship 480 which is equivalent to my 'flagship' 285.

[sunu]

Have you made sure that it isn't some strange software problem and not a hardware problem?

[riofl]

yes. i switched the roles of the ports so dsp1/port1  becomes 'port0' and the problem stayed on port 1.. i switched monitors. same behavior.   i borrowed a gts250 card a friend has for about 10 min since it is his only vid card and the problem went away. both ports behaved fine at 1920x1200.  so it is located within the gpu circuitry. i called xfx and explained my tests and they agreed it was a gpu hardware problem. they've "seen it before".

[sunu]

Is this the machine with the buggy tesla card? If the gtx285 doesn't have problems with seti crunching, you could decommission the tesla card, make the 285 a dedicated crunching card and get a new one to drive your displays + seti crunching. Or if you are lucky and your motherboard has 3 pci-express slots, get a low budget card for your displays and have the tesla and the 285 as dedicated crunching cards.

[riofl]

i only have 2 pci-e slots... but yes my plan is to use the 295 that is due to arrive in the next 3 days as my primary vid card. the 285 gives no probs with cuda crunching and since port0 works fine and i have a 3rd monitor sitting in a box doing nothing i was thinking of expanding my desktop over 3 monitors. would be extremely convenient. the only reason i am even going to ship the xfx for repair is 1. lifetime warranty they have to satisfy me.. 2. i want it to work properly even if i never use the 2nd vid port... i may, but even if i dont i want it to handle 1920x1200 like it should. the 285 will replace the tesla ultimately, or whatever they agree to ship back to me. my only concern is if they will only replace it with a fermi.. in that case the fermi will become my primary dual monitor display and the 295 will do all the number crunching and drive the 3rd monitor until such a time as seti gets a linux fermi app. they did say there is some hope they can fix my card. they still have some parts inventory... only them seeing the card will tell.. i can also opt not to replace and have them ship the card back to me in worst case scenario.

[sunu]

XFX doesn't have fermi cards.

[riofl]

i dunno i may not ship it. this is looking more and more bleak to get any satisfaction out of xfx. as my 2nd card replacing the tesla, it does everything i will need it to do. port0 works fine and it number crunches fine, and although it would be nice to eventually go to 4 monitors that would just be greedy. i dont need 4. i dont even need 3 but since i have a spare monitor sitting in a box doing nothing i may as well use it. that way i can keep email and im clients (i get a LOT of msgs from both for my work) on screen on all desktops. i wouldnt really care except these monitors were expensive. all 3 are samsung 245bw and at the time of purchase they were $450 each so if i dont use it i am starting to feel like it is just wasting away (been in the box for almost 2 yrs already. i only opened it to verify it worked after receiving it). the 285 is a better performer than the tesla for cuda work and that is no slouch.