Folding Forum

I'm new to folding, and being a gpu enthusiast I have a number of cards to choose from. I see mentions of "white lists" and "approved cards", but am unable to find any actual lists of which cards are most efficient...?

If double precision gflops are most important, I have AMD pro cards such as the S10000. But if cuda cores are the only way, I also have two 2080ti's on hand...

Where can I find info on what criteria makes a card good for folding?

I'm retired, and have significant resources for this project.

Please help, I'd really like to get started but want to do this the best way possible.

When talking about folding then invest in 2080 Ti. Many of them. It's by far the fastest GPU for folding (except the RTX TITAN which is a little bit faster but costs double wherefore I wouldn't consider it)

For folding it is necessary that the GPU supports double precision, however gflops of double are not important as the very most calculations use single precision.

I would choose a 3 fan design and use 2 GPUs in one PC.
Preferable running on Linux.
In general a inexpensive GPU like a i3 is enough for folding as long as it has 4 threads or cores.
8GB of RAM is sufficient as well as 128GB SSD.
A platinum PSU with 800W.

Welcome to Folding@Home!

Many AMD and Nvidia cards are supported.

The requirements I look for are OpenCL 1.2 support or greater, and hardware based Double Precision floating point math.

I generally use Tech Power up GPU database to be sure a card is supported.
https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/

I hope you find that all your cards are supported.

I just recently bought a second hand RTX2070 (it was half the price of a new RTX2080Ti, actually cheaper and 2 generations newer than 1080Ti) and it is good enough and did not put big a hole in my budget. (it was circa 380 euros)

If you have very old GPU then its not good. Before this, I had a Tesla C2050 in my rig (tried to learn GPU computing and wanted something reliable) and it was Fermi based, from 2010. It did not fail, had ecc memory, it was running some favorite old games at max settings, but such ancient cards are just too weak for folding. These old cards produce more heat than points. I will just keep it as a spare part for now...

These old cards produce more heat than points.

But that's nice when it's cold in the winter.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... edit#gid=0

I'm brand new to all this FAH. I've been learning all about this stuff recently.
I've got a 2080 Ti, and after seeing its chart comparisons to other GPU's I'm amazed how awesome it is vs other GPU's, its an absolute beast of beasts for this or what!

Earlier I was reading this new-ish thread: "Expected PPD and Current Setup?"
"I have recently got back into Folding@Home after a long while. My current computer has an I5-3570K @ 3.4Ghz and a Radeon 7790! I am achieving only around 20-30k PPD per day! Is this what is to be expected of this hardware?"
I then looked at my PPD in the advanced window to see almost 2.8m... (combined with a i9 10900X) so I was there thinking what the actual...cough* compared to the above 20-30k, I thought something isn't right for him or me?! But after reading into it... yeah, omg lol..

JimboPalmer wrote:Welcome to Folding@Home!

The requirements I look for are OpenCL 1.2 support or greater, and hardware based Double Precision floating point math.

I generally use Tech Power up GPU database to be sure a card is supported.
https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/

JimboPalmer can you explain "Double Precision floating point math"? The link you gave, does it show/explain that for the different GPU's?

Thank you!!

Believe it is the FP64 (double) rating

Neil-B Thank you!