Folding Forum

Hi

Just updated home PC to Ryzen 7 3700X on X570 mb, 32GB 3600MHz and an 8GB 5700XT.

It's running folding and showing Est PPD for GPU as 1,020,000 and 110,000 for CPU.

As a result have the old PC running folding now but would like to improve.

It's showing Est PPD for GPU as 158,000 and 15,000 for CPU.

Where's my best bang for buck on a system that is currently:

• ASRock H77M Motherboard Socket 1155, Intel H77, DDR3
  Intel Core i5 3570 3.40GHz
  Sapphire R9 270X 2GB Vapor-X OC
  8GB DDR3 1600MHz HyperX XMP CL9
  PSU be quiet! Pure Power L8 530W

Is it worth me spending on a GPU? Say a GTX 1650/1660?

$250-300 seems a reasonable return otherwise I'm looking at new mb, cpu, mem and gpu which will push beyond my budget.

Or is the increase in perf not going to be that great for $250 investment? Would it be better to either leave as is or spend a little more to see a far greater return? ie. If someone has a spec for $400 worth of mb, mem, cpu and gpu that'll blow this away that might be tempting to stretch to.

As on off base thought … What would be the best GPU you could buy that would fit in you existing old pc with no other upgrade? … Hmm might have misread original post - this might have been what you were looking at anyways

Looing at UK prices I could push it to a RTX 2060. I draw the line at the RTX 2060 Super though as feels too much money on the GPU for a system that is over 6 years old.

Although I could of course update mb, cpu etc. should those components fail....

Is a 2060 with the existing spec a good balance? CPU/mem not limiting/throttling?

System looks great for GPU folding, no bottlenecks there and you can run that many years. You would only upgrade the GPU every 3 years.

If you run Linux you can even put in 2 GPUs, for Windows the 2nd GPU slot pcie 2.0 x4 is too slow and bottlenecks.

I would go for a RTX 2060 because when you want to upgrade GPU again in some years then it resells better to gamers than GTX 1660 because it is a RTX.

RTX 2060 cuda cores: 1920 for $320
GTX 1660 cuda cores: 1408 for $240

You'd be surprised how little cpu is required to drive a decent gpu. Your mb/cpu & ram is fine to drive a 2060 especially if you can face installing Linux Mint. Personally, I'd then limit it to only folding on the gpu but that's just a power efficiency thing.

What's your power supply on that old system? That will likely be your limiting factor on GPU upgrade.

Thanks for info. I was going to rebuild with Ubuntu but if Mint better then I don't have any great preference.

With 2 x GPU do they need to be the same or does folding just see it as another single resource to use rather than a pair?

PSU is a be quiet! Pure Power L8 530W so I think I'll be ok even with multi GPUs but it's a fair comment! Just realised looking at old emails it was bought in 2011. Still working fine though.
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/be-quiet ... 53-bq.html

agent71 wrote:Thanks for info. I was going to rebuild with Ubuntu but if Mint better then I don't have any great preference.

With 2 x GPU do they need to be the same or does folding just see it as another single resource to use rather than a pair?

PSU is a be quiet! Pure Power L8 530W so I think I'll be ok even with multi GPUs but it's a fair comment! Just realised looking at old emails it was bought in 2011. Still working fine though.
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/be-quiet ... 53-bq.html

Ubuntu or Mint doesn't really matter, except that there are some issues with Ubuntu versions after 18.04 due to a change in Python version. If you want an easy setup without too many hassles, use Ubuntu 18.04 LTS or the current Linux Mint 19.3, which is based on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.
Otherwise it comes down to personal preference between the two distributions, my preference is with Mint.

agent71 wrote:With 2 x GPU do they need to be the same or does folding just see it as another single resource to use rather than a pair?

No, they do not need to be the same. Each GPU is a single resource and gets its own folding slot.

Welcome to the F@H Forum agent71,

agent71 wrote:...With 2 x GPU do they need to be the same or does folding just see it as another single resource to use rather than a pair?...

While the dual GPUs don't have to be identical, it would be better to have them the same vendor (AMD/Nvidia). Bonus points if they are the same architecture. Reason being you will only need to have a single driver version for both GPUs. It means less headaches when updating drivers or if a GPU architecture becomes incompatible.

agent71 wrote:...PSU is a be quiet! Pure Power L8 530W so I think I'll be ok even with multi GPUs but it's a fair comment! Just realised looking at old emails it was bought in 2011...

It has a pretty good review on KitGuru (https://www.kitguru.net/components/powe ... -review/7/) but the conclusion was for a single GPU system. YMMV so keep that in the back of your mind. You can always get a decent single GPU now, then later, upgrade the PSU and even later, get a second GPU to make the situation work in your favor.

Thanks. I wasn't really considering dual GPUs but if the old R9 270X can sit in a slot and do something it may as well rather than sit in a cupboard.

But with a preference for NVIDIA for this machine and the potential for headaches with mixed architectures and vendors for such little gain it doesn't seem worth it.

Buying 2 x RTX 2060 or 5700XT isn't part of the plan!

Also since looking at possibility of dual GPU I don't think the mobo is up to it with just 1 x PCIE 3.0 x16 and 1 x PCEI 2.0 x4.

agent71 wrote:...looking at possibility of dual GPU I don't think the mobo is up to it with just 1 x PCIE 3.0 x16 and 1 x PCEI 2.0 x4.

Well... There's a possibility that running Linux and using a slower GPU in PCIe 2.0 x4 and a faster GPU in PCIe 3.0 x16 would allow your motherboard to be used without a significant drop in performance with PCIe 2.0 x4 that's what I learnt from this topic: viewtopic.php?f=38&t=28847

no problem with that second slot if on Linux

Power supply Pure Power L8 530W has max 340 watts on 12V1 and max 240 watts on 12V2. So if you substract 130 watts for CPU and MB it is 400 watts left for GPU. So it can drive one big GPU but not two big GPUs.

If you happen to have crashes with a new GPU, keep in mind that this old power supply may not be ready for the fast changes of power required by the new GPU. That wattage is enough, but fluctuation may become a problem.