Folding Forum

I've been researching GPU's to find the best one for PPD/Watts/Cost. I was looking at Vega 64 and 5700XT's but I keep coming back to the RTX 2070. I think I have my wife convinced that we need a new PC since ours is 11 years old (X58, first gen i7 960 and GTX 560ti). I spec'd out a Ryzen 3700X build with 2 RTX 2070's and all in all will cost me about $2500. I have 2 questions.

1: Is this what you would build to use as a PC/game rig/Folding beast?

2: Our room already gets hot with the GTX 560ti folding, how am I supposed to deal with the heat of dual RTX 2070's? Lol

Take one RTX 2080Ti instead of two 2070. That's the way I did and I'm glad I did.
Let the Ti run at 160-180W. Take one with 3 fans, they are not so noisy.
You can compare the gpus here
https://www.overclock.net/forum/55-over ... abase.html

But it is also 2 to 3 times the cost.

chabgood wrote:But it is also 2 to 3 times the cost.

Depends how much you pay for power.
At the end it could be cheaper to pay more for the gpu and less for power.
Btw, if you don't destroy the gpu you can still sell it later.
I wouldn't buy a new one, there are some used on the market still with warranty.

The cost of the a 2080TI is 2 to 3 times the cost of a 2070.

chabgood wrote:The cost of the a 2080TI is 2 to 3 times the cost of a 2070.

You wrote that.
And he wanted to buy 2x 2070, I wrote, it is better than to buy 1x 2080Ti ...

right the power cost is not very relevant.

chabgood wrote:right the power cost is not very relevant.

You don't know where the OP is located.
In Germany it is very relevant.

If heat is an issue with a GTX 560 Ti (219W), I would definitely not recommend two of them (a 2070 uses about 225W, 133-145W if capped).
A single 2080Ti gets you the highest PPD per watt.
Not only do you end up with more PPD, you also save power, and also save heat (especially when running it at ~200W).

However, not a lot of WUs make full use of the 2080Ti.

So the question is, are you going by heat/power limitation, or PPD count?
Being cheaper on the wallet on electricity, goes paired with temperature. The more watts you run in your case, the higher the bill.
The more power your GPUs run at, the higher the heat.

If heat/power is your limit, that means a stock 2070 is indeed your cap.
You can limit the power on each GPU, in which case you can still go for a 2070 Super, 2080, 2080 Super, or 2080 Ti.
I bought 5 2080Tis at under $1k (most of them between $900-$999 were Gigabyte Windforce refurbs).
Gigabyte is my favorite brand for GPUs btw.

Right now, it might be tough to get a good price on a 2080Ti.
We've been waiting for AMD and Nvidia to release their newest GPUs (introduction should have been May, but is moved up due to covid).
Then prices will fall on the highest GPUs, and newer (probably RTX 3000 series GPUs) will vastly outperform current GPUs (while also running cooler) thanks to 7/10nm design.
That's a 20-60% die shrink of current gen.

I think that 'the best' of anything is relative to your circumstances, as previous posters have mentioned there are purchase and running costs to consider, also hardware considerations space on the mobo and inside case and number of PSU connectors etc For simplicity one GPU is better than two but for practical reasons someone may choose two to stagger the costs. As a folding addict I always prefer to build using one as I can then add another one.
Over the course of time the best solution may change, right now it seems that fast GPUs in Linux are the best if best=most ppd, but at some point that may change as the surrounding software changes such as new core and or better drivers.
New GPU models may also come out and become game changers.

I live in the USA so electricity costs don't matter all that much unless I was comparing 2 gpu's that are very similar in price. The average price for a 2080ti is about $1200, whereas I can get 2x 2070's for $800. The numbers I have seen for the 2080ti are about 2.1m PPD, and the 2070 between 900k-1m PPD.

Unibrowser wrote:I live in the USA so electricity costs don't matter all that much unless I was comparing 2 gpu's that are very similar in price. The average price for a 2080ti is about $1200, whereas I can get 2x 2070's for $800. The numbers I have seen for the 2080ti are about 2.1m PPD, and the 2070 between 900k-1m PPD.

RTX 2080ti will do considerably more than that on average especially under Linux, mine in windows probably averages more like 2.6 mppd but I have it power limited due to heat issues at present. PPD ranges are quite extreme at present and see 1.5-3.6 mppd depending on projects.

Here are all the PPD listings I've been able to locate.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... =323814829
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... Ek/pubhtml
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... utput=html
https://folding.lar.systems/folding_dat ... pd_overall

Unibrowser wrote:I live in the USA so electricity costs don't matter all that much unless I was comparing 2 gpu's that are very similar in price. The average price for a 2080ti is about $1200, whereas I can get 2x 2070's for $800. The numbers I have seen for the 2080ti are about 2.1m PPD, and the 2070 between 900k-1m PPD.

Those numbers are quite low, even for Core 21 WUs.
But yes,
2070s make about 1.25M PPD on Linux stock, and a 2080 Ti makes 2.4M PPD stock (Core 21).
Take about 10% off for Windows on average.
If PPD is a goal, once you start introducing Core 22 WUs, a 2070 runs at around 2.1M PPD max, and I've gotten 4.4M PPD on Linux out of a 2080 Ti (granted, those WUs are a rarity).

I have an undervolted rtx 2070 ryzen 3600 win 10 running at 0.69v 1800MHz (core) doing 1.3-1.4M ppd for almost 2 years. The energy consumption is always between 120-170w for the gpu. I never understand why people say rtx 2070 does 225w. Mine is a gigabyte windforce with 3 fans that go usually between 35-60% depending on the gpu load from 60-98%.

If you have a good (cool) setup you should go for 2 rtx 2070. Just cap the wattage or undervolt the voltage curve and you can do magic with these little suckers. I bought mine used for £320 ($360).

BUT be aware: keeping the case cool is difficult without making a lot of noise with 2 gpu's. Be very careful on the case fans position.