Folding Forum

So my current rig is around 4-years old now - Intel i5 11400F, 64Gb ram, Radeon 6600

Going to do a complete rebuild - should I concentrate more on the cpu or gpu ?

Budget around £2k to £2.5k

Building a rig for dedicated / mostly for folding:
- I'd prefer an AMD CPU atm - F@h doesn't deal well with little/big CPUs, and Intel has major problems with the 13th/14th gen
- nVidia is better in folding than AMD GPU, with points per day / points per dollar / job efficiency. I read about efforts on improving the underlying platform for AMD, but do not know the status.
- Linux gives better folding results than Windows (and nVidia drivers on Linux are better as well)
- If you want to focus on PPD, concentrate on GPU. With regards to the science, CPU jobs are also useful
- For F@h I'd go for 32 GB ram - it's doesn't cost all that much more than 16 GB, and it's more than enough for folding

Thanks Paul.

Probably go for something like AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D with 32 or 64Gb ram and a GeForce RTX 4080

At this point it might be worth waiting to see if the release of Blackwell GPU's triggers some price drops on the 4000 Series. Or some Black Friday deals at least.

Thanks for the heads-up Bob - didn't realise another nVidia launch was expected - reading now it says hopefully Oct/Nov so I might just wait and concentrate on getting a telescope instead

I will echo PaulTV, his points are all confirmed in my own experience.

I am inclined to believe that the 4070 Super gives the best PPD/$ based on GPU cost only. When you amortize the complete system cost, that probably favor the 4080 Super, depending.
I am intending to mix the 4060 TI and 4070 Super as some systems only have 500-600 PS, and also on hot summer days, I will shut down the 4070 S systems

Decided to pull the trigger and got myself a 4080 Super - now just started folding - might get another 4080 next month or wait and see if the 5080 comes out.

Ah, new toys Always nice, grats!

@jchang6 If you can run linux with that 4070 Super, the command

"sudo nvidia-smi -i 0 -pl 176" will get 10-14 million ppd with a 90 set in nvidia xserver settings. fans about 70 to 75 for a decent temp day.

"sudo nvidia-smi -i 0 -pl 106 or 116" will get 7.5 to 8.5 million ppd with 90 set in nvidia xserver settings. fans about 70 to 75 for a indecent temp day.

you can also toggle them without changing any other settings during the day or evening as the commands are left in the bash_history

the "0" refers to 1st video card, the 106 or 176 refers to how many watts you want the card to run at

good stuff for an old house in the lower sonoran frying pan or anywhere else daytime temps get indecent