Hi all,

My current folding setup is rather ancient.

AMD 3400+
Nvidia 7300GS 512 meg AGP
2 gig Ram.

I will asume that this is not anything special at all

So, what would be anice cheap decent folding machine?

Thanks guys, I really want to get a better rig for it.

Paul...

I hear the 9600gso is a good cheap folding card, it's being discussed here
http://www.xtremesystems.org/FORUMS/showthread.php?t=198606

About half way down there's a table showing ppd and cost.

My 2 9600 gts run just short of 3000 ppd each and i think the 9600gso is about half the price of these cards and give around 2500 ppd.

Other people here should be able to help more

Watch out with the GSOs though! The 96 shader models are great, but the 48 shader models suck! There is two different versions out there!!!

we had a nice discussion about the 9600 GSO in this thread.

king is right, you want the GSO with 96 Stream Processors (aka Unified Shaders). you can differentiate between the two variants like this:
- GSO w/96 SP: total memory evenly divisible by 192 and running on a 192-bit memory bus. so, any GSO with 384mb or 768mb RAM is the good kind!
- GSO w/48 SP: total memory evenly divisible by 128 and running on a 128-bit memory bus. so, any GSO with 256mb, 512mb, 1gb, 1.5gb is the bad kind!

this is the card you want.

if you OC only the shaders on a good GSO, you can expect ~3000-4000 PPD per card. you should be able to push those shaders up to 1700mhz, if not higher. overclocking the core and memory speeds wont do much of anything but make the card hotter. shaders are where it's at for folding!

I have a X4 940 with 2x 8800gts 512's. When I looked at fahspy this morning it was reporting 13,000 ppd. I have another vid card in the mail and still looking for a 4th. Once I get all 4 up and running i'm guessing it should pull off about 20-21k ppd.

I got a couple of the Asus EN9600GSO 348MB that are installed but I haven't succeeded in getting the second one to fold yet!

The first card is pulling 3000~3500 PPD, currently says 3505 PPD but this goes up and down depending on the WU's.

Once the second card is running and with some shader overclocking I hope to hit somewhere around 8000 PPD, including CPU folding, which isn't too bad for the price.

Cheers

Paul

Guys,

If you notice, my card is AGP which means I would be looking for a new cheap system to fold.

Suggestions please.

Thanks...

They are giving you suggestions lol
You're telling us your video card is AGP so I would think you just want to replace the video card, its just that you keep saying you want a new cheap system.
A system (or computer if that what you mean) isn't really a video card, per se

As well as an AMD 3400+ and 2Gig Ram...

The responces focused on the video card. I did ask for a cheap folding system.


Thanks...

This is what my setup consists of:

CPU - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16819103471 - $189

Motherboard - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16813186152 - $189

Ram - 2x1GB Buffalo FireStix I had laying around - $20-$30

Vid cards - Used 8800gts 512's bought for $75-$90 (the $90 one had a single slot cooler)

PSU - http://www.directron.com/rsc50embad2.html - $269

If thats not cheap enough you can go with a cheaper motherboard and a X3 720 and run 1 or 2 vid cards with a much smaller psu.

That PSU is infinitely overkill for what you're running Raiderfan! 800W would have sufficed

Anyways, I would suggest something like an X3 720, 2GB RAM, a MSI K9A2 Platinum motherboard (130$ after MIR), video cards of your choice, and a PSU depending on what sort of video card(s) you're gonna run.

While this may not exactly be "cheap", it will pack a massive punch in Folding!

I'm gonna have 4 8800gts's eventually. And it's basically going to be running full load 24/7/365. So I think it should be running pretty efficiently....plus I just wanted it. For the price and if it's what you need power wise it's hard to beat.

Doubt you'll ever make use of the full wattage, 8800gts are about 125w each. Even with four, a quality 850w would suffice.

Got the two 9600GSO's installed and (systray) folding in the system in my signature with an overclock to 1800MHz on the shaders. The processor isn't really that important so any dual core, 512MB~1GB of memory and mobo with the necessary slots will probably give you 7500~8000PPD and with 230W pulled from the wall a quality 400~500W power supply, for best efficiency, would suffice.

If you fold using Linux (free OS) you could put this machine together for very little money!

See my post here for the numbers.

Cheers

Paul

Making use of the full wattage wasn't my intent. Having it running in the 40-60% range of it's capabilities 24/7 was. 125x4= 500w....plus the AMD 940 overclocked.