Hyper Threaded Posted January 8, 2014 Posted January 8, 2014 Right now, I have an MSI HD6950 TwinFrozr PE OC basically, the best of the HD6950s offered at the time. The rub is not gaming performance, it's performing just fine for my needs. However, the F@H performance is seriously lacking, newer cards are easily out-performing this card two or three times. I'm not buying right now, my projected budget will be around $300-$400. I think this puts me in the R9 280x/7970 or GTX 770 cards. My goal is to ultimately get the best card for F@H for the money. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
IVIYTH0S Posted January 9, 2014 Posted January 9, 2014 (edited) Aren't AMDs the best for folding right now?? Also highfive for a fellow X950TF brother! You should try overclocking it! Edited January 9, 2014 by IVIYTH0S Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
SpikeSoprano Posted January 9, 2014 Posted January 9, 2014 yes if your going to fold stay with the amd cards,they're getting the best scores. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hyper Threaded Posted January 9, 2014 Posted January 9, 2014 Cards have changed that much, eh? Back when I got the HD6950, nvidia cards were superior at F@H. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
cchalogamer Posted January 9, 2014 Posted January 9, 2014 The cards haven't changed so much but the F@H core has nVidia no longer gets the boost by using cuda, both camps are using OpenCL and AMD does it better. On top of that, the 331 "gaming ready" drivers from nvidia started the trend of reduced compute performance (pure guess here is to cripple them and stop people from using GeForce cards for tasks designed for the Quadro) might not be so bad but unless you have a 780/Titan you're looking at 1/3 the performance as before. My GTX 670 was an easy 60,000 PPD card when I bought it, now closer to 20,000(well I was going to put a right now estimate with a project number here, but looks like for the last few hours it's been failing to get an assignment wonderful). I of course am not very pleased seeing as I have to choose folding performance or play the newer games I want to play with up to date drivers. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hyper Threaded Posted January 9, 2014 Posted January 9, 2014 This is all very eye-opening for me, nvidia cards were superior for F@H at the time I bought the HD6950. I understood the advantage was based on the software but, presumed it would stay that way. With that being said, are there any tips to improve production on my current card? I'm running Catalyst 13.8 right now. My GPU clock is currently set at 900, the highest allowed by the driver control panel. I'm willing to clock higher, provided it isn't a total faff. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
cchalogamer Posted January 9, 2014 Posted January 9, 2014 If your 6950 is a 2GB version you can try unlocking it to a 6970, mine would unlock shaders but was a little unstable at higher clock speeds. When I had mine in my server running Server 08 I had to use the FirePro drivers on it as AMD no longer supported the server OS for the card (and none of the drivers would install anyway as nvidia's tend to do) I don't remember the exact PPD boost but seems like it was a little extra from that forced driver change (vs what it was doing in a Win 7 x64 system using then current drivers) Honestly right now a new AMD card would give you the best PPD, but bitcoin/litecoin/etc miners are buying them up for similar performance on their end so pricing sucks right now (or else a 290/290X would be very attractive to me atm) Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hyper Threaded Posted January 9, 2014 Posted January 9, 2014 Actually, the miners are the one thing that really annoy me. Driving the prices up sky high. I'm going to see if it's possible to get past 900mhz on this card. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hyper Threaded Posted January 20, 2014 Posted January 20, 2014 After plenty of tweaking and testing, I decided the best thing was to stay at 900/1300. I kept running into issues trying to go higher than that. An upgrade to a newer card is still due in the next few months. My plan is to wait a bit until the mining fury dies down and the prices return to normal. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hyper Threaded Posted January 28, 2014 Posted January 28, 2014 Another update for you guys, I have settled on either an ASUS or EVGA GTX770. Prices on the R9 280x are just too high for me to stomach. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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