The Scottish Boinc Team

FTO-Par · Cruncher Joined: 17 Nov 2007 Posts: 28 Location: Fife

I'm looking to buy a new graphics card within the next two weeks, and I don't have a clue what to buy. I'm currently using the on-board Nvida, with is poor to say the least. I have read loads of write ups and am still none the wiser. Is there any difference between AGP and PCI ?
I'm looking to spend around £100, will that get me a reasonable spec card.
All advice appreciated

Mark

aardvark · Posted: Fri May 29, 2009 2:55 pm Post subject:

Mark

I think you'll find that the newer generation of cards only support PCIe2 (also backward compatable with PCIe, but would not perform as well) this is totally different from the PCI slot. This (PCIe) was the step up from the older AGP standard, and the now very old PCI. As to the choice of card, it depends on what type of slots are on your motherboard (and how many, typically 1 PCIe (type 1 or 2), but some modern boards have up to 4 slots). One way of finding out, without opening the case, would be to run a piece of software. Such as Sisoft SANDRA which gives you all the information you could want about your system. As for choice of card, I only have recent experience with the Nvidia cards, perhaps some of the others could comment on the ATI cards. For your budget I would recomend any manufacturer of the Nvidia 8800GT with 512MB (note the GT, not GTS or GS etc) cards. This will give reasonable performance accross most games, and is capable of running CUDA (have a look at the Nvidia site). Which is what alows me to run projects such as GPUGRID on my graphics card GPU. Or if you had a dual PCIe (or AGP in the case of the 8800GT, which is available for both types of slot) motherboard you could get a pair of these cards at £50 each on eBay and SLI them for good game performance, and the ability to run two GPUGRID projects simultaneously.
Unfortunately the really good performing cards are in the £300-£500 price range. I hope this has helped and not confused your decision

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jockmacmad2 · Boinc Admiral Joined: 27 Jan 2009 Posts: 261

If you are looking to go ATI then your options are varied and much cheaper than the nVidia route but there is at present only a single project you can use them on.

The price of 4850's is dropping through the floor and I have even seen a 4870 for < £100.

The new ATI cards 4770 are also coming out which are not so power hungry but pretty fast for approx. £80. I have one to test but I nuked the PC earlier.

By far my favourite for the grunt and price (but not power consumtion) are the 4850X2 which is 2 4850's on a single card. These run HOT and need a large case like a GTX-295 etc. Now avail at £130.
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