Nvidia Bang for Buck comparison

I had a little time on my hands, so surfed the net and put together my findings and whacked them together into this. Some of the prices are somewhat outdated, i'm open to corrections. It does not include the latest cards, (as yet) but gives a good idea what gives the best PPD/$.

I will be doing one for you ATI fans too.

 

Any idea how to make them full size on the post, so you don't have to hover it?

 

And those would be for standard clocks with no shader OC I assume?

 

Yes unfortunately, too many factors to consider when adding OC'ed cards, but if you can find OC PPD data for these cards then i will put them on.

 

I have been running the three top card from Nvidia for a while now and without doubt the GTX295 is light years ahead of anything ATI has but they are not cheap, i burnt out one of the cards on the 295 (it's a dual card) so it's useless now and i am now running GTX260 which is not that much slower.

After the release date march 26 i have a GT100 (Nvidia firmi) ordered and this is supposed to be 8 times faster than the 295 (we will see)

I find Nvidia far superior to ATI even though they are more expensive, but that's a personal view.

 

Yep Nvidia are a head above ATI at the moment, their PPD are no where near NV's

Bill, mind telling your PPD with the 295?

 

The 8600GT does not do well with folding, set to minimum settings, 90% - 100% cpu usage, setting the environment variables (FAH_GPU_IDLE) to 20 instead of 10 didn't help much,I would EUE offen times and have discontinued using them.

My thoughts are the ram and other factors on these boards are not up to the specs needed to do the calculations.(just my experience using these x3 specific gpu video cards)

I am now using a stock 8800GS which does well and am contemplating firing up either the factory over clocked 8800GS (I prefer stock gpu cards) or the stock 8800GT.

All cards listed here are 512 MB ram excluding the 8800GS which is 384 MB

 

Sure it was 6000ppd running only 12 hours per day.

 

*******!!!!

... i wish i had the cash.

But from other posts ive seen from you i think it ran rather hot?

And you've had more than 1?

 

I have only had one 295 and yes i did have a problem with cooling, i used EVGA to set the fan speed at max but it still ran around 93c, i don't know if i had a bad card or if i just had bad luck but i left the house and at some stage it did a re-start (no idea why) and it was running at over 105c for some time and then just died.

My GTX260 runs with the fan set to auto at around 82c that's why i suspect it was a defective card and it was out of warranty.

 

Ouch, that was an expensive failure.

 

Have you tried a manual setting on the fan BILL?
Both my 260s run in the low to mid 60s at 65% fan.

 

I am happy with the temps for the 260, they are well within the safe zone.

I have used EVGA to up the speeds and it does lower the temps but the increase in noise is not acceptable.

 

How loud are these things? As loud as a 120mm case fan(at say 1600RPM)?

(I've only owned cheap GPU's with puny fans)

 

Well, much louder than a 120 case fan if one goes up to say %70 fan but it's fine where mine is at which is %51(auto)/78C, mind you I have the side panel off ATM in preparation for some major surgery. Even the mobo's coming out!:cry

 

Thanks, i just wanted an idea

that takes some patience! And time!

 

Ya, I have to change the chipset fan with those crappy plastic pushpins and change the stock single core HS/F to a heatpipe which has to be attached from the back of the mobo for my dual X2 3800+. It'll be interesting as I've never installed a huge thing like this on a CPU before!:eek

 

Good luck!

Hope its not too frustrating! :banghead:banghead:banghead

 

Sounds like fun Augie!! Is it just me or does it seem like motherboards and GPUs are often sold with really crappy cooling? The last couple of computers I built, I swapped out the chipset fan, and replaced the stock cooling on the GPU's. And the stock CPU heatsink? AMD still seems to have a decent cooler, but those damn plastic push pin things on the Q6600... What was Intel thinking??

As far as PPD per$, I still think the old 8800GT rocks. You can usually buy a used one for $50 or less, and they crank out some points, are usually good for a light overclock, and will still play some games. Of course, I am sure that some 260GTS cards will be bargains soon as well. My 260 gets almost 5K a day, and only folds when I am not on the computer. :cool

 

Well, on my ASUS A8N-E, it was a common issue with the chipset fan and a friend from Chicago sent me a replacement as the warranty was out on mine. Damn push pins there too! My original HS/F was for a single core AMD Venice and it's now cooling an X2 3800+. Ace was kind enough to offer me one of those huge Zalman doughnut heatpipe HS's. It's worth it now to pull the mobo out and do a major cooling upgrade.

As to my Q6600 stock HS/F, it's doing well enough to keep the CPU at 85C @ 3.07GHz with SMP2 pinning all cores but that's too hot for me, esp with summer coming. I'm thinking of getting an H-50 cooler for this quad and my future i7.

 

Great idea!, mine keep my Quad Athlon at 3.3 @ 49 Load!

 

Second that idea.
Mine is keeping the 920 about 15C above ambient with a spread of about 5C or 6C over all the cores.
Only hiccup I had was matching the small screws and the metal keepers that fasten the back plate to the mobo. Match those to the correct backplate either AMD or Intel.

 

Good to have some real life feedback on the H-50 from the heaviest CPU users around!:cool Plus, the thing is affordable and without having to learn all the ins and outs of water-cooling. Have you followed their instructions on blowing air into the case instead of out over the radiator? Just wondering.

 

No. I've got the Antec 900 case.
There are 2 120mm at the front directing in, 1 120mm in the side directing in on my vid cards. 1 200mm on top for exhaust at medium speed. Of course both vid cards and power supply exhaust out the back.
Added a second 120mm fan on the radiator for a push-pull arrangement to exhaust. With the vid cards below the radiator and not as much room behind the tower as i would like, I figured to keep from looping the vid card exhaust I'd exhaust the radiator also.

 

Hmm, some folk have mentioned to do a push-pull like you have and have had good success. Man, a pair of 260's plus the CPU, lots of heat there! Those are darn good temps! The heck with their recommendations!:-D Results don't lie.:cool

 

I goofed.:banghead
25C above ambient for the cores. (Darn F to C conversions in my head.):-o
Running mid 50s C on the cores.

 

Hehehe, still good temps man! Much better than my quad burning up at 85C ATM. I'm going back to 2.7 even though everything's fine.

 

I have mine set up as push/pull as an exhaust, on all the H-50 forums, they recommend having them as an exhaust.