Looks like a nice PPW contender coming up:



source: http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?optio ... 5&Itemid=1

My post on folding costs didn't generate a whole lot of interest.

And there's this:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/video/disp ... vidia.html

The wait for news is almost over. NVidia will announce whatever hand they can play at CeBit starting March 3, 2009. Some sources like The Enquirer, claim emphasis on notebook GPU chips first, and performance oriented GPUs will come much later. The 40nm process is leaky at best, so success starts with the ones with the fewest number of parts.

Expect the 9800GTX+ to be relabeled the GTS 250, no die shrink, no extra GHz, but possibly more money. Oh joy!

Actually a slightly lower price point, if what I have read is to be believed.

No die shrink but a smaller PCB which probably translates to slightly lower power. "A handful of watts" was how one source described it. The new board is shorter - 9" vs 10.5", and all will have just one 12v plug; Some 9800GTX+ have one but some have two.

Nothing Earth shattering, but an incremental improvement.

Not such a small increment for NVidia, they claim like a $15 reduction in cost.

The plugs are good for 75 watts, so at 80 watts you need 2 and at 70 watts one will do. That's very deceiving with the 55nm GTX260 with 2 plugs, total draw 100-110 watts.

That would be 75W above what they can draw from the PCIe bus. Right?

Yes, if they choose to do so.

OW!

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/ ... html#sect0

On this page first graph we see the 128 shader GTS 250 using 80 watts, and the 216 shader GTX 260 using 105 watts.

Any questions?

The GTS 250 does look like it may be good incremental step up from a 9600 GSO.

You say that as if the conclusion to be drawn is intuitively obvious.

Two GTS 250s do 10k ppd. Is another 2k to 4k ppd worth an additional 50 watts? That depends. My PSU fan is already running at 1200 RPM. Any higher and it becomes the loudest thing in my system. Maybe my case fans have to spin faster to get rid of those additional 50 watts of heat.

In my case a pair of 260s might bust my power, heat and noise budgets. Maybe when they move to 40nm I'll upgrade.

Those are all certainly valid concerns. I was only addressing PPW. Heck, I have a minimal system with a 300 watt PS I wouldn't trust with anything more than the 9600 GSO, and I'm hoping I have enough power for that.

Do you have a kill-a-watt? I'm curious what your total system power draw is. Back when I ran dual video cards, the highest power usage I saw was.. umm.. I think 340 watts A/C? At that level, my Seasonic 600 ramped up to around 1000rpm, but this is in an Antec P180 where it draws bottom chamber air, not hot air from the main case. That was 2 GPU + SMP CPU client.

If I just ran two GTX 260's or a single 295GTX with no CPU client I could probably squeze in around 320-340 watts A/C even with the most intensive GPU WU's, and right now the WU's they're handing out aren't that bad. That would keep my PSU fan at or under 1000rpm, where it wasn't very loud.

303 to 403 watts, with most of the readings in the low 300s.

The PSU is an Enermax Modu82+ 625W. It's drawing outside air directly, not warm air from inside the case. But the fan speeds are, I believe, based on power draw not on temperature. My PSU fan speed at the moment is varying between 1055 and 1082 RPM.

My CPU utilization is hovering at 93% to 94%.

I was wondering if replacing 2 9600GSOs with 1 GTX260 whether one would gain some stream processors and perhaps use fewer watts at the same time.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/video/disp ... oduct.html

A GTX295 on one, not two circuit boards. This should be a substantial price reduction.

http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?optio ... &Itemid=34

Lets hope this is the start of a whole mess of activity.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-4770,2281.html

In games, comparable to a 250. I doubt very much that it will fold like a 250, though. What is interesting is at the end of the article, mention is made of a CUDA "roundup" of applications. I wonder if they'll include FAH.

The answer here is yes and no. You gain the stream processors but don't cut any watts.

Also - The ATI 4770 card is a 50-watter.

As soon as there is something comparable to the 9800GTX+/GTS 250 in a lower power chip, I will replace the two cards I have. My system is pulling over 400 watts.

That's a tad excessive, what other equipment do you have? What PS? Are you OCing?

i7. Nothing much else of note. Overclocked a bit, but only to 3.2GHz, at stock voltage.

Sounds about right. My 9800GTX+ at full load folding takes my PC to 200 watts with the CPU and some 260 watts with the CPU at load. When I had a 9800GT too the total draw was around 335 watts. I can see how dual GTS 250's and an i7 would hit 400 watts - I too would love to see a 30-40% lower power GTS 250, much like ATI's 4770 has about 85% the graphics power of a 4850 at about 50% of the electrical power.