http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814121319

You're looking at a range of 2800 to 3500 PPD, for $35! No AMD X2 dual core will give you that for $35.

And this is a real one, 96 stream processors, not like those others with 512MB or 1 Gig of memory and 64 processors.

Yeah, it's double wide and it doesn't vent out of the case, but hey, did I mention it's $35?

Deal maker - The rebate is good for TWO products, that's 192 stream processors for $70! Shipping is 1 card $7, 2 cards $9. And you don't have to check eBay.

$35 Hey Neil, I'm talking to you.

So now it's going to take me even longer to catch you? Great. Ah well, let us know how it goes, I'm vaguely interested in dual card setups. They sound good in theory, but I'm curious about the practice.

Well, I will throttle down a bit for the summer because of the heat. Do some maintainance as well, clean the dust out of the current cards and such.

I do know that Mike C has an X2 dual board he would like to sell cheap. An AMD BE4050 (2.1GHz) costs $40. That's the backbone of a dual gpu setup. No need for big power supplies either. This setup would draw at most (with 2 9600GSOs) 250 watts. Less depending on the exact motherboard and cpu.

Frankly I want Neil in there somewhere. Yo dude, where are you?

Added:

I knew it! I knew it! I knew it! I just checked back at NewEgg, and they are all sold out for now. Get your email id on the auto notification list and just wait. I recall when Nikon released a camera or lens with pent up demand, B&H Photo would sell out in 45 minutes. You moved at notification or you lost out.

Hey, so you don't seem to have spiked too much, how are the cards going? Folding away, or having some bugs?

Yes, I won't have them installed until this Saturday.

Let us know how it goes. I've been reading that many 9600GSO's don't have fan control, and it's the only thing holding me back from ordering one as well.

Wow, I killed myself just to get 3 cards running on this quad mobo.

Well my scores for Sunday will be bad, as pc #3 did nothing for several hours. Quad setup is downright dreadful compared to dual. Dual is a no-brainer. It just works. Quad? I'm writing it up over on the Stanford forums later because I only got one of the 2 new cards rolling.

Somebody said something about no fan control, which is semi accurate. Riva Tuner saw 4 gpus, and allowed only the first 2 to have fan control that I could see. Again 2 cards total no issues at all. Cards 3 and 4? It may be hidden but I didn't see it. Frankly I would just as soon have it running flat out anyways, you need air movement to cool stuff with no heatsinks. Noise I would call average, no high pitched whine or crap like that. The new cards are GPU 1 & 3 (they are numbered 0, 1, 2, 3). Two has Riva Tuner fan control, so I am pretty sure fan control works.

Asus utilities? Uh, don't bother. The big arse fan looks impressive, but frankly doesn't seem any better than any other setup. Believe it or not, the single slot coolers have 2 heat pipes in them, flat, but present. The Asus cooler has no copper to speak of at all. The memory chips are not hot and I don't worry about them. The regulator type chips are always hot but there's no logic there so big deal. There is 1 logic chip, square with pins on all side, like a cpu, that runs hot. That should have a smaller heat sink on it. It won't take much but something should be added.

Cool. I ordered one from NCIX and will see if it works well. Thanks for the reply.

Thanks for the update, so 4 gpus is tough, but 2 is ok? Definitely good to know.

I can't say 4 is a dog for certain until I update the motherboard BIOS. I have a sneaky suspicion they were released WAY TOO SOON. I mean 90% of all the settings I changed don't stick, they aren't saved.

I wouldn't be surprised if virtually all returns of this mobo Im using are because of the lousy BIOS.

I'm confused; what motherboard are you running? Was this mentioned in a different thread, or am I just not seeing it above? From what I gather, you're running a mobo with 4 PCI-E slots, and having trouble getting all 4 cards recognized and working, is that correct?

Correct, I ran the 4 slot mobo with 2 cards, and just now, 4 cards.

All I'm saying is right now is I don't know exactly where the problem lies. Is a general 4 slot motherboard problem, a general problem on just this make and model, or these particular BIOS?

I want to get the latest BIOS and either blame them or rule them out.

In addition, one person posted on NewEgg that his board didn't recognize changes in the number of PCI-E slots used. The only way his board worked correctly was to reset the BIOS and then have the system redo everything from scratch. Then they all worked properly.

MS display settings really freaked me out:
http://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=10473

Looks like the card is back in stock at Newegg

It lasted longer than last time, but it's sold out again.

Update - My EVGA cards have fan controls, but at least under RivaTuner this card does not. I forgot to look to see of fan speed is reported in FAHMon, but the fan itself is 3 wire so it should be.

The cooler has no copper at all, the entire card is quite hot folding. Buying an alternate gpu cooler kind of squashes its low initial investment pro, but if an Artic Cooler makes it work enough passive, then it's quiet, cooler, and still cheaper than most. A 3-fer.

Don't get me wrong here, some of my EVGA 9600GSOs are always quite warm as well, meaning the entire card.

(deleted)

how does the 8800GTS (384 MB) version compare to the 9600GSO in ppd?

Something I've found kind of useful is this page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Nvidia_graphics_processing_units

It has all the shader counts and stuff, but if you check out the GFLOPS column, it compares roughly to this chart:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Inno3D/GeForce_GTX_275_OC/23.html

So from that, if the GFLOPs correlation holds up, then the 8800 GTS should fold faster. I haven't quite figured out why, but it may hold up. The cards look to be more expensive, so I guess that makes a little sense.

Looks like they're back on sale, I finally ordered one. Does seem like a good deal. I've been trying to get gpu folding going in linux, guess this will be a real test.

Trying for 30,000 PPD?

I don't think the 9600 gso will give me 30k, from what I've been able to gather maybe an extra 2-3k a day, that would put me at 25-26k. I just figured that I have an empty slot on my asus motherboard with the built in 9300M, I've been playing with trying to get that working in linux, and it seemed like the 9600 gso would be good for experimenting with running multiple gpus. I've read that it works if the shader counts are integer multiples, and with the 9300M having 16 shaders, that should be compatible with lots of cards. But I'll need to experiment, and the 9600 gso card seems like a cheap way to test the setup.

But as far as future plans go, I always have an eye out for more stuff. Just today I noticed a good motherboard cpu combo deal at Fry's, and it's a motherboard on the EFI-X compatibility list, and I've been dying to set up a system with that and make a cool Hackintosh, and they're getting close to the release of the V1.1 Efi-X dongle, so I bet I'll be giving that a shot soon. And I really want to pick up one of those Pegatron mini-itx atom 330 boards with the pci-e x16 slot on it, seems like an ideal little dedicated folding system. And my couch laptop is an old pentium 4 system, I should really replace that at some point. That's just embarasing. And I finally cleaned out my old cm stacker, a huge old case with mounting room for dual power supplies. Wonder what I'll get up to with that.

So all in all, yeah, I'm hoping for 30,000, and more.

Speaking of more, when do the new line of Nvidia cards come out?

You used an awful lot of words to say that.

Only ones I've heard about are the low-end parts. GT210 and 220. (aka GT216/218). They are supposedly being shipped to OEMs already.
http://www.techreport.com/discussions.x/17182
http://www.geek.com/articles/games/nvid ... -20090710/
http://www.geeks3d.com/20090708/nvidia- ... ics-cards/

From the rumors, GT230 (40nm, GDDR5/3) is supposed to come out in December. It's supposed to be a mainstream part, and will feature 64-96 stream processors.

Haven't seen anything about release dates for GT300/GTX300 series highend parts. Last I heard, they were having problems with yields due to TSMC's 40nm process.

I also read that ATI's new 40nm cards are delayed till November.

Yeah, I've been known to ramble. And hey, thanks for the tips on gpu in linux, got it going for a bit, although I tried running the on board gpu too and it got a little screwed up. I need to explore a little more for dual gpu linux folding. But just having one going is a big help!

I just saw this in the mail today, it turns out that they're selling this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130482&nm_mc=EMC-IGNEFL073009&cm_mmc=EMC-IGNEFL073009-_-VideoCards-_-L6A-_-14130482

with a promo code that drops the price $15 to $130. Being recertified, I'm not sure how reliable it'll be for folding, and I can't figure out if it's the 55nm or 65nm GTX 260 version, but it is a little tempting. Think I'll see what's on sale at Fry's tomorrow, and if nothing leaps out maybe pick up one or two of these. Anyone have any experience with this card or recertified stuff at newegg in general?

It's the 55nm version. You can tell by the model number. 1255 is a 55nm part.

With that said, Newegg has the same card for $179.99 - $30 mail in rebate = $149.99

So about $20 difference in price. Whether it's worth the risk of dealing with a recertified card or not, is upto you.

Also, the warranty is 90 days vs the normal lifetime that EVGA offers.