used tesla/firepro or mining card for folding?

[AMDMike]

getting into folding, alzheimers recently took the life of my grandmother and wanna do something to help the cause looking at adding a a used firepro/tesla/quadro or a mining card to my system to fold full time power draw is no issue cost isn't a huge issue whatever has the most folding power

[Lord Nicoll]

20 minutes ago, AMDMike said:

getting into folding, alzheimers recently took the life of my grandmother and wanna do something to help the cause looking at adding a a used firepro/tesla/quadro or a mining card to my system to fold full time power draw is no issue cost isn't a huge issue whatever has the most folding power

Most power? Something in the Titan V class would work well but that'd cost a lot. I know FAH has an FP64 benchmark so I'm assuming it can use FP64, you're gonna want a GPU with good FP64 perf then, 1/4 to 1/2 would be best, but I'm guessing most FAH is done with FP32. I don't fold so I wouldn't know, but likely whatever you see cheap will work best. Quadro's/Tesla's and Firepross aren't strictly needed.

[Jaker788]

From what I've read, F@H doesn't use FP64 anymore, they ran a trial and found it's extra accuracy didn't add much and costs performance.  That being the case, a used consumer card is probably the best option since pro features won't add anything.  I'm thinking a used 1080, RX580, RX590. Anything more powerful than these cards and the GPU load will be below 100% due to the work units being too small and a waste of the extra power the GPU has.

 

A 1080 will get you 700-900k points per day

A RX 580 will get you about 350K points per day

 

It's likely a used 1080 will be your best bet and bang for the buck. if you find some for a steal you could buy more than one and have them running separate work units. Just make sure you have a power supply with enough PCI-E connectors and wattage capability.

[Gorgon]

10 hours ago, AMDMike said:

getting into folding, alzheimers recently took the life of my grandmother and wanna do something to help the cause looking at adding a a used firepro/tesla/quadro or a mining card to my system to fold full time power draw is no issue cost isn't a huge issue whatever has the most folding power

Sorry to hear about your grandmother but glad to have you start folding again with us.

 

Here is a list of card performance that’s fairly accurate. I can’t speak to AMD but from your handle I suspect that would be your preference. In general the Quadros and FirePros available used at a reasonable cost don’t perform that well so as others have said I’d stick with the RX 590 or a Vega 56 which AMD is rumoured to be dropping the price on in response to the GTX 1660Ti.

 

On the Nvidia side if your preference is used I’d personally go with a used 1070Ti over a 1080 as they perform almost as well. Just remember for Nvidia your need to leave one core/Thread free for the GPU and have a PCIe3 x4 or x8 slot available from the CPU not the PCH or Northbridge for maximizing your yield. But remember to sanity check any used prices as the GTX 1060 Ti should perform at or above a 1070.

 

Theres a couple of threads here where people have gotten the P106 mining cards working for folding so if you can find one used at a reasonable cost those might be an option.

 

The other option is to think about replacing your primary GPU with a newer or similar card for Crossfire when gaming and a boost when folding.