Nvidia GTS 450 incompatible with Folding@Home, I presume?

[maximumzero]

Helped my brother-in-law build a new computer over the weekend. His GPU hasn't arrived yet so we pulled a GPU out of an old Alienware PC (GTX 680) as a temporary fix to get everything else up and running for the moment.

 

In the process he dug out two even older GPUs out of his closet including a SLI bridge. They were unbranded (they were the cards that originally shipped with said Alienware PC) so I was unsure of what they were, but I took them off his hands, excited that I would finally have GPUs to fold on.

 

After pulling off the cooler, I discovered they were GTS 450s. Over a decade old at this point, but I presumed they would be enough to at least get a handful of points daily, moreso than the CPU folding I was doing on some of the older computers anyway. This morning I slotted them into an appropriately older PC and booted it up, only for Folding@Home to tell me they're "disabled". 

Am I to presume that these GPUs are just too old for Folding@Home and are pretty much useless?

 

Oh well, he told me when his new GPU arrives that I can have the GTX 680. Maybe that one will work at least.

[BondiBlue]

I don't think those cards are supported by F@h anymore. Even if they were supported it wouldn't make sense to use them for folding given the amount of power they draw. According to the GPU PPD list they're many times slower than something as weak as a GT 1030. My own 1030 gets roughly 120,000 PPD while only drawing ~30W of power. 

 

8 minutes ago, maximumzero said:

Oh well, he told me when his new GPU arrives that I can have the GTX 680. Maybe that one will work at least.

AFAIK the GTX 680 is still supported by F@h. I was getting around 230K PPD on my GTX 680 when I last used it for folding. It's too inefficient for me to keep folding on it anymore, but it did work. 

[WhitetailAni]

On 8/15/2022 at 1:43 PM, maximumzero said:

Oh well, he told me when his new GPU arrives that I can have the GTX 680. Maybe that one will work at least.

For NVidia, Kepler architecture and newer will work for Folding. I Fold exclusively on Kepler cards - they're slow by modern standards but they do work. I'm close to 100 million points.

[maximumzero]

So any suggestion on what to do with the GTS 450s short of recycling them?

[Gorgon]

7 hours ago, maximumzero said:

So any suggestion on what to do with the GTS 450s short of recycling them?

The GTS 450 supports OpenCL version 1.1 still and there is a relatively current Win 10 Driver (391.35) still available. You could try running BOINC on it but there aren't too many GPU projects available and with only 1GB GDDR5 of VRAM you might be limited in which projects.

 

Honestly though if you want to contribute picking up a used 1660ti or other low end card would likely pay for itself in the electricity savings per unit of work done in less than a couple of years.

 

It's a 12 year-old GPU at this point. It's had a good run and there's no shame sending it to the glue factory.

[maximumzero]

So...swapped out the GTS 450s with a GTX 680 and the Folding@Home client is reading "Disabled" for the slot that I attempt to add. Is that GPU not supported either?

 

Nevermind, had to restart the computer after the driver install.