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Bok
03-27-14, 11:14 AM
What do you all think of this one ?

XFX Double D R9-270X-EDFC Radeon R9 270X 4GB 256-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card

(http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150704)I just need a newer one for my main PC as the older GeForce 260 is creaking. Handle 2x27" monitors at 1920x1080 and the occasional game of Diablo III (with Reaper of Souls expansion)

FourOh
03-27-14, 12:02 PM
For $20-30 more the R9 280 has 5 times the Double Precision capability and 25% more SP GFLOPS. It would be a great card for MilkyWay! Tell you what, if you'll crunch for SUSA during our next two MilkyWay challenges - I'll cover the difference.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150706

Bok
03-27-14, 12:11 PM
I did look at that one, but I would have had to get a better PSU for it and I wanted the 4Gb memory too.

Sarge104
03-27-14, 12:18 PM
Quick and dirty comparison (http://us.hardware.info/reviews/5003/five-amd-radeon-r9-270x-tested-asus-msi-sapphire-and-xfx), from what they say the MSI R9 270X Gaming may be the one to look for price wise, overclocking would be the Hawk from MSI.

GeForce GTX 760 may be a better option in terms of power consumption, but you might take a small hit performance wise.

rgathright
03-27-14, 12:48 PM
Overall... the AMD R9 is very good graphics card and a nice addition to the SETI.USA team!

DrPop
03-27-14, 05:13 PM
BOK, how small (or old) is that PSU in your main rig? I'm with FourOh on this. I know you only upgrade your personal rig once in a blue moon, and everything else goes to free-dc.org and setiusa.us/.org web and data servers.

If you would like the bigger GPU, we will find a way to get you a better PSU in that rig. Even if I have to rip one out of one of my rigs and mail it to you. You don't upgrade often enough to settle for lower end when you do.
We appreciate everything you do for us, so please if you want the better GPU, just say the word.

Bok
03-27-14, 05:41 PM
Already pulled the trigger :) Though now I'm thinking of upgrading the mobo/cpu to a Haswell. Mine is an older I7-920 and the board is USB2.0. I do a lot of video for my kids hockey games with GoPro cameras and it takes too long to transfer over with USB2.0, but then again I just don;t have the time to build it right now, perhaps in the summer. To be honest I don't really do much GPU crunching at all anyway, only on new projects to get my 100K would I do that or for a new badge.

DrPop
03-27-14, 06:04 PM
How about we just get you a USB 3.0 internal card to slip into one of those PCI-e 1x slots on your mobo? :o Seriously, I would not spend the $ on a Haswell mobo and CPU right now, you will be shocked at how little an upgrade it would be from a nicely O/Ced i7 920. :p I would wait for Broadwell and DDR4 and/or the new 8 core Socket 2011 rigs with DDR4. :D
At the very least wait for the refresh of Haswell and see if the new "O/Cing" CPU they're coming out with is really all that much better. I'd personally like to see what one crunches like with the iris Pro turned off and that 128MB on die RAM is used as a giant L4 cache. ;)

Bok
03-27-14, 06:07 PM
You know (and I'm embarassed) I didn't even know there was USB 3.0 PCI cards! Now that I do I'll pick one up next time I'm close to the TigerDirect store close by! Don;t need it right now anyway.

Thanks for the info!

DrPop
03-28-14, 12:22 AM
I'm sure you probably already know this, but just to be clear:
You want to get a PCI-e x1 slot USB 3.0 add in card and definitely not a regular PCI card. The regular PCI cards are rare (but they do exist) so I'm just letting you know - the regular PCI bus only lets it transmit at 1.3Gbps - not the 5Gbps you will get from the PCI-e slot add in card. As I mentioned, you probably won't even see a regular PCI USB 3.0 add in card for sale where you look, but just in case you do ... you don't want it. ;)

One more thing you might consider if you want is an internal USB 3.0 header to go to some front ports either built in to your case or ports that you can put into an empty drive bay. Not a problem if you don't want front ports, but some of the add in cards do have the internal header, so if you want this, just make sure to look for it specifically.

John P. Myers
03-28-14, 02:31 AM
Even better, you can get PCIe USB cards that have both external and internal USB 3.0 ports on them :)

Fire$torm
03-30-14, 01:25 PM
And back to the GPU upgrade. For future reference: If you have an old PSU laying around, you could always add it to your existing system, to use in tandem. Even a small 300W unit would work fine.

See my blog on Tandem setup (Here (http://www.setiusa.us/entry.php?72-Dual-(Tandem)-PSU-setup))

Oh and btw, Antec and maybe 2~3 other companies now make PSUs with built-in ports to link 2 or more together for tandem use.