Is it a good idea to buy a 5870 for Milkyway?

[Xuyongchen]

Hello everyone!

I am planning to set up a desktop for BOINC. I would like to choose Milkyway as my target. 7970 has 947 GFLOPS Double Precision compute power with a price around $300-400. 5870 has a 544GFLOPS Double Precision compute power with a price around $100-150. I think I will focus on Milkyway@home. So, is it a good idea to buy a 5870?

Thank you so much

[zombie67]

Hello everyone!

I am planning to set up a desktop for BOINC. I would like to choose Milkyway as my target. 7970 has 947 GFLOPS Double Precision compute power with a price around $300-400. 5870 has a 544GFLOPS Double Precision compute power with a price around $100-150. I think I will focus on Milkyway@home. So, is it a good idea to buy a 5870?

Thank you so much

I think the answer is yes. Put another way, a 7970 out-performs a 5870 on MW. But a 7970 *way* out-performs the 5870 on some other projects like distrrtgen. So if you had both, I would say put the 5870 on MW and the 7970 on something else more productive.

This all assumes you want maximum credits per $, regardless of the project.

[Xuyongchen]

I think the answer is yes. Put another way, a 7970 out-performs a 5870 on MW. But a 7970 *way* out-performs the 5870 on some other projects like distrrtgen. So if you had both, I would say put the 5870 on MW and the 7970 on something else more productive.

This all assumes you want maximum credits per $, regardless of the project.

Thank you for your reply. I don't think I will buy a 7970 because of its price. I am try to find a cheap 5870 on ebay. By the way, may I crossfire 2 5870 with different brands? I have never done this before.

[nanoprobe]

You have PM

[Xuyongchen]

Could XFX 5870 1G version and Sapphire 5870 2G set up a crossfire system?
I think they could....

[Fire$torm]

Could XFX 5870 1G version and Sapphire 5870 2G set up a crossfire system?
I think they could....

Yes.