What parts of a GPU card can be used for FAH?

[markdotgooley]

Are only the shaders useful? I'm assuming that e.g. ray-tracing hardware is not useful. What parts of a GPU can be used for computations?

[JimboPalmer]

Just the shaders, what Nvidia calls CUDA cores. They do both 32 bit and 64 bit FP math. Most of F@H uses 32 bit FP math but there are cases where the much slower 64 but FP math is needed.

The RT cores only do 16 bit FP math, not nearly accurate enough for F@H's algorithm.

And, of course the rasterizers are idle, as there is no image made.

RAM is not an issue for F@H, but the PCIE bus can slow the Card

[markdotgooley]

I’ve noticed that little GPU memory gets used and that PCIe bandwidth does matter, yes.

Pretty sure that nobody will make discount FAH cards using chips with defective RT hardware and about 2 Gb of memory...

[JimboPalmer]

Some 'bitcoin' cards are showing up on ebay.

No ports, just compute.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/ZOTAC-P106-90- ... 4224522436

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Gigabyte-p106- ... 3594695865

I don't endorse these auctions, just saying they exist.

[toTOW]

Be careful, P106-90 is a 1050 ... P106-100 is a 1060 ...

[markdotgooley]

Be careful, P106-90 is a 1050 ... P106-100 is a 1060 ...

Yes. There are some Zotac (not a brand I trust) mining cards with P106 showing up on eBay under US$50 delivered, straight from China. Apparently 75W power. I don’t think they’re good PPD/watt, apart from everything else.

[MeeLee]

Be careful, P106-90 is a 1050 ... P106-100 is a 1060 ...

Yes. There are some Zotac (not a brand I trust) mining cards with P106 showing up on eBay under US$50 delivered, straight from China. Apparently 75W power. I don’t think they’re good PPD/watt, apart from everything else.

China is known to rebadge GPUs, that usually are lower than what they promote on their selling sites.
The 1060 variants, might be a 1050 with a flashed bios that just says it's a 1060.
You still get the performance of a 1050.
China really messed up the GTX line, and I wouldn't trust those for a hair.
All my GPUs come from North America, I always buy from known brands, and I always go back to the site for reference pictures, to make sure the brand and model, and specs are identical.
You may get a GPU with lots of lies on the spec sheet.