Folding Forum

Built a dedicated folding rig recently w/ a Gigabyte GTX 460.

Averaging about 10k ppd w/ a few 16k days every now and then, plus the SMP client.

Newegg has a MSI GT 430 1GB 64-bit for $20 after rebate.

Thinking of grabbing one as a spare and have read 430's are actually good for ~5k ppd, tempted to throw it in the folding rig w/ the 460.

Some of the other 430's I see have 128-bit...how much would the 64/128 bit effect folding, and is this even worth buying?

Read some good advice here: viewtopic.php?f=16&t=21150 and here: viewtopic.php?f=59&t=16199 but am wondering if this card is just too crappy to be worth it.

No gaming on this system, just f@h.

Thanks

If it can finish most of the WU it get assigned it is worth from a scientific view point. If it was my money I would not do it. The PPD pr watt is to low for old cards. It should also be mention that I pay 0.26 euro pr kwatt (stupid danish tax system). If you have the money and if you would like to pay for the electricity bill I dont see why not

I used a PNY GT 430 for a long time. It does pretty well for being an older and underpowered card. If its cheap and available it should do just fine if your not looking for super high ppd. I finally put up the cash to upgrade to the GTX 560 Ti and getting 18,000 ppd out of it. The GT 430 was getting about 4000 ppd. Any additional hardware for folding is always a plus regardless if it is high or low end.

The ppd per watt is actually pretty good for this card, it doesn't use much electricity at all, especially given that the rig is already running other clients.

And yes, this card is old and cheap.

Main question...difference between a 64-bit 430 and 128-bit 430 for folding?

Presumably the difference between a 64-bit GPU and 128-bit is primarily the speed with which it can access Video Memory. It's pretty clear that the number of shaders and their clock rate has been pretty important. Folks have adjusted the VRAM clock rate and for the small proteins that have been common until recently, VRAM clock rate was not particularly important. Within the past month or so, several projects have been released that are much larger than we've seen before. They behave quite differently so VRAM clock rate and data path width and PCIe speed may have become more important. We really don't know yet.

Personally, at that price, get one, use it for a while, and plan on upgrading to a MUCH more powerful model whenever you decide you're ready to. Moore's Lawl is working in your favor and in the meantime, you'd be folding with what you've got.

humboldt32 wrote:The ppd per watt is actually pretty good for this card, it doesn't use much electricity at all, especially given that the rig is already running other clients.

Yes, I was getting 100 PPD/watt with my GT 430. It takes about a day to complete a work unit, which is OK if you leave your PC on all the time, as I do. And surprisingly, Folding on it did not cause any discernible mouse lag on the desktop (I use it as my display card). That is in contrast to my GTX 560 on another PC, which does show lag when Folding. But it did cause some audio/video sync problems when I edited some videos, so I do not use the GT 430 for Folding now; it was not enough output to be worth it.