Nvidia GTX 1050 TI Folding review

[Paragon]

I picked up an EVGA 1050 TI and am very impressed with the level of performance and efficiency from such a small card...190k PPD and 1400 PPD/Watt at the wall in Windows isn't half bad. Its a great budget card. Anyone else using these?

Review here:

https://greenfoldingathome.com/2017/04/ ... x-1050-ti/

[JimboPalmer]

I have a low Profile GTX 1050 ti by Zotac. I am getting about 150k PPD out of it with only a 240 watt PS and no additional power connectors on the card, only PCIE. I suspect a larger PS would help some, but being a Low Profile PC, there is no standard. The PC is drawing about 110 watts when folding and 50 watts when idle. I am getting more PPD not folding on the CPU. (Intel i5: 2 cores, 4 threads, drops to 3 when using the GPU. Both the PPD of the CPU, and the PPD of the GPU took a large hit when the other was running)

[bruce]

I'd love to install a LP GTX 1050 Ti in some of my small-case systems but most of them put the 16x PCIe slot next to the case wall and have a 1x slot on the side where there's more room. Installing a double-wide card is a problem. It would work better if the MB reversed those two slots. (I don't mind covering up the 1x slot with the card's HS/Fan but that's not where it fits.)

[Paragon]

I have a low Profile GTX 1050 ti by Zotac. I am getting about 150k PPD out of it with only a 240 watt PS and no additional power connectors on the card, only PCIE. I suspect a larger PS would help some, but being a Low Profile PC, there is no standard. The PC is drawing about 110 watts when folding and 50 watts when idle. I am getting more PPD not folding on the CPU. (Intel i5: 2 cores, 4 threads, drops to 3 when using the GPU. Both the PPD of the CPU, and the PPD of the GPU took a large hit when the other was running)

Good to see some other info...do you know what the core clock of the Zotac card is? I'm guessing it might be a touch slower than the EVGA SC I'm playing with in order to work with a low profile cooler (EVGA Card is clocked to 1354 MHz).

Still, that is a great power draw on that system. 150K PPD / 110 watts = 1363 PPD/Watt, which is about the same as I found on my card. I might mess around with lowering the power threshold on the card to see if I can increase the efficiency.

[Paragon]

I'd love to install a LP GTX 1050 Ti in some of my small-case systems but most of them put the 16x PCIe slot next to the case wall and have a 1x slot on the side where there's more room. Installing a double-wide card is a problem. It would work better if the MB reversed those two slots. (I don't mind covering up the 1x slot with the card's HS/Fan but that's not where it fits.)

Yeah that's annoying, and I've run into it. If you're feeling adventurous, you can dremel off the extra PCB on the card to make it fit in the 1X slot...the rest of the pins are just for the 16X bandwidth and won't affect folding much. Just don't miss with the dremel...alternatively you can notch the socket on the board. Might be a better choice...it could then work with multiple future X16 cards.

[JimboPalmer]

Core Clock 1290 MHz https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product. ... 6814500417

[Paragon]

Updated the numbers with extended testing

https://greenfoldingathome.com/2017/05/ ... d-testing/

Key Findings: Average PPD is closer to 185K (not 192K)
Throttling the card by reducing the power limit kills performance

[rwh202]

Unfortunately, the 14nm process of the 1050 (Ti) doesn't seem to offer the efficiency of the 16nm used on the 1060 and above. This is also the problem seen by AMD on the 480/580.
I think the 1060 currently occupies a bit of a sweet spot - 400k PPD for 140 W from the wall is pretty much double the 1050 Ti. However, for really small spaces, the 1050 Ti looks to be a good solution.
The big pascal cards can do a bit better PPD/W, but rely on WUs scaling well which many don't at the moment (I'm seeing 900k - 1.4M for 340W on a 1080 Ti) and suffer terribly on the PPD/$ !

[v00d00]

In the last day or so my 1050 Ti has died. Its a Zotac 1050 Ti OC. It hasnt had the hardest life overall. It folds for no more than 16 hours a day. It has lasted 6 months. Never had a Zotac before, might not bother again. Have had MSI, Palit and Gigabyte cards without issue for the last 10 years or so.

So its RMA time. :/

[toTOW]

What are the symptoms of failure ?

[v00d00]

Folding GPU was advancing at 0.01% per 20 minutes. GPU utilisation was at 99-100%. Temperatures were still at 30C, even at full load. What that exactly indicates, I don't know, but a week prior folding would produce heat at 63C . Definitely a core failure. A separate process had started called irq75/nvidia that was using a constant 20% of cpu power on a different core to the one assigned to that process, but I could find nothing specific as to what it was or why it was running. it seemed to be started at kernel level and could not be terminated. The whole system was lagging, even though graphics are handled by the 970.

In short the fact it had 100% utilisation but no extra heat produced instantly told me the gpu core was damaged in some way. The fans were still spinning, but it somehow achieved at a guess an overheat scenario, which shouldn't be possible on this model (dual fan, fan control governed by card, not OS). Its been RMA'd now, so its for Zotac to deal with.

[JimboPalmer]

I downloaded the 385.41 driver and got a 10% speedup. 152,000 to 168,000 PPD

[toTOW]

I downloaded the 385.41 driver and got a 10% speedup. 152,000 to 168,000 PPD

Windows ? Linux ?

[JimboPalmer]

I downloaded the 385.41 driver and got a 10% speedup. 152,000 to 168,000 PPD

Windows ? Linux ?

Windows 7 64 bit. 4 thread i3, using 3 threads in CPU folding. 4 gig RAM, Stock Low Profile Zotec 1050ti, no power plugs, just PCI-E and a 240 watt PS

[Hypocritus]

Yeah that's annoying, and I've run into it. If you're feeling adventurous, you can dremel off the extra PCB on the card to make it fit in the 1X slot...the rest of the pins are just for the 16X bandwidth and won't affect folding much. Just don't miss with the dremel...alternatively you can notch the socket on the board. Might be a better choice...it could then work with multiple future X16 cards.

Good info. might want to clarify "notch the socket on the board" with something like "open" the x1 "slot" on the "motherboard".

This mentally-challenged yet-almost-intelligent individual first read your post as, to the effect of: dremeling a narrow 'notch' in the card's 'board' (right at the x1 transition, just enough to fit into the unmodified x1 slot), which you could then just put back into a x16 slot, along with other x16's and successfully x16 and SLI without a hiccup.

THE LAST PARAGRAPH IS MY OWN FABRICATION AND WILL NOT FUNCTION. DO NOT TRY IT AT HOME OR ELSEWHERE.