I recently just purchased and received a new HP Pavilion p6785t computer with a NVIDIA GeForce GT 420 graphics card (2GB). I was wondering if there was any incentive for me to also add the Zotac ION-GPU-A-E ION Upgrade Kit to my computer since I have available PCIe x1 slots. Would this upgrade kit be able to run projects like Einstein@home, SETI@Home, GPUGRID@home, etc.? If it does run these projects, is it worth buying and installing? If this upgrade kit isn't worth buying, please let me know too. Thanks for any input.

Here is the link to it at TigerDirect.com:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/Category/guidedSearch.asp?CatId=28&sel=Detail;55_158_43617_43617

I wouldn't bother, Ion and Next Generation Ion have less Cuda cores and lower clock and Memory speed than GT420, Check out Nvidia's product info for your GT420, and the Ion,

GeForce GT 420 - OEM

GPU Engine Specs:
CUDA Cores 48
Graphics Clock (MHz) 700 MHz
Processor Clock (MHz) 1400 MHz
Texture Fill Rate (billion/sec) 5.6

Memory Specs:
Memory Clock (MHz) 900
Standard Memory Config 2 GB DDR3
Memory Interface Width 128-bit
Memory Bandwidth (GB/sec) 28.8

Next Generation ION

GPU Engine Specs:
CUDA Cores Up to 16
Memory Specs
Standard Memory Configs:
512MB DDR3
512MB DDR2
256MB DDR3
Memory Interface Width Up to 64-bit

Zotac spec says:

GPU/VPU: NVIDIA ION
Memory Type: DDR3
Video Memory: 512MB
Stream Processors: 16
Core Clock: 589 MHz
Memory Clock: 790 MHz

Claggy

Thanks for the info Claggy. I was intending to keep the NVIDIA GT 420 but was just wondering if the ION gpu upgrade was something that I could use in addition to the NVIDIA GT 420 card. Thanks for the info and your advice.

Thanks for the info Claggy. I was intending to keep the NVIDIA GT 420 but was just wondering if the ION gpu upgrade was something that I could use in addition to the NVIDIA GT 420 card. Thanks for the info and your advice.

You would probably find the Ion is too slow for Einstein and GPU Grid, it would probably work at Seti, but would probably only be as fast as a CPU core, if that,

Claggy

Dear Claggy,

I just wanted to let you know that I decided to try out the Zotac Ion GPU Upgrade. The peak performance is 45 GFLOPS with a compute capability of 1.2. I don't know how this compares with any CPU's but the Zotac Ion GPU seems to handle SETI WU's well. No Einstein or GPUGrid WU's have run on it though. I am still using my nVidia GT420. I just wanted to let you and the community know just in case anyone else is interested.


4/18/2011 1:57:58 PM NVIDIA GPU 0: GeForce GT 420 (driver version 26658, CUDA version 3020, compute capability 2.1, 1983MB, 90 GFLOPS peak)

4/18/2011 1:57:58 PM NVIDIA GPU 1: ION (driver version 26658, CUDA version 3020, compute capability 1.2, 412MB, 45 GFLOPS peak)

My computer does do 6 WU's now instead of 5 WU's. The Zotac Ion GPU Upgrade is $59.99 at tigerdirect.com if anyone is wondering what the price was.

I also want to thank you Claggy because BOINC didn't want to take advantage of the new Zotac Ion but was able to track down the answer I need in another thread and you were the one that had posted the answer about the cc_config.xml file.

Thank you very much.

Michael

Okay, this is what I did to my new HP computer. I ended up adding 3 new Zotac Ion GPU's to my computer. The GPU's are obviously slower than other nVidia and ATI GPU's which is something I did expect. While I did add 3 more Zotac GPU's, I am only currently using 2 of them along with my nVidia GeForce GT 420. The third GPU is properly installed, as far as I know, in my computer.

The reason for only using 2 of the 3 Zotac Ion GPU's is because my computer would start using the screensaver and the computer would not come out of the screensaver mode when I would come back and try to get the computer going. If anyone has any insight on why this is, I would appreciate your advice?

I have a new HP Pavilion p6785t with an Intel i5 760 processor. I have 8 GB of RAM. I am running Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit edition. The computer also had the nVidia GeForce GT 420 installed when the computer was built. So if anyone has any ideas on what might be causing my computer to not come out of screensaver mode, I would love to hear your advice? I am not too worried right now about not using the third Zotac Ion GPU right now but I would love to use it for BOINC.

---

I think I solved the problem for my computer. I think my problem has been heat related. I installed TThrottle and my computer is working fine with it. I am still debating about re-installing the 3rd Zotac GPU. I am also taking other measures to keep my computer running cooler such as having the ceiling fan run. I will probably keep updating this thread once-in-awhile so all of you can learn from my mistakes and what I am doing. Also, if you would like to make any suggestions, I am open to them too.

I just wanted to do an update on the Zotac Ion upgrade. On my HP, the Zotac Ion upgrades have worked on Einstein@home, SETI@home, and Collatz Conjecture. Now with that said, the Zotac Ion upgrade is considerably slower than the nVidia GeForce GT 420 which is to be expected. The GT 420 has a compute capability of 2.1 with 90 GFLOPS at peak with the Zotac Ion upgrade having a compute capability of 1.2 with 45 GFLOPS at peak.

I have found the Ion upgrade to be fast enough to run the above programs (Einstein, Seti, and Collatz.) With the above info having been stated, there will be time differences in how long it takes the Ion upgrade versus another higher end GPU.

I do feel that the Zotac ION upgrade was worth the investment ($59.99 each from tigerdirect.com plus shipping and taxes) since it allows my computer to do 2 more workunits at the same time. With the Ion upgrade, my computer can do 7 workunits at the same time compared to doing 5 workunits previously.

I got myself a PCI 512Mb 8400 GS two months ago, i've managed to run it at Seti, Collatz and Einstein too,
it wouldn't run the earlier Lunatics Cuda app, so Jason fixed the app so it would work with SSE only CPU's, :-)
it cost me £39.93, i managed to get it just before PCI Cuda cards went out of Stock here,

Claggy

One thing that I have noticed since adding the Zotac Ion Upgrade is that I have to keep an eye on what WU's are running. Unfortunately, I have run into the problem of having WU's not starting since the deadline passes before the WU's start. This is due to the Zotac Ion Upgrade running slower than my NVIDIA GeForce 420. I knew when I bought the Ion upgrades that they would be slower than my NVIDIA.

I think a contributing issue to this problem was trying to run Einstein, Collatz, SETI, and maybe one other program all at the same time. This probably caused my BOINC manager some confusion since the WU's that used the Zotac GPU's obviously ran slower. I have kept Einstein and SETI workunits but have removed any other programs that took advantage of the GPU's (e.g. Collatz, etc.) from running so I don't have this issue again.

Collatz and PrimeGrid WU's can use the Zotac Ion Upgrades but I had too many tasks on my computer along with too many programs that wanted to use the GPU's causing the WU's to be late or not running at all since the deadline for them had passed. Right now, I am just going to stick with SETI and Einstein for use on my GPU's.

I am just passing this along so all of you can benefit from what is working or not working for me.