6800 GS

[silverpulser]

My NV40 GeForce 6800 agp card is shown in the GPU's.txt file (0x10de:0x0047:::NV40 [GeForce 6800 GS]
) but the System info shows it as an unsupported gpu.

What can I do to get this useable (if at all possible)

[kiore]

My NV40 GeForce 6800 agp card is shown in the GPU's.txt file (0x10de:0x0047:::NV40 [GeForce 6800 GS]
) but the System info shows it as an unsupported gpu.

What can I do to get this useable (if at all possible)

I don't think it is usable for folding I am sorry to say, I think the lowest supported card is the 8400 GS.

[bollix47]

Sorry, but GeForce 8xxx is the lowest in that series the current client supports:

http://folding.stanford.edu/FAQ-NVIDIA

[silverpulser]

Thanks for the rapid replies.

[Joe_H]

The GPUs.txt file is both a whitelist and a blacklist. So entries will exist in it for unsupported GPU's.

[silverpulser]

OK, I will probably retire that machine for FAH work then as it seems much noisier and slower at this task than my other dual core Pentium D desktop and core2duo laptop, neither of which has a dedicated GPU.

[GreyWhiskers]

I had a similar situation with an old AGP-bus box when the ATI 4670 AGP card I had became unsupported. I found the Zotac ZT-40605-10L is a PCI bus Nvidia Fermi card (not PCI-Express as 99.99% of the current inventory of GPUs have). There aren't many Fermi-class non-PCI-epxress cards out there. [EDIT] This is an Nvidia GT430 with 96 CUDA cores.

The card is available in most of the usual places - at a relatively reasonable price. It overclocks well (I am running mine at 900 MHz core clock vs stock 700 MHz). It is passively cooled (no fans), so I bought a cheap USB fan to blow on it in the case.

The card works quite well in my old WinXP computer - getting typically 3200 ppd on the P8018 WUs - vs about 1100 ppd I was getting with the AGP-bus ATI card.

As always, YMMV.

[silverpulser]

That looks interesting. I don't game much nowadays and would be glad to remove the molex connector that my current 6800 GS needs. However, with XP nearing end of life is it worth the effort on my 8 year old Dell Dimension 4550 with a P4 3.06 HT and 2 Gb ram. Is Windows 7 realistic?

[GreyWhiskers]

Well, the GT430 card would make the video work with Win7, but I would opt to just keep the Win Xp until it dies.

An interesting question is whether (or when) Folding at Home would no longer support WinXP with their v7 software. One could always just hold fast to the last supported version, at the risk of not being able to run newer cores or projects.

[bruce]

An interesting question is whether (or when) Folding at Home would no longer support WinXP with their v7 software.

V7 works fine on WinXP. Support for the CLIENT is not in the same category as support for a GPU when that GPU is no longer supported by its manufacturer. Microsoft continues to support some really old CPUs on operating systems that are no longer being updated.

Whether it's WISE to fold with an Athlon or early Pentium class cpu (or whatever you happen to have) or not is an independent question.