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Re: [LUG] Linux + High End GPUs

 

On 09/08/14 18:10, bad apple wrote:
I'm doing some shopping for a "stepping stone" graphics card - my needs
are decidedly more workstation orientated than gaming orientated,
although I realise there is obviously quite a high degree of crossover.
My already powerful main PC has a strong but now very aged Nvidia 8800
GTX that needs replacing with something decent enough to get me through
the interim period between now and a few more months down the line when
various ludicrously cutting edge and expensive technology has stabilised
and filtered down enough to be kind of affordable instead of bank
account crushing (PCIe attached SSD storage, graphics cards with g-sync,
DDR4 RAM, etc).

When I order the new box in probably Q4 this year it will be a monster:
dual Xeons, ~256Gb RAM, multiple 4k displays and probably a Â2500 AMD
FirePro W9100 so I don't want to get anything too pricey now as it will
be replaced within a few months anyway. But I don't want to half-arse it
either, as whatever I buy will remain in service in backup machines for
years and years to come.

So I'm looking for advice - I know some of you are dual booters and
gamers with decent high end kit, whereas nearly all of my friends are
pure Windows gamers so can't give me any advice on Linux compatibility
and support. The drivers particularly give me cause for concern on
Linux, especially as brand new decent graphics cards typically have
patchy support even on Windows for the first few months (at least).

I'm leaning towards an AMD R9 290X: massively powerful, OpenCL
supported, fantastic for GPGPU number crunching, not insanely expensive
or power hungry (although admittedly still pretty expensive and
relatively power hungry). I don't care about Windows support, gaming
performance, power consumption or price particularly. Noise is perhaps
significant - some system fan noise is actually quite pleasant (the
soundtrack of my life is humming computers after all) but screaming full
tilt monster fans on 24/7 would not make me a happy man: been there and
done that with G5 Mac Pros and many SGI workstations (setenv -p fastfan 1).

So, any recommendations people? Anyone got a high end GPU on their Linux
box they want to recommend? Or perhaps even more importantly, anyone got
a high end GPU on their Linux box they want to specifically warn me off?
Either way, I want to order this thing before long as my first 4k
display arrives next week and I need something to drive it with.

Cheers

RS are now selling the parallella cards - not GPU but 32GFlops for Â99 and only 5W.
Tom te tom te tom

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