Out of the Blue comes NeoGen

[Nflight]

Has anyone noticed NeoGen (http://www.amdusers.com/forum/member.php/56-NeoGen) has taken flight to the likes of a huge jump in points on Milkyway? Or are my eyes deceiving me ~! Someone got a new rig !!!

Congrats NeoGen it was long over due to get some needed heat under your belt. Lets get cranken on some points!

[Dirk Broer]

Looks like he has gotten hold of a Tahiti-based GPU, and is not afraid to use it...

[Nflight]

I have the R9 270 and if that is the same version, He must have several units not just one? He must have the R9 290X or the dual GPU's on one slot to get that much out of his system!

[Dirk Broer]

No, NeoGen has aquired a HD 7950/7970/R9 280X series card (a card with a Tahiti chip anyway).
The R9 270 has a Curaçao chip and much less Double Precision capability (1/16th of the Single Precision instead of 1/4th as with the HD 7950/7970/R9 280 and 280X).
The R9 280X (or its equivalent in the HD 79xx series) is at the moment the best regular AMD card for MilkyWay, and NeoGen is proving it.

[Jason1478963]

I thought the 6990 was the best card for milkyway

[Dirk Broer]

I thought the 6990 was the best card for milkyway

To paraphrase a famous Dutch politician "There are two answers to that question"

On the one hand:

The HD 6990 is not for sale anymore
The HD 7990 was even better (2048.5 GFlop DP vs 1274.8 for the HD 6990)


And on the other hand: within normal budget the R9 280X/HD 7970 is the card to have (1024/1075 GFlop DP)

[Jason1478963]

I just found a 6990 on ebay for sale :P
I'm not sure i would want to fork out that kind of money for a card that may not have the best performance per watt across multiple projects

The water cooled 7970s are pretty nice setups to have.

[alez [ TSBT Pirate ]]

I have a 6990 and trust me on milkyway it is awesome, but the 7970 ( I have 2 ) are better ( even standard air cooled ). The 6990 burns more power and really needs to have the twin arctic cooler addition to be viable for Boinc or the temps go through the roof. For the new cards the R-280 is the only one one with decent DP. Don't get a R-270, ( I did and the old 7750 / 7770 are better and far cheaper) , they sux. Oh and the 6990 is truly massive, you need a big case to fit it in or a set of tin snips and not to be scared to use them. I run my 6990 with a 6970 in a completely open, butchered case outside in the garage .

[Dirk Broer]

;78140']I have a 6990 and trust me on milkyway it is awesome, but the 7970 ( I have 2 ) are better ( even standard air cooled ).

The HD 6990 is a dual-GPU card and needs finely tuned app_config.xml files to get the best out of them. They burn an awfull lot of Watts (375 vs 247 for the 7970), but have more memory bandwidth, more SIMD units (2x24 vs 32), more ROP units (2x32 vs 32) and more texture units (2x96 vs 128) -the HD 6990 is essentially a dual HD 6970-. That being said, two HD 7970s are better of course!

[alez [ TSBT Pirate ]]

Yes it does use a lot more power and for Boinc you have to except it as two 6970's rather than a single card as it runs two units at a time not one combined on the two cores. It is still an awesome card but the 7970 is a far better buy. IMHO the 7970 is still better than any of the new R series cards on Boinc. The 6990 is close but it's power usage and the heat it produces can be crippling. The 7970 is also better for overclocking , again due to heat issues.

[Dirk Broer]

I think the R9 280X is perhaps even better than the HD 7970. It has just a tiny bit less GFlop power, but runs far cooler (tdp is 190 Watt as opposed to the 247 Watt of the HD 7970), other features (ROPS, TMUs, SIMDs) are the same, so more room for overclocking. It starts with a core clock of 850MHz where the HD 7970 starts with 1000 or 1050, depending on the model. Cranking the R9 280X's core up to 1050MHz will see it perform just as good as the HD 7970.

[Nflight]

I think NeoGen used someone else's over the weekend to see what it would do. Now he is back to normal conditions as he was before!