GK104: nVidia's Kepler to be the First Mining Card? - page 2.

DeathAndTaxes

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Gerald Davis

Quote from: MrTeal on March 21, 2012, 11:22:38 AM

If you look at the second to last slide I posted, Sandra actually has a crypto benchmark that uses SHA256. I'm not sure how it's implemented since the numbers between the 6990 and the 7970 don't correspond to bitcoin hashing performance, but it should still be more useful than FP ops.

I noticed that was int performance but didn't notice it was SHA-256.

Yeah it is hashing a large amount of data where Bitcoin hashes a small amount of data a lot of times so the units aren't going to be similar still the relative performance should give us some ideas. Ballpark it looks like less than 1/2 the performance of 7970. Exactly how many hashes it pulls will depend on how much it can be tweaked or overclocked (or gain from using pure CUDA). Still it isn't even close to matching a 7970 in OpenCL integer performance. It likely won't even match a 7950.

MrTeal

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If you look at the second to last slide I posted, Sandra actually has a crypto benchmark that uses SHA256. I'm not sure how it's implemented since the numbers between the 6990 and the 7970 don't correspond to bitcoin hashing performance, but it should still be more useful than FP ops.

rjk

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1ngldh

Quote from: goxed on March 20, 2012, 11:00:22 PM

Quote from: DeathAndTaxes on March 20, 2012, 09:35:10 PM

Although I don't have much hope I would be interested to see the results TRL.

Here are results by proxy
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/review/2162193/nvidias-gtx680-thrashed-amds-mid-range-radeon-hd-7870-gpu-compute

So according to that article, it is horrible at FP ops, and the 7970 beats the pants off of it in that benchmark. Wonder if they compensated by giving better integer ops? One can only hope....

goxed

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Bitcoin / Crypto mining Hardware.

Quote from: DeathAndTaxes on March 20, 2012, 09:35:10 PM

Although I don't have much hope I would be interested to see the results TRL.

Here are results by proxy
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/review/2162193/nvidias-gtx680-thrashed-amds-mid-range-radeon-hd-7870-gpu-compute

DeathAndTaxes

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Gerald Davis

Although I don't have much hope I would be interested to see the results TRL.

The-Real-Link

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Sorry for bumping my own thread as I hadn't seen the info edited into this post when I checked it before when I posted mine.

Since I was reconfiguring my main GPUs anyway, I sold my 580s and should be picking one (or if prices are that darned good, maybe two) of the 680s up. I can gladly give you guys mining results once I have time to mess around with the cards.

racerguy

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I don't understand the people buying brand new 7970's thinking the resell value will be better, it's going to lose a few hundred $ in value the first few months, while a 5970 still maintains the majority if not all of it's value if you bought one when the 7970 came out. Anyway more for me I guess.

bulanula

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Indeed. This is good as 7970 destroyed so crappy AMD prices lowered now due to gamers buying green stuff.

Too bad we have to stick with needing xserver running and hardcoded 8 GPU limit Cry

I really think somebody should try it out for mining first before calling it a crap mining card Huh

Mousepotato

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Seal Cub Clubbing Club

If I listen closely, I can almost hear the price of 7970s dropping.

DeathAndTaxes

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Gerald Davis

No games use integer ops, that is what CPU is used for.

My guess is it will suck at mining. Nothing in any of the reviews indicated improved integer performance. I doubt NVidia would mention Bitcoin specifically but something like "improved encryption for OpenCL/CUDA accelerated applications like Winzip" would be a good sign.

It is roughly 1.3x to 1.7x as fast a 580 GTX. If it has similar relative performance (int ops vs FLOPs) that puts it around 200 MH/s maybe 250 MH/s.

I agree with the post above. The good news is that because it "beats" the 7970, AMD will need to undercut on price.

On edit:
http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/26437-nvidia-gtx-680-price-now-set-at-us-$499

Looks like NVidia is striking back. If GTX 680 is $499 and it out performs 7970 then 7970 will need a steep cut to be competitive. Most gamers have little loyalty. They just want max fps/$.

Obviously launch day prices will be higher but if they can keep the supply up I would imagine AMD needs to look at <$480 to avoid losing share.

MrTeal

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Power usage is awesome and it destroys the 7970 in gaming performance per watt, but I wouldn't expect it to mine well. The price of a 7970 might be dropping soon though.

rjk

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1ngldh

Quote from: tacotime on March 20, 2012, 10:22:40 AM

nda is up and reviews are out. The 680 is shredding the 7970 in most applictions... Can't wait to see the mining performance.

What games are most similar to bitcoin mining in that they use integers heavily? Perhaps we could compare such a game and make a little bit of a better determination. I doubt that many games make heavy use of integer ops though, at least not in a remotely similar way to how mining does.

tacotime

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nda is up and reviews are out. The 680 is shredding the 7970 in most applications... Can't wait to see the mining performance.

http://overclock.net/t/1231711/toms-geforce-gtx-680-review

st4rdust

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Quote from: ShadesOfMarble on March 19, 2012, 05:06:06 PM

Last GPU was Fermi, now we have Kepler, then Maxwell. What do these names have in common? All three were great physicists...

That makes much more sense. I'm not familiar with the current nVidia line but now I kinda wish I was, so I could have saved myself the embarrassment of my previous rant about the name of the card.

Oops.

ShadesOfMarble

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Last GPU was Fermi, now we have Kepler, then Maxwell. What do these names have in common? All three were great physicists...

st4rdust

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No way of knowing until the card is actually released, but OP did a solid bit of educated estimation.

Also, why are they calling their card Kepler? It sounds to me like some not-very-subtle reference to the behavior of planetary orbits. Is this supposed to be some kind of nVidia/NASA joint project? Some kind of space calculation capabilities? Hmm? Some kind of crazy orbital mechanics logic built into the GPU? Maybe leaving amateur astronomers richer for the experience? That right, nVidia? Hmm???

No, but seriously, sounds like an awful idea for a video card.

Vbs

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For best performance you need a miner that supports CUDA (OpenCL is ~~forever~~ "atm" slower than CUDA on nVidia hardware Roll Eyes

).

Two that I know of:
Ufasoft: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/ufasoft-miner-windowslinux-x86x64-sse2opencl-open-source-3486
RPC Miner CUDA: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/rpc-miners-cpu4waycudaopencl-2444

bulanula

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Quote from: Vbs on March 19, 2012, 11:10:43 AM

Quote from: tacotime on March 16, 2012, 04:32:30 PM

GK104 will have 1536 stream processors clocked at 1GHz.

Here's my totally speculative math:

A GTX 570 with 480 SP at 732MHz gets about 150 MH/s, or 0.3125 MH s^-1 SP^-1.

Scaling linearly with clock speed, we would expect 0.4269 MH s^-1 SP^-1 at 1GHz.

For 1536 SPs, that's 656 MH/s at an estimated TDP of 200w.

Of course, it's likely that these new SPs will be a little slower than the old ones, but even if they're 30% slower they should still be competitive with AMD cards.

The stream processors ("cuda cores") are dynamically clocked, and can go to 1411MHz (non-oc'ed).
http://www.overclock.net/t/1231113/gigabyte-gtx-680-2gb-already-arrive-at-my-shop

Also, you should be using hot-clocks in your calcs, e.g.:

GTX 570, 480SP at 1464MHz (2*732MHz) shaders ~150MH/s, so (1411*1536)/(1464*480) = 3.084*150MH/s = 463MH/s

The thing is... they've changed the architecture from Fermi, so untill someone tests it with real hardware, it's all a gamble.
http://www.techpowerup.com/162500/GK104-Block-Diagram-Explained.html
nVidia presentation slides: https://imgur.com/a/aQmuA

So going by above link it looks like card is already here.

Anyone going to buy one and do some BTC mining ?

Maybe a new kernel needs to be developed to pwn the 7970 at mining ?

Vbs

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Quote from: tacotime on March 16, 2012, 04:32:30 PM

GK104 will have 1536 stream processors clocked at 1GHz.

Here's my totally speculative math:

A GTX 570 with 480 SP at 732MHz gets about 150 MH/s, or 0.3125 MH s^-1 SP^-1.

Scaling linearly with clock speed, we would expect 0.4269 MH s^-1 SP^-1 at 1GHz.

For 1536 SPs, that's 656 MH/s at an estimated TDP of 200w.

Of course, it's likely that these new SPs will be a little slower than the old ones, but even if they're 30% slower they should still be competitive with AMD cards.

The stream processors ("cuda cores") are dynamically clocked, and can go to 1411MHz (non-oc'ed).
http://www.overclock.net/t/1231113/gigabyte-gtx-680-2gb-already-arrive-at-my-shop

Also, you should be using hot-clocks in your calcs, e.g.:

GTX 570, 480SP at 1464MHz (2*732MHz) shaders ~150MH/s, so (1411*1536)/(1464*480) = 3.084*150MH/s = 463MH/s

The thing is... they've changed the architecture from Fermi, so untill someone tests it with real hardware, it's all a gamble.
http://www.techpowerup.com/162500/GK104-Block-Diagram-Explained.html
nVidia presentation slides: https://imgur.com/a/aQmuA

jake262144

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Quote from: bulanula on March 17, 2012, 05:54:04 PM

Anyway, maybe someone more technically inclined ( ArtForz we are looking at you ) can tell us if there is some hope or not.

I think you want one particular answer, not just any answer.
I see no reason whatsoever why one should expect significant progress in integer ops performance - those have long been off nVidia's radar.
There are twice as many stream processors working at a lower clock than previous generation cards.
We're not getting rid of buggy AMD drivers and the need for running Xorg any time soon Undecided

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