Need help in choosing Graphic card for CUDA

Accelerated Computing CUDA CUDA Programming and Performance
1

I’m a newbie in CUDA, planning to get a Nvidia Graphic card for CUDA purpose. But I have a limited budget
My question is,

  1. Should I go for high performance(GTS250 512MB) GF or large memory(9800GT 1GB)?

  2. Is that the dedicated memory on GF is important for CUDA rather than GPU’s performance?

  3. What is the min. size of memory required for CUDA?

  4. How does the size of memory on GF affect the CUDA performance?

Thanks

2

Get a GTX 260 at a minimum–you’ll thank me later!

3

Generally speaking, you need at least 256 MB to run the example programs in the SDK. Otherwise, more memory has no impact on CUDA performance. The memory size can affect your algorithm performance, though. If your data doesn’t all fit in the device memory, then your code will have to swap it to and from the device as needed.

The ideal amount of memory is really dictated by the size of your data set.

(And yeah, I second the GTX 260 suggestion. They’ve gotten very cheap with the release of the GTX 275 pushing prices down. tmurray also has the ability to see the future, so take heed! :) )

4

Sometimes, other programs on your system can use up significant amounts of memory (like 256 mb) on the GPU, so more memory is always helpful.

I second the gtx 260, the gt200 architecture is much improved. newegg has a msi version for $160 after rebate. This card is also factory overclocked, which is useful if you use Linux. [url=“MSI GeForce GTX 260 Video Card N260GTX-T2D896-OCv4 - Newegg.com”]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16814127430[/url]

5

I do have a GTX 260 on my i7-920 computer running Vista Home 32 bit and am also a newbie having purchased the system on 8th May particularly for use in home video editing here in Australia. I am about to purchase the Cyberlink PowerDirector 7 Ultra having just tried out the trial version. Cyberlink advertise their product as being specifically designed to use i7 technology for faster editing and rendering (and it sure does!). They also claim their software is designed to take advantage of NVIDIA CUDA technology for faster processing of H.264 HD format. (I do not currently use HD but may well change over soon so thought I would try to clear up this uncertainty first)

My question is this - Is my GTX 260 card CUDA enhanced or not? How can I tell? And if it is not how can I get it CUDA enhanced?

I asked the computer supplier/builder by email but got no reply. :(

I looked for documentation with the package but could find nothing. Should there be some? I would have thought so myself.

Thanks in anticipation,

Phil

6

http://www.nvidia.com/object/cuda_learn_products.html lists all CUDA Capable cards.

– http://www.nvidia.com/object/product_geforce_gtx_260_us.html - The specifications tab lists the 260 with a check mark next to “NVIDIA CUDAâ„¢ Technology”. The software should be able to use the GPU if they programmed for it as claimed.