The WCG GPU roll-out is going to be a momentous moment for WCG, as in "One small step for cruncher... One giant leap for WCG !"

That'll be at the front. At the backend, its 99.99% perspiration from Techs, CA's, Scientists, and other supporting groups behind the scenes. This early, I want to thank these people for their passion and belief in pushing ahead despite the enormity of the task before them so that one day, soon one day, a cruncher is able to make that first WCG GPU-computing step!

Happy holidays everyone!
;

skgiven I think you are absolutely right.
I would suggest as the first combination to test: Windows with Nvidia cards.

Why? First Windows is the largest platform at WCG.
Second Nvidia is the only company that has a clear strategy to develop technologies that make GPU's with architectures adapted at crunching. They went from GPU to supercomputers.

The problem is that if the maths behind it uses double precision floating point calculations, the Radeon cards are about 4 times faster - mostly because Nvidia have crippled their double precision work, so people have to buy their much more expensive (but more or less the same thing) Tesla cards.

Have a look at the speed of Radeon 5XXX and 4XXX cards vs Nvidia 2XX cards. I know it's a bit old, but the difference in speed remains the same today on Radeon 6XXX vs Nvidia 5XX cards:



Also for bitcoin generation: (A bit more recent)



Unless there are 4 times more Nvidia Users who are technically competent enough to set up CUDA support, than equivalent ATI users, I'd advocate going ATI Stream first. Also, from the recent drastic drop in Bitcoin prices, there are probably quite a few ATI bitcoin mining rigs which have been retired from mining, and probably could be used for WCG projects... Hopefully?

Thanks Skgiven - if that's the case, then it does make sense to use Nvidia. I have 2 Nvidia laptops, and 1 Crossfired ATI Desktop

On an unrelated note, is there anyway to set a nickname? I didn't realise when I created my account that it would use my login name on forums too. I've been in and out of WCG since the united devices days, and I think my nickname was already taken from one of those days, so I just used my real name. Even just shortening it to just "Ken" would do.

How would I do that without losing all my progress and re-registering my devices?