The 590 also requires a big case to handle its length, a more expensive power supply, especially if running more than one card, more case fans to vacate the 350 watts of heat, etc.

ok GTX 970 it is...
 

NewEgg Canada has them for $370 + $12 shipping.

Adding about 590: you can easily stress a well cooled (or water cooled) 590 card to ~500 Watts, or even 600 Watts. The "350W" is a "low clock" (factory) setting. Technically, one 590 is two 580 in parallel, with a reduced clock to keep the heat and consumption down. But its [B]biggest problem[/B] is the fact that half of the the hot air (if air cooled) goes back into the case (the card exhausts in both directions, at both ends). So, it has to be either water/liquid cooled, or you will need a special case (beside of the length, mentioned before, an additional fan is needed in the side of the case to take that hot air out, as it is exhausted by the card(s) inside of the case).

I don't know (yet) and I can't comment about newer 9xx cards, never played with one.

But if you want to go "old style", buying two 580's (for about the same price, a bit higher) may be better than one 590. You get higher performance (about 30% more, see the Asus Mars II cards, they have very instructive "performance charts", which can be used for comparison, Mars II is just two 580s in parallel, and they compare it directly with 590 on their web page), plus easier cooling, and you still can run your system if one card crashes. The only problem is that two 580s will take 4 (or 6) pcie slots, but a 590 only 2 (or 3, depending on brand and cooling solution).

Xeon Phi for a reasonable price
 

[url]https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/special-promotion-intel-xeon-phi-coprocessor-31s1p[/url]

Intel is selling off 270W 57-core 8GB Knights Crossing boards at the extremely attractive price of $195, presumably because they want to clear stock before Knights Landing turns up.

[url]http://www.colfax-intl.com/nd/xeonphi/31s1p-promo.aspx[/url] is probably the obvious supplier to use in America. But their international shipping is unfortunately pretty hopeless ('organise your own pick-up' rather than just offering to put it in USPS); there is a single European reseller, who is in Italy and doesn't appear to have the boards available.

Could I convince an American on the forum to buy me one and send it USPS? I will transfer the money by paypal and send address details.

I don't know whether there are seven people on the forum who might want one, but Colfax offers a ten-pack for $1290 so if there are more than six people it would be worth putting in a bulk order.

The boards are two slots wide, and have huge heat sinks but no fan, so you would have to contrive some source of forced air.

Hm... over 1k gig of DP power... tempting. I may be in for one, this price look very cheap to me.

How many GHzD/D of DC can produce? I understand that we deal with 57 cores of ~x86, but they are kinda stupid cores, not like sandy bridge or haswel..

Noob question: Can I pair the cores somehow, or do I have to run 57 copies of the LL test? (any LL test, I assume that P95 will not run, but I will contribute to buy one for George if he promise to make it running, hehe)

Any special [existing] software for it? (I think ewmayer was working on something, if I am not mistaken).

[QUOTE=fivemack;387008][url]https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/special-promotion-intel-xeon-phi-coprocessor-31s1p[/url]

Intel is selling off 270W 57-core 8GB Knights Crossing boards at the extremely attractive price of $195, presumably because they want to clear stock before Knights Landing turns up.

[url]http://www.colfax-intl.com/nd/xeonphi/31s1p-promo.aspx[/url] is probably the obvious supplier to use in America. But their international shipping is unfortunately pretty hopeless ('organise your own pick-up' rather than just offering to put it in USPS); there is a single European reseller, who is in Italy and doesn't appear to have the boards available.

Could I convince an American on the forum to buy me one and send it USPS? I will transfer the money by paypal and send address details.

I don't know whether there are seven people on the forum who might want one, but Colfax offers a ten-pack for $1290 so if there are more than six people it would be worth putting in a bulk order.

The boards are two slots wide, and have huge heat sinks but no fan, so you would have to contrive some source of forced air.[/QUOTE]
It must be some sort of special developer board, since it doesn't show up on Intel ARK: [url]http://ark.intel.com/products/codename/57721/Knights-Corner[/url]

Is there any (factoring) software that can can utilise this beast?

[QUOTE=fivemack;387008]I don't know whether there are seven people on the forum who might want one, but Colfax offers a ten-pack for $1290 so if there are more than six people it would be worth putting in a bulk order.

The boards are two slots wide, and have huge heat sinks but no fan, so you would have to contrive some source of forced air.[/QUOTE]I may well be interested at that price. I need to rebuild one of my systems anyway so starting afresh has some attraction.

I'll investigate further and maybe chat with you off-line.


Paul

There's a good thread about Xeon Phi: [url]http://www.mersenneforum.org/showthread.php?t=18223[/url]

These bargain cards aren't very promising.

[QUOTE=Mark Rose;387020]There's a good thread about Xeon Phi: [url]http://www.mersenneforum.org/showthread.php?t=18223[/url]

These bargain cards aren't very promising.[/QUOTE]TBH, I'm more interested in ECM and NFS on rather smaller numbers. It's not clear at the moment whether Phi will be cost effective in that regime. As noted, I need to investigate further.

I have no background with code, but I am interested in participating in the 10-pack if there is a simple way to run ECM or NFS sieving on it.

If George is willing to "play with it" we are certain that a quick forum fundraiser could provide him with one, especially at the discounted price from the 10-pack deal.