I have a couple of projects in my portfolio which run GPU applications. The graphics cards in these machines are several years old and are AMD Radeon HD 7800 series cards.

Looking at Toms for example, the comparison charts they publish all tend to assume that the machine is going to be used to play games, I have no games, no interest any more, text based things are all I have ever used.

Is it worth upgrading these perfectly fuctioninal cards?

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Wave upon wave of demented avengers march cheerfully out of obscurity into the dream.

Depends if you're willing to spend a little time and effort, as well as money.

You will find that there's a huge range of modern GPUs. At the top end, they will complete your scientific research much more quickly: at the bottom end, a card of similar speed to your current ones will use significantly less electricity.

Before you purchase anything, make sure it will work in your current computers. Manufacturers are discontinuing driver support for older operating systems like Windows XP: your existing cards will go on working, but a new card will probably require a new driver. Check all the small print.

At the top end, they will complete your scientific research much more quickly: at the bottom end, a card of similar speed to your current ones will use significantly less electricity.

If they are Nvidia, as AMD GPUs use a lot of electricity.

I found one of the boxes that the cards came in, they are ASUS HD 7850 cards. The machines run Windows 8.1 64bit. The motherboards are ASUS Sabertooth Z170's.

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Wave upon wave of demented avengers march cheerfully out of obscurity into the dream.

... AMD GPUs use a lot of electricity.

I guess you haven't kept up with AMD's improvements in recent years :-). Was true several years ago but much improved now.

Don't take my biased opinion about that. You might like to have a look at this particular thread over at Einstein. It was started by Peter Stoll (archae86), a long time nvidia user, because of the 'better' power efficiency of nvidia as compared to AMD. That aspect was very important to him. If you read the entire thread (wall to wall text - I know) you might just be interested in the process he went through which currently has him threatening to ditch nvidia completely in favour of AMD.

There is also another thread about the new Radeon VII. In the fairly recent posts, a user has one with very good performance at Einstein. Take a look at this particular message where he documents a theoretical RAC of 1.7M for the use of just 280 watts total power draw from the wall.

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Cheers,
Gary.

... they are ASUS HD 7850 cards.

I have a bunch of HD 7850s crunching at Einstein. I find them still very productive and OK as far as power efficiency goes. I've got no intention of shutting any of them down any time soon.

AMD seem to be on quite a roll at the moment. The new Radeon VII (far too expensive for me) has amazing output and there is new architecture (code-named Navi) which is reputed to be released later in the year and with more affordable models. If you can wait, it might be interesting to see how that lot performs. If you need to upgrade now, GPUs like the RX 570 or 580 can be had very cheaply right now - probably because of the need to clear surplus inventory as a result of the downturn in the mining boom :-).

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Cheers,
Gary.

Gary, I run AMD GPUs, my RX470 already draws 200W under substantial load, the later versions only take more. Compare this to Nvidia with more bells and whistles on their cards for only 250W power draw and you'll know what I mean. The VII is rated for 300W, which in a day and age where we're supposed to be using power efficient hardware is stupidly high. I mean, if Intel released a CPU tomorrow that would have a TDP of 300W, would you buy and use it, or would you laugh them out of the building?

There, fixed.

Thanks for the replies, it looks like the 7850's are still adequate, and there is no great need to upgrade yet.

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Wave upon wave of demented avengers march cheerfully out of obscurity into the dream.

Gary, I run AMD GPUs, my RX470 already draws 200W under substantial load, the later versions only take more.

Jord, first you post 275W and now its changed to 200W and that's supposedly unacceptably higher than some unspecified nvidia card that supposedly draws 250W. And "later versions" draw more??? I'm certainly not trying to have an argument with you. I'm just asking for a bit of fairness and balance when claiming that AMD are simply just unacceptable power hogs. Also I'm talking about crunching, not gaming, so I don't care about "bells and whistles". I think it's really great for both gaming and crunching that AMD are working on becoming a better competitor to nvidia and I hope this trend continues. We will all benefit from more fierce competition between them and I hope Intel can join the fray as well, as they seem to be intending to do.

Peter has been doing measurements while tweaking the performance of his newly acquired RX 570. Here is a direct quote from a recent posting of his in the thread I linked to. It refers to crunching Einstein tasks 2x on an RX 570.

When I was running at default conditions (and my wife was not playing solitaire), the 2X elapsed times were 20:15. I've now specified a -40% power limitation using MSIAfterburner, which has given a box level power reduction from 197.9 to 178.1 watts, or 10% while suffering an Einstein output reduction of only 1.5%. That power reduction, plus use of my old fan curve in MSIAfterburner, got the reported GPU temperature down from 82C to 69C, and moderately low fan noise.

If there is one thing I know about Peter, it's that he is fierce about power efficiency and extremely thorough in the tests he performs.

The final thing you wrote that puzzles me is the following:-

The VII is rated for 300W, which in a day and age where we're supposed to be using power efficient hardware is stupidly high. I mean, if Intel released a CPU tomorrow that would have a TDP of 300W, would you buy and use it, or would you laugh them out of the building?

I have no idea why you are comparing a top of the line GPU with some fictitious CPU. The Radeon VII compares extremely favourably with nvidia's top of the line units on power efficiency. Here is page 8 of a very thorough review which compares a whole bunch of top end GPUs from both companies. Look at the graphic (3rd from the bottom of the page) for the system power consumption of the Radeon VII as compared to the 1080Ti and the 2080Ti.

Work out for yourself how bad AMD has become in comparison to nvidia. Look at the gain over Vega 64. Lower power consumption with a dramatic increase in compute performance. AMD should be applauded, not bagged.

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Cheers,
Gary.

A 570 can run under/around a 100W w/o much performance drop from stock.

A VII can run under 300W as well. When running FP64 tasks you won't find a more power efficient card without spending $3k. That also includes 16GB of HBM. Be sure to include DDR4 power usage if you want to compare a GPU to a CPU.