I need a GPU because my onboard video (Aspeed AST2050) is too crappy to watch movies in 1080p. But that's the only non-BOINC use I will get out of it, so I imagine that I should find something with the best GPU computing power and as long as it has an HDMI out, it will probably do the trick, right?

I remember when the only choice for GPU computing was nVidia products, but now that ATI GPUs are supported, the decision is more difficult. Personally, I never really liked ATI stuff because their control software always seemed chintzy.

What GPUs would you recommend for maximum BOINCing?

Here's my system:
ASUS Z8PE-D12X w/ dual Xeon E5520 (3 PCIe 2.0 x16 slots free)
12GB ECC RDIMMs
Windows Server 2008R2
Vizio ES370VL LCD HDTV used as monitor

Really? No one has any advice for me? I'm relatively GPU-ignorant because my typical computer use cases are much more dependent on I/O throughput and CPU/memory bottlenecks. I have an application I need to run that requires DirectX capability not present in my onboard graphics. But other than this application and my desire to watch an occasional movie, the rest of the GPU cycles will be dedicated to BOINCing. I need help filtering through the gaming-related nonsense in order to determine what features on a whiz-bang graphics card will actually be relevant to BOINC projects. Since I'm pretty sure I will go with an nVidia product, how about some help comparing Quadro to GTX-series cards? The CUDA GPU listing has a "compute capability" number for each product, but what is that based on? Is that a precise enough metric to simply buy the card with the highest "compute capability" that is in my price range?

Since you don't say what you price range is, in actual numbers, it's still difficult to give advice. Even then, I may like AMD, you may like Nvidia, you have to choose what you want. All of the above are DirectX 11 these days.

I think it's easier to just go to a comparing site, like http://graphics-cards.findthebest.com/. Just fill in what you ant and see what rolls out.

While I muse about not having seen a 2D only graphics card (or -chip) since at least 1995. ;-)

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Since you don't say what you price range is, in actual numbers, it's still difficult to give advice. Even then, I may like AMD, you may like Nvidia, you have to choose what you want. All of the above are DirectX 11 these days.

I think it's easier to just go to a comparing site, like http://graphics-cards.findthebest.com/. Just fill in what you ant and see what rolls out.

While I muse about not having seen a 2D only graphics card (or -chip) since at least 1995. ;-)

Well, ASUS uses 2D onboard graphics for their server boards; so I assure you, they are still out there. I have a Z8PE-D12X as the foundation for my system. I tried adding a video card a couple of years ago, but it conflicted with my SAS array, so I gave up.

I am asking here because I want information for a very specific use-case. Generic web pages comparing GPUs are really not very helpful because they take into account gaming performance and such. And since I know nothing about graphics rendering, I can't really compare the technical specs on my own without devoting a bunch of time that I don't currently have to learning the engineering background.

My price range is between $200-500. If that's too vague for you, then I'm sorry.