EVGA GeForce GTX 950 2 GB

[cma6]

I have the above GPU in a dual-Xeon system, but BIOS has never recognized card so Win10 defaults to onboard video.
If I could get that GPU recognized, is it a worthwhile GPU for Lco?

[ChickenLogic]

The 950 is ceratinly good enough for basic analysis - 1 node Leela is around 2200 -2300 "human elo" and you'll get at least 1kn/s (just a guess). The double xeons with sf will be stronger though; but if you want to use Leela it certainly helps to get it running. In case you want to upgrade the 2060 is a good deal.

[glennsamuel32]

The 950M for laptops outputs at 1kn.
You should get much more than 1 kn with a desktop card.

[cma6]

Thanks to Glenn and Chicken for advice. As I don't see any video card in my dual-Xeon system, I may have to "upgrade" from no video card to something, since onboard mobo video is being used by default. On Newegg, EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti is priced between $1200 to $1400. The 1080Ti is priced only about $100 less.
As I'm planning to build a 3rd generation Threadripper system at the end of the year with a high end GPU, at this point I would like something that is a step or two below the RTX 2080Ti but at a reasonable price. I assume that used cards are a bad idea.
I have the Nvidia GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost in a different system. Is that too low end to even try Lc0?
Thanks, CMA

[brianr]

While I am no expert, some general suggestions. Firstly, Leela specifically benefits from some optimizations known as "fp16", which roughly triples the speed in nps. The newer RTX 20XX series cards support this. The older 10XX cards do not. A value-priced option instead of the 2080ti would be a 2060 or 2070.

[cma6]

Brian,
Great idea. That's what I will do: go with RTX 2060 or 2070 from Amazon.
In terms of the RTX 2070m, if you had $500 to $600 (of my money) to spend, what specs would you go for in the RTX 2070, as I am ready to buy from Amazon, though there are multiple choices in the RTX 2070 in terms of Brand, and other specs like
Powered by NVIDIA Turing with 1845 MHz Boost Clock (OC Mode), 2304 CUDA cores and overclocked 8GB GDDR6 memory,
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07JF ... _qh_dp_hza

One issue that seems concerning from Amazon reviews: very high percent of these cards seem to break down after 1-3 months.

[brianr]

I know next to nothing about laptop video cards.
That said, personally, I would never run Leela for any long time on a laptop at all.

For desktop gpus, I would not bother with any over-clocking or "free" bundled games. The question is the number of fans or the sealed one with just the one fan (these are best according to others when using more than one in a case to prevent the hot air from one card being blown into the next one). For just one gpu, I would look for one with the 3 fans, as Leela pushes them. Don't forget to throttle in back a bit with a tool like MSI Afterburner and set the Power Limit to say 90%, which will keep it much cooler to last hopefully much longer. For me the performance difference is negligible.

For vendors, I personally prefer EVGA.

[cma6]

Thanks, Brian, for the advice.