Recommendation for buying GPU

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Anoop K

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Sep 25, 2023, 10:23:37 AM9/25/23
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Hi,
Looking for recommendations to buy GPU for Mumax3 simulations in our group. Let's say the budget cap is 10K euros. What would you guys recommend?  Any reply is greatly appreciated

Best
Anoop

Felipe Garcia

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Sep 26, 2023, 7:04:46 AM9/26/23
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Hi,

I recommend you one of the Nvidia RTXs. The parameters that you want to maximize are single precision FLOPS and memory bandwidth, ... and price. Of course, if your provider has a stock of Tesla or Quadro with comparable specs and affordable price that is fine. In the previous family the RTX 3000s, it was more or less clear the idea. But with the new family RTX 4000s, there have been some problems and the intention of Nvidia is not so straightforward. The new GPUS requires proper installation and they have larger consumptions. The RTX 4090 has upto 450W and may need three or even effectively 4 slots. In any case, I think if you can afford an RTX4090 is a good choice and for 1800$ I think one can find that, although obviously this depends on your country and supplier. Another option is to buy two 4070 for the price of a 4090 but that the total amount of GFLOPs will be smaller than a single 4090 and comparable to a single 4080, with less bandwidth but it allows you to run two programs at the same time, that some times it is better if you are sharing the computer. The Tesla A100 from a regular provider can have several times that price, but has  large double precision FLOPS which an advantage for a general GPU computer not running only mumax3. To summarize, an RTX4090 is the best now from the performance point of view but it is a bit heavy and power hungry.

Felipe

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Anoop K

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Sep 26, 2023, 9:07:50 AM9/26/23
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Dear Felipe,
Thank you for the detailed reply. I am trying to understand the difference between the new Geforce RTX 4090(24 GB) the RTX 6000(48 GB) and RTX A6000(48GB)  which is mentioned on the Nvidea web page for professional use. Is that something I should consider??

Anoop

Felipe Garcia

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Sep 26, 2023, 10:20:17 AM9/26/23
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Dear Anoop,

You can find here the latest benchmark of mumax3, https://github.com/mumax/3/blob/master/bench/gpus.txt
The second column is the relative performance for a system of several millions of cells. There is a comparison and the best results are for a RTX 4090. The Quadro RTX A6000 is also included.
The single precision speed (not included there) is 73 Tflops for RTX 4090 and 38 Tflops for A6000. Unless you find a good offer for RTX A6000, with a price per TFlops equivalent or with the equivalency from the mumax benchmark, I would still choose a RTX 4090.

Best regards,
Felipe

Anoop K

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Sep 26, 2023, 11:52:26 AM9/26/23
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Dear Felipe,
Thank you very much for the effort. I have now some idea about which GPU I should order.

Best
Anoop

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