Video card for Starnet++/Pixinsight?

[garymck]

Hi,
anyone have any idea of the lowest cost Nvidia card that supports Starnet acceleration in Pixinsight? I have a fast PC, but my old video card does not support a compatible version of Cuda. Most of the cards I've seen people using are around $400 and up - not something a humble pensioner can afford !! any suggestions for lower cost cards (sub$200???) that provide a significant speed boost?
cheers
Gary

[sunslayr]

The only thing I can think of for that price would be a used gtx 1060 or better yet 1070.

[garymck]

Ah well, might have to forgo the use of Starnet. too slow to use productively....

thanks
Gary

[Camelopardalis]

Gary, in the latest release of PixInsight it is pretty sprightly on CPU alone.

The other day I went away to make a cup of coffee having fired it off on a 16MP image only to return to my computer with it claiming it had completed in 46 seconds :eyepop:

Not exactly preview speed, but it’s streets ahead of where it used to be.

Btw, this is on my Intel NUC with i5-8259U, so not exactly a speed demon :lol:

[multiweb]

You guys should talk to Ivo here on IIS. He's pretty switched on with hardware and anything to do with GPUs. He's the dev of Startools.

[garymck]

Interesting,my Ryzen 1700 / 16gb based pc took 2 minutes and 25 seconds to do an image from my ASI533MC Pro. Wonder why it was so slow compared to your i5. It's lightning fast on everything else.....

Gary

[Camelopardalis]

Pure speculation...it could be the way Starnet is compiled and what CPU features it supports? I’m clutching at straws really as it doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense.

Btw, I’m using macOS and PixInsight 1.8.8-6.

[rustigsmed]

starnet+ uses avx (heavy on the cpu)

[rbronca]

I have an AMD 1700 (OC to 3.7Ghz all 8 cores) and an Nvidia 1060 6GB. The GPU completes Starnet++ in around 1/4 of the time of CPU only. I expect a 1050 ($220 to 250 AU) should fit the bill.

[irwjager]

For a cheap solution check out this post (https://forum.startools.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1955) on the ST forums.
In short, it's a ~70 AUD solution (ex-mining) you can use alongside your current display adapter that performs somewhere in between a 1050Ti and a 1060 3GB (they're slightly cut-down 1060 3GB cards w/o display output). I'm currently using one in my development system.


Other than that, there are currently deals going for 1650 Super cards that perform very well for the price. Many deals can be had at the moment as new cards will be announced in the next few weeks and months (both AMD and Nvidia), though AMD obviously don't have the proprietary CUDA cores.


Hope this helps!


EDIT: I should also mention that there are some scam-GPUs out there (essentially re-flashed old GPUs to change the way they identify themselves in the OS). They are easily identified by the display output configuration on the back; they will usually still have a VGA output - no current GPU has those.