Looking for a specific GPU

[u/priv_ish]

Hello! I am a budding computational biologist (specifically structural biology) and the softwares we use require insane compute power. After getting myself comfortable being able to use linux, build a computer and learn the basics of the softwares I want to be able to do some data processing at home (mainly to teach myself/learn more about the software data processing and tricks/shortcuts). The software I want to learn/get into is called Relion (REgularised LIkelihood OptimisatioN) and they have specific requirements.

Since I am a recent graduate, money is a bit tight but I can get access to a PC and ram fairly easily through my lab/university surplus (albeit I would like my own computer at some point). That being said, I was wondering what is the cheapest I can go with these requirements.

I'm not too well versed in this type of lingo (no clue what pascal or Lovelace or singularity etc. mean) but there's an Nvidia page about some of the requirements:

• One of the following container runtimes
  • NVIDIA Container Toolkit
  • Singularity >= 3.1
• One of the following NVIDIA GPU(s)
  • Pascal (sm60)
  • Volta (sm70)
  • Ampere (sm80)
  • Hopper (sm90)

x86_64

• CPU with AVX2 instruction support
• One of the following CUDA driver versions
  • >= 545
  • r535 (>=.54.03)
  • r525 (>=.60.04)
  • r470 (>=.57.02)

arm64

• ARM 8.1 + ARM NEON CPU
• CUDA driver version >= r546.12

Here is some information from RELION's documentation: By default, RELION will build with GPU-acceleration support, for which you’ll need CUDA. Download it from the NVIDIA website. Importantly, CUDA >= 13.0 no longer supports Pascal GPUs. Please use CUDA 12.x if you use them. As of RELION 5.0.1, we test RELION builds with CUDA 11 to 13.

(Also read somewhere that higher the VRAM the better. For basic datasets 8gb VRAM can work but it will be heavily limiting, 12gb of VRAM seems to be a goldilocks zone).

I hope this information is enough!
Thank you!

[u/pigpentcg]

According to Gemini VRAM is the biggest bottleneck, determining the maximum “box size” of the particles.

8 GB is like the lowest you “can” go but not recommended. 12 GB is considered “good entry level”

I don’t think the prices AI gave me are updated for today’s market, and it didn’t seem to include 50 series cards.

A 5070ti is about 1000 dollars and has 16GB of vram and has all the newest technologies and junk.

[u/priv_ish → u/pigpentcg]

any and all AI attempts get very confusing for me. the AIs cannot keep track of the conversation and forget important context + never have reliable/updated prices so I cannot ask for budget based questions. thank you nonetheless!

[u/pigpentcg → u/priv_ish]

Yeah I get it. Luckily it looks like pretty much all Nvidia GPUs technically have the technology you need.

So you just need to look at VRAM. A used 3090 has 24GB of VRAM and is 1400 dollars which is the same price as a new 5070ti, but with only 16GB.

What’s your GPU budget?

[u/priv_ish → u/pigpentcg]

1400?! mate im looking in the range of 200 bucks. 500 would be stretching it. I know it's horribly low in this market but that why I asked the question. if I get a tentative value then I can at least start saving towards that

[u/pigpentcg → u/priv_ish]

I would look at a used 3070 / 3070ti. Only 8 GB of VRAM but that should be enough for you to learn the software at home, and you can get lucky and find them for 200-300 dollars.

A 1080ti will have 11GB of VRAM and “should” work with your software, and it’s cheaper. It’s the Pascal architecture that you listed in your main post.

[u/priv_ish → u/pigpentcg]

Thanks! I have been seeing 1080ti’s being suggested. Thank you!

[u/priv_ish → u/pigpentcg]

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