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[raymondf2009]

Dear all,

I have been following the GPU and OpenCL development for a while, and now want to get my feet wet to start development on OpenCL with appropriate GPU card. So, my first question is "how do I start ?". This leads to the following questions :

1. Is there any FAQ available handy for beginners ?

2. Any suggested GPU cards with good price-to-performance to start with ? R280X ? R290X ?

3. My primary working and development environment is Linux. Can I use the same GPU card to run OpenCL programs and use it as display card at the same time ?

4. Can I install more than one GPU card into my computer ? What's the co-relation between OpenCL and CrossFire ? How do I specify which GPU card to run the compiled OpenCL application ?

Regards,

Raymond.

[nou]

1. there is some getting started in AMD APP SDK documentation. also I recomend read AMD OpenCL programing guide also in AMD APP SDK documentation.

2. I think the X variants off the cards are not worth it. buy 280 or 290 instead. but for start any 5xxx or newer card is fine.

3. yes. But you may consider run your code on CPU first as if you lock up your GPU with while(1) loop you must hard reset whole PC.

4. yes. each GPU is exposed as one OpenCL device so you create command queue for it. so which queue you use determine which GPU will execute kernel. crossfire is nothing to do with OpenCL. in fact sometimes you need disable it to access multiple GPU.