Guys, what was that? Already? Thanks.

FYI, there is a thread related to this one over in the Beta Test Support Forum :
- If and/or When they send out Betas for HCC GPU (Apostrophe Man strikes again)

Recent (Jan 2012) posts have been mainly hardware-oriented.
There, kateiacy also discusses getting some experience with GPU crunching by doing some work from projects outside of WCG (shame!) ...

My own 2c worth:
I think my priority will remain CPU crunching because I want to allocate most of my electricity $$ to projects other than HCC. However, I'll be interested in contributing with efficient low-end GPU devices, especially the integrated ones (IGPs) in the newer CPU packages, in particular Intel Sandy Bridge (2600k) and the forthcoming Ivy Bridge (due April 2012)(Wikipedia, AnandTech ) varieties. [Edit]: Provided the rumoured/promised openCL support for the Intels is forthcoming, that is. ( Intel® Software Network >> Sandy bridge, opencl , Intel® Software Network >> OpenCL SDK FAQs )[/Edit]. Although their individual contributions at this stage will be fairly modest, they will become very numerous as the WCG crunching fleet is gradually updated, and their total contribution could greatly outweigh the contributions by the comparatively few people who are likely to have efficient discrete GPU cards.

IGPs may also be more energy-efficient (work done per Joule ) than discrete graphics cards. IGPs don't suffer the energy overheads of communicating via an external bus (PCIE etc), and current ones are now implemented in the same technology size as their attached CPU cores; CPU technology shrinkage has always led that of GPUs. E.g., Ivy Bridge will be 22nm, while the forthcoming high-end ATI 7000 series will be 28nm. Dinosaurs, really ...
OTOH, The Ivy Bridge IGP will share the L3 CPU cache with the CPU cores, and could slow down CPU processing. Chip cooling could also be a problem especially for overclockers.

IGPs could be the big win for GPU crunching on WCG (but see [Edit] above).

@KWSN: Hmmm ... Re-examining my post (above) I discover that there is not yet actual OpenCL support for Intel's IGPs . See edits to the post. And the Ivy Bridge ("IVB") IGP may have too many differences from the Sandy Bridge ("SNB") unit that Intel may not bother providing retro support for it even if/when they do OpenCL for IVB.

OTOH it's very likely that Intel's IGPs will eventually support OpenCL, since Intel are a member of the non-profit technology consortium Khronos Group which manages OpenCL , and Apple, who defined OpenCL are a very large Intel customer. I think Apple will be very keen to have OpenCL run on its notebooks, and for reasons of power consumption the only way they could probably achieve that is to use the IGP.

I recall an instructor in a course on CUDA programming in the summer of 2010 saying that at that time, the ION was one of the most efficient Nvidia graphics cards. Although its total output is small, its very low power consumption let it beat out the big boys in terms of FLOPS per watt.

I doubt that the ION itself is near the top in efficiency anymore, but I too am keeping my eye out for less power-hungry GPUs and IGPs as a way to increase my crunching contribution without breaking the bank or overheating my home.

So, any of the BOINC projects supporting them?