I will be purchasing a new PC very soon. I haven't had a PC in 5 years so the technology is vastly different then when I owned my last desktop. I have most of the specs down for what I want but I have come across this new type of card called the Nvidia Tesla C1060. I know it's not a video card but an addition of computation power to the CPU's. Apparently it is some very serious stuff and not meant for the gamer crowd, of which I am not. Since I will be getting more into water, fire and smoke effects with Houdini… I was wondering if this card would make a significant power boost to any of my work. Cost is not an option, I know this card is around $1200.00 but if it can achieve what I think it can then it's worth it. Has anyone used it or is using or have any info that can help me out with my purchase?

Cheers,
John

Houdini doesn't currently have much support (only some COPS) for using GPUs in calculations so you wouldn't really see much out of it.

http://odforce.net/wiki/index.php/FrequentlyAskedQuestions#Q:__Does_Houdini_use_GPUs.3F [odforce.net]

Thanks alot Graham. That definitely helps out in my research.

COPs GPU Acceleration is also GLSL-based (OpenGL), which I don't believe the Tesla supports. Even if it did, it's not a big enough part of Houdini to recommend. You'd be better off spending the same money on a newer Quadro, as the viewport would benefit greatly from its excellent OpenGL support.