http://theovalich.wordpress.com/2008...olding-at-hom/
As you might already know, I am a bit enthusiastic when it comes to distributed computing.
I’ve been looking for aliens through SETI@home, later with
BOINC… but then, Folding@Home showed up and I became an enthusiast for
this valuable project from Stanford University. My family had some share of dealings with
Alzheimer’s (aka AD) and Parkinson’s diseases (aka PD) and I won’t go here into
what psychological and ultimately financial stress that families around the world, including my own
- have to endure.
Folding@Home is also a project that pioneered the use of GPUs for distributed computing (if I am
wrong on this one, feel free to correct me). Back in the summer of 2006, I heard that ATI and
Stanford are working Folding@Home GPGPU client. I now remember my articles and articles from a lot
of colleagues who all criticized Nvidia for not having a F@H client.
Fast forward to GTX280 launch and the Vijay Pande team debuted the Folding@Home client for Nvidia
chips as well. Nvidia and ATI lead a short marketing war who can fold better and things went
quiet… apparently, for a reason.
The reason why things went quiet is probably the ”inconvenient
truth”: ATI showed up with Radeon 4800 series and demolished
Nvidia’s dominance in the segment, with GTX260 and 280 going through radical price drops in
order to stay competitive. However, ATI’s Radeon 4800 series has one field where the card is
losing against 5-10x cheaper cards: Folding@Home.
The 10x argument lies in comparison between current ATI’s flagship, the Radeon 4870X2 and
Nvidia’s GeForce 9600GSO. This $50 card can easily out-fold ATI Radeon 4870X2, which retails
for more than 500 USD/450EUR in respective markets.
Damn, I need to get my 8800GS SLI rig folding.... double the 4870 PPD? :eek:
Recommandations
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and reject those that you are not interested in
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