ATI GPU stream processing for Folding@home Anandtech article

autoboy · Post by **autoboy** » Tue Oct 03, 2006 9:38 am

So now that the x1900 can fold 40-50x faster, I feel like my contribution will never be able to compete anymore. I don't feel comfortable putting a x1900 in my box. I might run a x1600 if i can undervolt it and it can get 10x faster.

Too many of us silent pc users do not run expensive graphics cards in our systems. Are we going to be passed up by all the gaming sites now?

jaganath · Post by **jaganath** » Tue Oct 03, 2006 10:35 am

So now that the x1900 can fold 40-50x faster, I feel like my contribution will never be able to compete anymore

I think FAH should have separate rankings for CPU and GPU donators, otherwise the GPU's will totally displace the CPU contributors and de-motivate a lot of those users from contributing.

aristide1 · Post by **aristide1** » Tue Oct 03, 2006 11:30 am

Well I am going to return to folding regardless because, frankly, Alheizmers scares the

out of me.

I am in the process of buying an upgrade, but I won't spend the kind of money it takes to buy a X1900 chip. Besides one HIS card has this chip and has 36 shading pixel processors, not 48.

Anything over a C note for a video card is not my game.

unregistered · Post by **unregistered** » Tue Oct 03, 2006 4:03 pm

Once upon a time there were nothing but tinkers to fold. They were slow and took many days sometimes weeks to complete. They were worth about 71 points at that time.

Along came Gromacs, they were fast and did incredible calculations many times as fast as tinkers.

Now we have a different class of Gromac that is for GPU's, it is many times faster.

But the fact remains that all gromacs stem from Tinkers. Tinkers are the base of folding, Gromacs and the GPU gromacs are just branches of the tinker. Things are changing, and as far as points go, the GPU units will probably be worth quite a bit but not 40x. Plus they are no more important than a Tinker.

Now in case you have not heard AMD is the new proud owner of ATI.
What is AMD proclaiming? They are the most energy efficient! You will see cooler and more energy efficient GPUs and GPUs integrated into the CPU soon.

BTW 80 watts is the power draw on a X1900 folding a "new" gromac.