Folding@Home with your PS3 and ATI cards

unregistered · Post by **unregistered** » Fri Aug 25, 2006 1:17 am

Some "Press" on this at

http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2006A ... 038246.htm

From Stanford;

ATI info: http://folding.stanford.edu/FAQ-ATI.html

PS3 info: http://folding.stanford.edu/news.html

I've been shopping for a new video card. In the past ATI cards have given me a lot of grief with their drivers. I have steered clear of them. With the AMD take over and folding possiblies, I may have to give them another shot.

Hmmm.... a dual core opty and an ATI card, I wonder if I will be folding 3 WUs at a time or just 2?

Has anyone here run any of the beta cores on either of these projects?

It looks like these video cards are going to do some serious folding. I laughed when I first heard someone ask about folding with a video card.

autoboy · Post by **autoboy** » Fri Aug 25, 2006 7:07 am

I guess i will be able to finally retire my athlon 1000 from folding. With these systems doing 100Gflops it is not really worth the electricity

pixel_pimp · Post by **pixel_pimp** » Fri Aug 25, 2006 8:52 am

Running FAH on CPU and GPU - surely that's going to result in rather a toasty PC?

AZBrandon · Post by **AZBrandon** » Fri Aug 25, 2006 9:14 am

pixel_pimp wrote:Running FAH on CPU and GPU - surely that's going to result in rather a toasty PC?

The first thing that hit me was that this is a great way to make absolutely certain your GPU cooling solution works. You can load up the GPU to 100% while NOT in a game, and thus you can be monitoring it with your favorite diagnostic tools in windows to make sure you're not overheating, or even fine tune your GPU fanspeed with a FanMate to tune your GPU temp to whatever your target temperature is, and maybe have CPUBurn going at the same time to simulate a worst-case scenario for gaming and power supply load. So.... even just from a benchmarking standpoint, it's kind of exciting to me but it's too bad nvidia wouldn't play nice and work with them to make it work on their GPU's too. There's a huge installed base of 6x and 7x nvidia cards out there for sure.

Vihta · Post by **Vihta** » Sat Aug 26, 2006 12:51 pm

Interesting news! Too bad that I just bought a nvidia card.

bsdie · Post by **bsdie** » Sat Aug 26, 2006 1:05 pm

AZBrandon wrote:
pixel_pimp wrote:Running FAH on CPU and GPU - surely that's going to result in rather a toasty PC?
The first thing that hit me was that this is a great way to make absolutely certain your GPU cooling solution works. You can load up the GPU to 100% while NOT in a game, and thus you can be monitoring it with your favorite diagnostic tools in windows to make sure you're not overheating, or even fine tune your GPU fanspeed with a FanMate to tune your GPU temp to whatever your target temperature is, and maybe have CPUBurn going at the same time to simulate a worst-case scenario for gaming and power supply load. So.... even just from a benchmarking standpoint, it's kind of exciting to me but it's too bad nvidia wouldn't play nice and work with them to make it work on their GPU's too. There's a huge installed base of 6x and 7x nvidia cards out there for sure.

I usually use this program to tax my gpu when I want to measure heat.
http://www.daionet.gr.jp/~masa/rthdribl/
You can run it under windows in a window and still monitor the heat of your system (beats swapping out of WoW really really fast =).

AZBrandon · Post by **AZBrandon** » Sun Aug 27, 2006 4:33 pm

bsdie wrote:I usually use this program to tax my gpu when I want to measure heat.
http://www.daionet.gr.jp/~masa/rthdribl/
You can run it under windows in a window and still monitor the heat of your system (beats swapping out of WoW really really fast =).

Wow! Sure enough, that works great! That tops out my 7800GT at the highest peak temp I ever see in Battlefield 2, and holds it there at peak. That's a great tool, thanks!!

Mats · Post by **Mats** » Sun Oct 01, 2006 4:03 am

Supports only X1900 cards ATM. Something tells me that SPCR is going to drop in the ranking...

SebRad · Post by **SebRad** » Sun Oct 01, 2006 4:21 am

Something tells me that SPCR is going to drop in the ranking...

I just read the Anandtech article and was thinking just the same. If they really can get 20 - 40x performance out of GPU as a CPU then it's all about how many high power video cards your team's got. Not something thats over-common on SPCR due the problems of cooling the things quietly, just doesn't fit in with out ethos.
Still I will keep folding as best I can, currently around 1000-1500 points/day, maybe a few more machines at work need to fold, those core duo laptops running 2 at a time could be good....
Seb

Tibors · Post by **Tibors** » Sun Oct 01, 2006 10:36 am

The information till now says nothing about the scoring system or the types of WU's used. Only that the raw computing power is 20x to 40x as big.

Maybe we'll see a new class of WU's on monday with a bigger number of amino acids.

They have to give people with these speed monsters some benefit, but if they use a factor of 40 in the scoring, then they are going to loose a lot of small time donators. It is the question if the speed monsters can compensate for it.

unregistered · Post by **unregistered** » Sun Oct 01, 2006 12:02 pm

I wonder if the 20-40X would apply to both cores that I am running(opty165) or just one. I could quiet my house down by turning the furnace off and cranking up the GPU.

Tibors · Post by **Tibors** » Sun Oct 01, 2006 3:38 pm

AFAIK It applies to non of the cores of the opty

Just like you need two clients running to use both cores, you'll need a third client running to use the graphics processor.

unregistered · Post by **unregistered** » Sun Oct 29, 2006 3:56 am

Uh OH! http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814121031

bkh · Post by **bkh** » Wed Nov 01, 2006 6:48 am

There is a discussion of points in the Folding@Home ATI GPU FAQ http://folding.stanford.edu/FAQ-ATI.html

The description of points is a bit confusing, but it seems that for their standard benchmark CPU they give 110 PPD, for folding on the ATI they give 440PPD, and during the beta they actually are awarding 660 PPD on an ATI X1900XT.

They seem to be keenly aware of how difficult it will be to make everyone happy with the new points scale, but they intend to figure out what is most fair.

ryboto · Post by **ryboto** » Wed Nov 01, 2006 8:10 am

well, I might not have a x1900xt, but my 1950pro is supported, and as soon as it arrives, I'll be folding with it for spcr!

aristide1 · Post by **aristide1** » Wed Dec 13, 2006 7:05 pm

unregistered wrote:Uh OH! http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814121031

Just like you need two clients running to use both cores, you'll need a third client running to use the graphics processor.

Taking bets the card listed here will sound like a jet at takeoff.

HIS fanless 1650Pro!

aristide1 · Post by **aristide1** » Wed Jan 03, 2007 6:32 pm

I wonder how cost effect GPU folding will be. The 19xx video cards require a lot of power. Yuck.

jaganath · Post by **jaganath** » Wed Jan 03, 2007 6:38 pm

aristide1 wrote:I wonder how cost effect GPU folding will be. The 19xx video cards require a lot of power. Yuck.

IIRC the GPU doesn't use as much power when it's Folding, maybe 80W or so. That is comparable to an overclocked C2D/X2, and it's many times more productive than CPU folding from what I have read.

aristide1 · Post by **aristide1** » Wed Jan 03, 2007 6:50 pm

jaganath wrote:
aristide1 wrote:I wonder how cost effect GPU folding will be. The 19xx video cards require a lot of power. Yuck.
IIRC the GPU doesn't use as much power when it's Folding, maybe 80W or so. That is comparable to an overclocked C2D/X2, and it's many times more productive than CPU folding from what I have read.

I was planning on building a 2nd pc (3800+ X2) just for folding, but I'll spend the money on a X1900 card instead.

aristide1 · Post by **aristide1** » Thu Mar 22, 2007 5:21 am

Egads people, I have an ATI 1950GT running and went to get the 7.2 drivers. I managed to get them installed from ATI's web site (Sapphire doesn't seem to offer any drivers). But when I display driver info I don't see "7.2" mentioned anywhere, but I did see 6.14.

But now Vista gets a BSOD upon shut down. The screen flashes by so quickly one could never hope to read it. AND because of that it immediately reboots.

Am I going to run a GPU fold WU on one of their beta versions? No.

Hopefully things will get better, but for now -->

Folding@Home with your PS3 and ATI cards

Folding@Home with your PS3 and ATI cards

in beta, 660 points per day for folding on ati x1900xt