GPU folding

Pilgrim57 · 24 Jul 2008 at 11:15

Wile lurking I've been trying to pick up how to do this once I get a new card.
I seen mention of issues with drivers, Nvidia, & nothing to take advantage of the new ATi/AMD 4850/70's.
So A. which card brand to go for for best folding & B. is their some easy to follow instructions ( in the sticky?) to follow to avoid loads of hassle?
Thanks for yr help guys.

oceaness · 24 Jul 2008 at 11:28

Get a GeForce 8000 series or higher based on how much power you want.

See Biffas post here for a comparison of the cards performance folding wise.

Then it should be as easy as downloading the correct CUDA drivers based on your OS from here and then downloading and installing the GPU2 client from the high performance clients page

I dont think I had to do anything else to get my 8800 GTS and 9800 GTX going

Pointed fahmon to monitor C:\Users\oceaness\AppData\Roaming\Folding@home-gpu\ and away she went.

Pilgrim57 · 24 Jul 2008 at 11:40

Thanks for that oceaness. Good to see you active in the forum again

Green for the win at the mo, then. I think I'd seen the graph before :confused:

but no comparrison with ATi though which I'd really be interested in.

oceaness · 24 Jul 2008 at 11:55

No problem, thanks

I'm not sure but I think the current ATI cards are so far behind performance wise there is no comparison, not entirely sure though.

Mattus · 24 Jul 2008 at 12:43

The current client doesn't come close to making the most of the recent AMD hardware. I think a 4870 gets about 1500PPD where an 8800GT gets ~4700ppd. Thing is, a 4870 doesn't really fold any faster than a 3870, so there's obviously lots of performance waiting to be unlocked. For now, though, nV is where it's at.

Yeggstry · 24 Jul 2008 at 13:12

The ATI GPU client isn't optimised yet, so there isn't a fair comparison between the two yet.

Psypher5 · 24 Jul 2008 at 23:37

does the gpu one do the same "thing" as the cpu one? Like amber something.. etc?

so it does it faster, or does it start a new wu

Cob · 24 Jul 2008 at 23:49

The GPU client uses a different core and different work units.

Think I read somewhere that they're using it for a different kind of research.

Psypher5 · 25 Jul 2008 at 08:36

ooh i think i finally have them working right now (before it just used to do a test protein, then log fahmon with the same info as my cpu)

finally got the quad smp thing working properly aswell so its using 100% of everything in my pc

Biffa · 26 Jul 2008 at 01:15

Had $102 in US rainforest vouchers so orderd a GS from there, sent to the US office using free delivery, so should get it in the UK in a couple of weeks. Then I'll turn my slowest seti rig over to the folding cause once more