ps3 for folding

[Psycho Sonny]

right guys as you all know the ps3 is supposedly going to be very good for folding, and for some reason (although i have no idea why) some of you buy pc's purely for folding, will you be buying a ps3 purely for folding? if so i would like you to do some tests, idle temperatures, load temps, and leave it on folding 24/7 until it dies just to see how long it lasts, ive already predicted it wouldnt last longer than 6 months when running on 100% load all day everyday, would be an interesting experiment, how about we all do a prediction and see who gets the closest guess as to when it dies, so ive chosen 6 months exactly, maybe someone would like to make a table with predictions, 1 prediction per forum member, and 1 dedicated console (if 1 of you guys is going to do it)

 

[SiriusB]

1: What are you basing your prediction on
2: £400 is a lot of money to spend on something you are waiting for to blow up

 

[Mattus]

Who would waste £400 continuing to run Folding on a PS3 if it looks like it's gonna blow up? People may buy PCs to Fold but they don't run them kamikaze-style, if the rig's overheating it's time to up the cooling or lower the CPU usage. Likewise I'm sure there's a way to lower the CPU utilisation on PS3 folding, or just point a big fan at it or something

And I don't think Sony/Stanford would be going ahead with the PS3 Folding project if the console were liable to lunch itself fairly rapidly! I'd hazard a guess that Folding is less demanding on it than some games - both will run the CPU flat out but games will hammer the GPU as well, resulting in more heat.

 

[rich99million]

hehe

I think the very reason the F@H client has not been released yet is to give those early PS3's a chance to break naturally before sticking them to 100% continually to help out. I certainly won't be getting one for quite some time even if they do promise an amazing output because despite my dedication to the cause that amount of money is just a bit beyond what I could willingly spend on a F@H upgrade right now (tops would have to be £300 for the greasy bits for a basic Conroe to upgrade an old socketA).

I also don't think they will score that great either - their performance for Folding has been likened to the GPU client in terms of 20-40 times the speed in certain calculations, as for the points it all depends on the scoring system and I don't see them giving even more points than the already silly combination of Conroe and SMP. There are changes to the scoring system on the horizon so we'll just have to see what ends up where.

In terms of reliability I doubt they will have any more trouble than the early release X-Box 360 consoles and those weren't even running 24/7 - the cooling design on the PS3 looks to be pretty well thought out (the thing is quite huge after all) with heatpipes and a monster fan to keep the heat out it should stand a good chance.
Besides if it breaks in the first 12 months you get a new one - better than it lasting just a little longer and being entitled to nothing


Interesting times

edit: sign me up for 1 week - there's bound to be a duffer out there somewhere that just needs a little extra encouragement to shuffle off the mortal coil

 

[muon]

There will be a move to 65nm production soon as well which should help. Most retailers have cheap insurance policies you can take out as well so breaking shouldnt really be a problem IMO.