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Software Folding@Home GPU Client Updated
Anh Tuan Huynh (Blog) - December 5, 2006 12:46 AM
Print 23 comment(s) - last by Ringold.. on Dec 6 at 7:26 PM
New version adds support for Radeon X1800 and X1600

Folding@Home has released a new Folding@Home GPU client. This brings the GPU client up to version 5.91 beta2. While previous Folding@Home GPU clients only supported ATI Radeon X1900 series graphics cards, the latest beta2 adds support for more GPUs. This release adds support for ATI’s Radeon X1800 and X1600 series of graphics processors.

As the Folding@Home GPU client relies heavily on pixel shader performance, the performance differences between the X1900-series and other ATI GPUs is tremendous. The Folding@Home GPU FAQ claims:
We now support serveral classes of GPU boards, including X1600, X1800, and X1900 class GPU's from ATI. At the launch, we supported X1900 cards only. X1800 cards do not provide the performance seen in X1900's and so we strongly recommend X1900 class cards (although we now officially support X1800). X1900 and X1800 cards are actually quite different -- they have different processors (R520, R530 vs. the R580 [in the X1900 series]). The R580 makes a huge difference in performance -- its 48 pixel shaders are key, as we use pixel shaders for our computations.
The latest beta2 release still only supports ATI GPUs. There’s no mention of support for NVIDIA GPUs at the moment. The latest Folding@Home GPU client can be downloaded from the Folding@Home download page.

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8800gtx
By jkresh on 12/5/2006 1:40:51 AM , Rating: 2
I understand why they didn't end up supporting the 7800/7900gtx's (though I believe the project actually started on the 7800), but with the 8800's incredible shader performance I really hope they release something for it soon. As it would be nice to get a comparison between the 8800 and the x1950 in terms of general purpose gpu (the 8800 should win).




RE: 8800gtx
By otispunkmeyer on 12/5/2006 4:10:01 AM , Rating: 3
it should be easier to do on the G80 too, since its 128 shaders are unified (scalar) and NV even have something called CUDA where programmers can write programs in C and have them work on the 8800


RE: 8800gtx
By Xajel on 12/5/2006 4:30:22 AM , Rating: 2
even if it's nice to see the comparison, but to be fair; we should wait for R600 and do the compare between it and G80 :)


RE: 8800gtx
By phusg on 12/5/2006 6:51:31 AM , Rating: 2
Strange sense of 'fair'. The R600 isn't availble yet, so what's wrong with comparing the fastest cards that you can actually go out and buy? As long as you redo the comparison when the R600 is out I don't see the bias.


RE: 8800gtx
By mindless1 on 12/5/2006 8:28:38 AM , Rating: 3
Are you insane? This is not a video card fanboy contest, it is merely what can be used to get a lot of F@H work done, like, now, not some grand "what if future thing" nonsense. There is no fair or unfair, there's what hardware someone HAS and whether it can be put to good use.


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