Great news - nVidia GPU folding soon

The Coolest · May 22, 2008

Users of nVidia GPUs, supporting CUDA will soon be able to fold using their video cards, and it should be pretty fast according to this article:
http://www.pcper.com/comments.php?nid=5679

Found it here originally:
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=188726

Shiggity · May 22, 2008

7000 petaflops going unused!

They also hint at the 'upcoming Nvidia GPU', I'm assuming they mean the new 280GTX

+1 to F@H

WarriorII · May 22, 2008

All I have to say is:

It's about darn time.

NoWhereM · May 22, 2008

Sounds good, I hope it will take advantage of sli and that it comes out soon.

hank123 · May 23, 2008

sweet our good cards will be put to use!

harlam357 · May 23, 2008

Good news for all those running nVidia... I posted about CUDA here, heck, about a year ago... nice to see Vijay and group finally got around to putting it to work.

Unless I see some insane ppd numbers... I will stick with my CPUs and save my GPUs. My feeling is that it will be tough to beat the points per watt ratio on a dedicated cpu.

sno.lcn · May 23, 2008

This is the best news I've gotten all day! :attn:

Hooray nvidia! :clap:

*Too much free time at work

Shiggity · May 23, 2008

We would have had Nvidia F@H clients much sooner, it just took this long to get Nvidia to agree to it / help. Mostly because Nvidia didn't want it to be only ATI, yay competition.

Another post about it - http://folding.typepad.com/ - looks like it gets a really sweet visualization client like on the PS3

Super Nade · May 24, 2008

One more link stating that Folding on NV GPUs can begin....
http://en.expreview.com/2008/05/24/foldinghome-nvidia-gpu-client-unveiled/

blakehenry00 · May 24, 2008

If the Folding@Home client is based on CUBA, that means Folding@Home will be accessible for all the GPU above GeForce 8XXX

hank123 · May 26, 2008

whens this going to hit?

dark bishop · May 26, 2008

it says on nvidia gpu's that support cuda, doesnt that mean the tesla and quadro series cards?

Leviathan41 · May 27, 2008

Wow, their new card is supposed to fold 5 times faster than the PS3! Don't know if it's exactly right, but still impressive :thup:

As far as exact numbers go, this sucker (the GTX280) can fold at 500 mol/day, which is much higher than the Radeon HD 3870 numbers (170 mol/day), five times higher than PS3 numbers (100 mol/day), and astronomically higher than the average computer numbers (4 mol/day).

http://www.techpowerup.com/index.php?61210

Sorin · May 27, 2008

Leviathan41 said:
Wow, their new card is supposed to fold 5 times faster than the PS3! Don't know if it's exactly right, but still impressive

Yeah. GPUs have gotten pretty ridiculous in terms of the power they're capable of. The raw computational power they have is just stupid (I mean that in the good way). For what? Purely for the sake of making gamers happy. Who would have thought we (gamers) could drive technological advancement in such a beneficial way.

It's really awesome that the rest of the industry is finally coming around to using the ungodly number crunching power GPUs have. I know the calculations GPUs do are pretty specific (unlike a CPU, which is more general), but it's still very useful.

I'm just waiting for the day the parts on a graphics card become upgradable so that you can build a semi-custom graphics card just like you can build a custom computer. Hell, they're mini computers already as it is. You've got the processor, the memory, the motherboard and a heatsink. Not holding my breath on this one though.

Shiggity · May 27, 2008

Except that you can buy an entire Q6600 folding rig for as much as 1 280GTX

Zerix01 · May 27, 2008

dark bishop said:
it says on nvidia gpu's that support cuda, doesnt that mean the tesla and quadro series cards?

Cuda support is on all Geforce cards (consumer level and professional) 8xxx series and up.

This has to do with the stream processors in the G8x G9x chips which have no predefined use (like all cards prior) which means they can be programed for general use floating point calculations.

If they bring this to Linux (not holding my breath) I will buy a second 8800GTS to occupy my lonely second PCI-E slot. The code GROMACS and CUDA are very portable so a Linux version is not out of the question but like all things Folding@Home they need time and resources to get it done.

Zerix01 · May 27, 2008

Hmm looking over at the Folding Forums.... it looks like they already have a beta GPU2 client with Nvidia support. Look around a bit and you will see they do plan on releasing a Linux and Mac OS X client once the Windows version is stable.

http://foldingforum.org/viewforum.php?f=42

WOOT

WarriorII · May 27, 2008

So... which Nvidia cards can be Folded?

Th3 F4ll3n P1mp · May 27, 2008

I read about this on XS. Looks pretty promising. Btw, if you guys thought a ps3 racked up points like crazy, wait till you do it on a g92 core. Ps3 is g80 btw.

Zerix01 · May 28, 2008

Th3 F4ll3n P1mp said:
I read about this on XS. Looks pretty promising. Btw, if you guys thought a ps3 racked up points like crazy, wait till you do it on a g92 core. Ps3 is g80 btw.

PS3 uses a G7x series GPU and the PS3 Folding client only uses the Cell processor, the GPU is not used in the PS3.

So... which Nvidia cards can be Folded?

Opps I guess it isn't released yet but will be supported in a soon to be released beta. The following is a quote from the Folding forums right from the main man himself.

by VijayPande on Fri May 23, 2008 5:35 pm

We should be able to support any card/driver combo that supports CUDA (most G80 cards or later).

Great news - nVidia GPU folding soon

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