F@H on GPU's by the end of September?!

[TollhouseFrank]

August 2006 We're running on the cluster and starting to ramp up. Vishal's new method to build cores should yield a FAH core soon, but it will take a lot of Q&A (GPU folding is much more sensitive to machine configuration) so it will still take some time before we release the core. It's pretty exciting for us to see the calculation racing away on the GPU cluster! Prof. Pande also formally announced FAH's GPU client at his award lecture at the Protein Society meeting, with a great response for the GPU work. We will be making a more formal announcement of the GPU client and some other surprises relatively soon. Note the update above regarding GPUs -- we currently plan to support only recent generation ATI GPUs (see above).

We are beta testing the ATI GPU client software internally at the moment and will likely announce an open beta in four to five weeks (end of September).

 

[||Console||]

will be interesting to try out thats for sure

 

[z0n3]

Darn. I don't have any ATI GPUs. Why no Nvidia?

 

[||Console||]

the thing i want to know is how well will it work on vid cards i mean they are only liek 500-700mhz

 

[Macaholic]

the thing i want to know is how well will it work on vid cards i mean they are only liek 500-700mhz

Read the FAQ.

"GPUs have the possibility to perform an enormous number of Floating Point OPerations (FLOPs). However, they achieve this high performance by losing generality -- there are only certain types of calculations which would be well-suited to GPUs. However, after much work, we have been able to write a highly optimized molecular dynamics code for GPU's, achieving a 20x to 40x speed increase over comparable CPU code for certain types of calculations in FAH."

Darn. I don't have any ATI GPUs. Why no Nvidia?

"Previous work of ours used NVIDIA GPUs as well, but we have now concentrated on ATI GPU's as they allow for significant performance increases for FAH over NVIDIA's GPU's (at least at the current generation)."

Just the FAQs ma'am. Sgt. Joe Friday.

 

[Epox4life]

the thing i want to know is how well will it work on vid cards i mean they are only liek 500-700mhz

Well the bandwidth on these video cards is pretty crazy if you take the GDDR3 into the equation.

 

[khiloa]

No ATI cards here either.

 

[Macaholic]

No ATI cards here either.

Look guys. Face it. Time to Ruby up!

 

[swebarb]

Ah cool ive read about that im sure gonna try it on my ati card.

 

[dwschoon]

I also read that not just any ati card will work. It may require it be at least an x1900xt, which means you have to have a very expensive high end card to run it. I hope they dont have such strict requirements.

 

[Macaholic]

I also read that not just any ati card will work. It may require it be at least an x1900xt, which means you have to have a very expensive high end card to run it. I hope they dont have such strict requirements.

Yes. From the FAQ;

"Our GPU cluster has 25 1900XT's and 25 1900 XTX's. We find a considerable performance increase of 1900XT's even over 1800XT's, due to the architectural differences between the R580 and R520 GPU's. Our code will run on R520's, but considerably more slowly than R580. We're very much looking forward to trying out R600's."

But, you can get a X1900XTX from MSI for the paltry sum of $276 (after $150 mail-in rebate). <cough> Beats the heck out of buying a new processor and motherboard to take up more space.

 

[||Console||]

should be cool to see a x2 with a CF setup with 4 FAH clients running =)

 

[Rpkole]

well i guess my old x600 that i have laying around wont work

 

[Karbon]

I remember this being suggested a while ago, it's great to see they worked on the idea and got this far with it

 

[dz_jad]

and some other surprises

hmmmm I like the sounds of that!

 

[KingFish]

Damn, and I was keeping my stack of ATI Rage Fury Pro cards lying around for nothing

 

[Joe Camel]

JC's X1900 knowledge

.


Cooling


since ive played with 1900 cards A LOT (from a benching POV) i can tell you that the best way to cool
one of these cards is with this.

its like a $9 HSF on EGG
($13 if you only buy 1x ... if your new to drilling/tapping, buy 2 or 3 )

you need to drill and tap the holes though

actually, short of a custom (CPU) HSF, the stock HSF (@ 100%) is VERY acceptable, from a cooling POV
and can match (or beat) most of the aftermarket coolers out there

but

its REALLY noisy





OCing

there is a VERY simple program to OC the thing (ATITool) and you have control of ALL the cards Voltage settings (via software)
AND
BOTH GPU and Memory speed (via software)




Prices

DONT buy X1900's right now though...

the next gen of these cards is due out NEXT week!!! (x1950's)
so the X1900 price should be going down SOON
(the "NEW" card has the SAME core though!)





PS

since im an ATi FanBoi benching hardware FREAK, i have: X800 Pro, X800 XT-PE, X850 XT, and my 2 current: X1900 XTX, X1900 CF Master


.

 

[ihrsetrdr]

But, you can get a X1900XTX from MSI for the paltry sum of $276 (after $150 mail-in rebate). <cough> Beats the heck out of buying a new processor and motherboard to take up more space.

That's what I'm thinkin'.


JC, thx for the heads up on the 1900's!

 

[Joe Camel]

one other thought:

these things draw A LOT of AMPS off the 12v rail!!!!!

any system with a "generic, bare minimum PSU" might run into problems

40 plus amps on a SINGLE rail PSU is almost required to run these cards to their MAX (OC) in the 3D benching world

and even those monsters have a hard time running CrossFire
(im using 700W in my Bench rig )



side note:

i wonder if a CorssFire rig would get any FOLDing benefit???

 

[Macaholic]

one other thought:

these things draw A LOT of AMPS off the 12v rail!!!!!

any system with a "generic, bare minimum PSU" might run into problems

40 plus amps on a SINGLE rail PSU is almost required to run these cards to their MAX (OC) in the 3D benching world

and even those monsters have a hard time running CrossFire
(im using 700W in my Bench rig )



side note:

i wonder if a CorssFire rig would get any FOLDing benefit???

Yeah. I made sure to "future proof" the two Conroe rigs I just built using Antec TruePower 2.0 EPS12V PSUs. I think they should be fine for powering an XTX in each. No "bench monster" aspirations here. Just lean, mean, folding machines. I'm not quite sure how the CrossFire will pan out, but I'm sure Dr. Pande's group has planned ahead for some surprises.