ATI GPU F@H client to be released next week. - Folding@Home

Team Starfire World BOINC Forums

Project Forums

Folding@Home

ATI GPU F@H client to be released next week.

9/29/2006 9:33 PM

nutcase

Joined: 7/29/2006

Posts: 289

ATI GPU F@H client to be released next week. (United States)

http://ir.ati.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=105421&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=910520

It is supposed to be 40x faster than a P4 2.8Ghz [EMO]surprise.gif[/EMO]

9/29/2006 10:00 PM

Kinguni

Joined: 7/7/2006

Posts: 2507

Re: ATI GPU F@H client to be released next week. (Canada)

Crazy. Now, if they could get that BOINC version going....

9/29/2006 10:48 PM

MikeC

Joined: 7/5/2006

Posts: 148

Re: ATI GPU F@H client to be released next week. (United States)

Looks cool...

9/30/2006 3:07 AM

ScottMo

Joined: 8/2/2006

Posts: 90

Re: ATI GPU F@H client to be released next week. (United States)

Amazing. It also brought to mind the old Seti-accelerator hoax from early on in Seti Classic (chips from the guidence systems of dimantled ICBMs were placed on a PCI board and could be used to speed SETI). I wonder if one could use a ATI X1900 solely for crunching (ie: have two or three non-SLI cards for the sole purpose of ramping up DC). Even at the $250-350, its a pretty easy and fast way to maximize production.

Not that I have an ATI X1900. Or a pci-x system.. I am so far behind...

10/1/2006 5:08 PM

paul

Joined: 7/9/2006

Posts: 1182

Re: ATI GPU F@H client to be released next week. (United States)

After some explanation in irc from nutcase and Xaak, I better understand the processing power inherent in today's gpu's. As it was explained to me, gpu's are essentially extremely fast and powerful floating point processors, which is just what DC projects need. This is pretty amazing, I wonder why a BOINC app wasn't made utilizing this computing power.

Co-owner, the Group of 10 ~~100~~ ~~200~~ 300

10/1/2006 5:42 PM

Keck_Komputers

Joined: 7/30/2006

Posts: 176

Re: ATI GPU F@H client to be released next week. (United States)

There are 2 main reasons why GPUs have not been used for DC projects before.

Memory bandwith- Prior to the PCIx standard bandwith was all one direction, from main memory to the video card. The PCIx standard allows nearly equal memory transfer speeds in both directions.
Accuracy- Most GPUs are designed to get a close answer very fast, however a DC project usually needs a very accurate answer. Only the latest video cards have the capability to get an answer up to double precision standards.