the new GPU2 client for NVIDIA cards

[sbohdan]

found some info on the recently released BETA version of the GPU2 client for NVIDIA cards. you can download the new client at the high performance client section here: Folding@home - DownloadWinOther

Santa Clara (CA) – During Nvidia Editor's Day, we learned that Nvidia and the Folding@Home research group led by Vijay Pande are making final preparation to launch the first version of the Folding@Home client for Nvidia graphics processors.

The unveiling of the client is set for the next week as part of the launch of Nvidia’s GT200 GPU series. Owning such a card will have its benefits in Folding@Home and will outrun Radeon 3870 cards. The new GeForce cards are expected to hit more than 650 nanoseconds of protein simulation in a single day, while the Radeon HD 3870 is stuck at about 170 ns. The Playstation 3 is able to produce "only" 100 ns of simulation, while a quad-core CPU creates an output of just four nanoseconds. For those who are keeping count: The GeForce GPU will be about 163 times faster than a quad-core processor in this specific application.

Nvidia founded Team “Whoopass”, which consists only of several computers that are running the Folding@Home GPU client. Even with just 4-5 test machines, the team quickly moved into the top 5% of all contributors by sheer processing power. Dr. Vijay told us that if only 1% of all CUDA-capable users would start using Folding@Home in their spare time, the Folding@Home machine would quickly be considered the fastest performing HPC computer in the whole world – hitting about 60-80 Peta FLOPS of processing power.

Folding@Home for Nvidia CUDA-capable graphics cards (GeForce 8 and above) should become available next week. The codename for this client is GPU2/NVIDIA. The GPU1 client was retired, while GPU2 client will continue to be updated for both Nvidia and ATI cards.

ATI was first with a client for the Folding@Home project, which was released back in September of 2006 for the X1900 series of cards. Back then, the cards topped out at 375 GFlops. The next GPU generation should provide more than double the horsepower.

amazing power

some more facts:

We're happy to roll out the beta nVidia client, it's a nice beta, and so here we go...

First and before you do anything else, LOOK OVER THE FAQ. Lots of important things in there that you'll need to know if you do anything beyond run the installer and run it.

Drivers
You MUST use the 174.55 version of the drivers (or better, from that URL) for now. You do not need the other files, just the drivers.

Known bugs:
It's a beta, and yes we meant that, not like Google but like software engineers - expect glitches and updates. The main thing is that the viewer will not work, as we're in the middle of changing how the live coordinates get to the viewer. Other then that, visit our nVidia beta Forum to see what's happening.

Download:
6.12 beta 6

Basic Requirements:

• a GeForce, Quadro, or Tesla card that supports CUDA (G80 or later for the most part)
• A CUDA capable driver, version 174.55 is recommended. Or 177.35 for GTX cards.
• 32-bit Windows operating system, XP or newer (better Vista support coming soon); 64-bit Windows operating systems appear to currently be incompatible (We're working on this too.)

[screwballl]

wow that nvidia GPU setup should produce mass points!!

[Dread]

One of my 8800GT cards is pulling around 4,200 PPD with the GPU2 client.

[screwballl]

I'd like to see some numbers from the ATI 48X0 cards...

[sbohdan]

Originally Posted by Dread

One of my 8800GT cards is pulling around 4,200 PPD with the GPU2 client.

its too bad it isn't for the hardware Logic team
our whole team doesn't have a PPD of 4200 all together...

anyone else who considers HL as his forum, would join the team and be a part of something great at the same time strengthening our position in the folding community? lots of you have powerful setups and GPU's not to mention the new quads.