Why does CPU work units give less credits than a GPU?

[_kernels]

Hello! I'm very quite new to folding@home. I recently joined because I just found out there are grids other than BOINC.

PRCG 11751 which is GPU work would award 25.8K.
PRCG 14545 which is CPU work would award 3.73K.

My other dedicated computer for grid computing also reports the same thing, GPU work gives more credits.

I'm not too concerned about credits or points, but it feels like computers with a good GPU is more important than a good CPU...
Is it?..

I have a good CPU but a bad GPU(I don't game) and I'm kind of worried that I'm not as helpful, I guess.

My specifications if required are:
CPU: Ryzen 7 2700x - 16 logical cores
GPU: Radeon R7 360

[PantherX]

Welcome to the F@H Forum _kernels,

I can't speak about other distributed projects and GPUs but I can talk about F@H and its GPU usage

CPUs perform different calculations than GPUs so this isn't an apples to apples comparison. However, at F@H, the higher the credits you get, the more science is being done. The reason your GPU gets more credit is because they are insanely good at performing specific calculations and they can do it really fast. CPUs on the other hand can perform different calculations that the GPU can't handle but not as fast. Thus, CPUs get less points. However, now high-end CPUs (AMD Ryzen 9 and Threadripper) are pretty powerful and get a decent amount of credits, comparable to a mid-range GPU.

[JimboPalmer]

F@H has two ways to get Points.

Your base score is based on the amount of science you do. If you complete the Work Unit before the timeout, you get the base score.

Your Quick Return Bonus, which you are eligible for if you get a passkey, rewards you for doing science quickly.

A CPU may do 32 calculations at the same time, but a GPU might do 1000, thus it is much quicker. As PantherX mentions, it is less versatile, so there is still work for CPUs, but if it can be done on a GPU, it is normally much quicker.

(Think of Molecular Biologists as toddlers, they not only want their toy, they want it NOW)

https://foldingathome.org/support/faq/points/passkey/

[HugoNotte]

You mention Boinc, have you done any GPU WUs on any Boinc project? If you have, most probably you would have noticed a similar situation there. The GPU would rake up higher credits than CPU work of the same project. Your processor got 16 threads, if you allow F@H to fully use it. F@H then reserves 1 thread to feed the GPU and 15 are available to crunsch a CPU project. Your GPU got 768 shaders, which are in a way comparable to CPU cores / threads (not quite, but in a simplified manner they are). Even though they are only clocked at 1 GHz and your CPU cores might run at about 4 times that speed, the GPU is way more capable of crunching large amounts of data.
As far as I understand (I haven't been here that long either yet) the big difference between Boinc projects and F@H is, that Boinc allocates 1 WU per CPU thread, while F@H allocates 1 WU per CPU slot. Unless you have divided your CPU into 2 or more slots, F@H sees 1 CPU with 16-1=15 threads for CPU WUs. Those WUs differ vastly and there are some that are specifically allocated to CPUs with higher thread count and some that are allocated to CPUs with lower thread count or even single thread CPUs. Same with the GPU WUs here, unlike at Boinc where a project would have 1 type of ATI (usually OpenGL) and 1 type of Nvidia (CUDA) WU, the F@H servers look at your GPU's capability and assign WUs accordingly.
Since there might not be a specific CPU WU available which is optimized for 15 threads, your CPU might also be a little under utilized compared to BOINC, where every thread may run its own dedicated WU.
In essence, GPUs can do certain, specialized computations much faster than CPUs and therefore get more points allocated.

[PantherX]

The safest CPU value in your case would be 12. It will is a nice safe number and allows the GPU to fold and have a bit of extra cycles free to process anything else you might be doing if it's a system you use daily.

[Neil-B]

Worth noting that the QRB has a 10 WUs requirement for a passkey/username pair so may not start appearing in your stats right away … https://foldingathome.org/support/faq/points/

What are the qualifications for the QRB?
The bonus is applied for users who use a passkey, have successfully returned at least 10 bonus-eligible WUs, have successfully returned 80% or more of assigned WUs, and returned the unit before its Timeout (formerly Preferred Deadline). Bonus points do not apply to partial returns.