Folding Forum

I like how the article highlighted the differences in the chip architectures, but how the performance of each was not that much different. There is no direct correlation to folding, but the results of the article tends to match what Pande Group has said about the performance differences between AMD and NV... after the GPU2 client/cores mature a bit more, and WU sizes come up a bit more, they end up being about equal, with pros and cons on each side. Please keep comments and replies out of the fanboy realm. Thanks.

ATI Stream vs. NVIDIA CUDA - GPGPU computing battle royale

Please keep comments and replies out of the fanboy realm. Thanks.

Well time will tell in short order. The next generation of cards is just around the corner for both. Too close to call at this point, we'll see when they come down to the wire.

7im wrote:I like how the article highlighted the differences in the chip architectures, but how the performance of each was not that much different. There is no direct correlation to folding,...

ATI Stream vs. NVIDIA CUDA - GPGPU computing battle royale

You should stop here.

First: MSE, PD7/8, Nero Move It, MediaCoder, SuperLoiLoScope are using the same Nvidia CUDA H.264 encoder, PD, MSE and AVIVO Converter are using the same ATi's AVIVO encoder (atixcode.dll). So all this software is just a GUI for AMD's/Nvidia's encoders.
Second: ATi's AVIVO encoder is piece of crap, Nvidia's H.264 is better and more advanced (eg CABAC). The speed advantage doesn't matter, if the quality is bad. (and compared to MediaCoder MSE is a bad joke)
Third: There is no GPGPU battle in this article, if you compare A with B. There is software like BarsWF (http://3.14.by/en/md5) or http://www.elcomsoft.com/ewsa.html, which uses same algorithms.
And the main thing is: Video encoding and md5 cracking use GPU's integer power, but F@H uses floating point formats, or am I wrong?


(Honestly: Nvidia has already won the GPGPU battle, because AMD doesn't do anything)

(Honestly: Nvidia has already won the GPGPU battle, because AMD doesn't do anything)

Well, as I alluded, this is yesterday's news rehashed and re-fried. The next generation chip from AMD is just around the corner:

RV870 is the biggest change since R600
http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/15076/1/

How many Shaders, what clock, Etc. etc. will be out shortly. Will these hardware changes improve folding?..., remains to be seen.
How OpenGL 3.1, and full DX11 will affect folding also remains to be seen. But nothing in this business is stagnant for long.
But looking backwards to older generation cards just doesn't really make sense.
Its a work in progress for both. Mainstream applications for NV aren't exactly in every home yet either.
It will be more of a horse race in this coming quarter, than it has been for the last year