Home-made GPU farm with 51 Nvidia 8800's

[+M2Ys4U Subscriber¹]

They have a new(er) client that utilizes the mass power from GPUs, although it would probably be cheaper to go with the CPU rendering route. Imagine getting a few Quad-Socket motherboards and stuffing some Quad-Core Processors in there..That'd be orgasmic.

According to that thread he used to have a cluster of Core2Quads but sold them and bought this (with a lil extra investment).

Apparently using GPUs gives the best bang-for-buck.

[BigCheese]

They have a new(er) client that utilizes the mass power from GPUs, although it would probably be cheaper to go with the CPU rendering route. Imagine getting a few Quad-Socket motherboards and stuffing some Quad-Core Processors in there..That'd be orgasmic.

Is it possible to run both the GPU client and the CPU client at the same time?

[Bryan R.]

According to that thread he used to have a cluster of Core2Quads but sold them and bought this (with a lil extra investment).

Apparently using GPUs gives the best bang-for-buck.

Yeah that does make sense.

Is it possible to run both the GPU client and the CPU client at the same time?

I was wondering the same thing. I'm going to be trying this when I get home.

[funkymunky]

WOW :)

Good lad.

However if it was me, I'd use it all for Seti@Home then ask the Aliens for the cures when we make contact :) 3 birds with one stone lol

[gwai lo]

I dont claim to know anything about how they research diseases but i think they do more than just use computers.

Then read Stanford's site to see what they're simulating on their worldwide cluster. Healing people doesn't just take place in labs with microscopes and pipettes.

[Dc'1]

He could have just bought a PS3 :/ they are a bit smaller :p

[Sethos]

Then in 50 years when the cure for cancer still haven't been found and we're all half past dead, have no electricity and our nuts are freezing off, he can pat himself on the back :p

[RAID 0]

Is it possible to run both the GPU client and the CPU client at the same time?

Yes. I run World Community Grid on my CPU, and do F@H on my 8600 at the same time. The only downside is the computer REALLY slows down.

[(Spork)]

wow wow wow

/salute for attempting to help cancer (Y)

[funkymunky]

Can anyone link to the GPU client for this please :)

[gwai lo]

http://folding.stanford.edu/English/DownloadWinOther

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

but i think you can just run the folding client on each computer instead (i don't know since i've never folded) that would seem simpler than clustering them

Yeah, I was thinking more along the lines of splitting a normal task up (e.g. rendering), F@H would just be run multiple times on the different systems.

They have a new(er) client that utilizes the mass power from GPUs, although it would probably be cheaper to go with the CPU rendering route. Imagine getting a few Quad-Socket motherboards and stuffing some Quad-Core Processors in there..That'd be orgasmic.

I'd still prefer the GPU's, they'd be faster (and probably cheaper)

[daz-]

Alot of mis-understanding about it in this thread..

World Community Grid does some AIDS research, I'm not sure what other group does it directly.

Also, Folding@Home is much more then just Cancer. It looks more at the basics of human life (Proteins), and this can help scientists in MANY more ways. When you actually look at diseases it turns out we really know nothing about what causes them yet. We have rough ideas of what causes Cancer or Alzheimer's but until you can get down to the root of its cause, we'll really have a difficult time finding better cures/treatments. Folding@Homo and Rosetta@Home will shed some much needed light on research. This research can help deal with Cancer, Alzheimer's, Diabetes, AIDS.. the list is potentially endless.

I saw a comment about donating the money to researchers instead. But from my last point, part of the problem the researchers are facing is that we simply don't understand the diseases well enough. We've been donating to them for 30+ years now, and while things have gotten better, we're not much further ahead. What we need is to simulate protein behaviors and work forward from there. (sort of like establishing a base or foundation).

Also GPU's are VERY much faster than CPU's in this type of work. CPU's are designed for general work, were as GPU's are highly specialized and very parallel. I have the newest 8-core mac pro with an 8800GT and I get about 3000 points per day in Rosetta@Home (on 8 cores) and my 8800 gets about 3000 points per day in F@H. Check out this F@H stats page for an idea of the sheer power of GPU's. Notice the ratio of terraflops to actual processors.

You'll also see the PS3 on there. The cell processor in the PS3 is highly parallel, and very well suited to this type of work too. Im surprised so many people run it on their PS3's considering how hot they get and how much electricity they consume, but its for a good cause.

And for some people, the majority of their power comes from renewable non-polluting sources (my city is powered mostly by our dam) so the biggest problem with a setup like that would be the powerbill.. point being is energy use is not always about polluting.

[gwai lo]

Ah, WCG does AIDS. Man it's been a while, I was with grid.org some years back when they were doing UD, then switched over to F@H. Totally didn't keep up with them when they made the full transition over.

[Shaun N.]

thread rez?