Tech Report reports Folding@Home will take advantage of ATI graphics processing power in the near future. Folding@Home claims performance of 100 gigaflops per computer will be achieved by taking advantage of ATI’s graphics processing power. ATI GPU support appears to only be for R5xx series of graphics processors according to the Folding@Home high performance client FAQ. The GPU powered Folding@Home client runs considerably faster on R580, Radeon X1900, X1950 series, than R520, Radeon X1800 series, most likely due to the R580’s 48 pixel shaders.
NVIDIA GPUs are currently unsupported at the time as the Folding@Home project has been concentrating its efforts on ATI GPUs as the ATI GPUs perform significantly faster than current generation NVIDIA GPUs. Folding@Home also previously announced its Cure@PS3 project to take advantage of the PS3’s processing power. DailyTech awaits the day Folding@Home optimizes its client for Bigfoot Networks KillerNIC.
The ATI optimized Folding@Home client is expected to arrive towards the end of September. And, of course, if you needed another reason to stock up on ATI R5xx cards, ATI is still expected to release a driver for Triple Play.
