Folding@home

Creator: Stanford University

Folding@home is possibly the most successful GPGPU application at the moment, with ATI pioneering GPU-based folding years ago with its Radeon X1000 range of GPUs. Since then, folding has spread to the point where Nvidia has supported folding on all GPUs since its GeForce 8-series.

Folding is a client-based distributed computing application that simulates protein folding to aid our understanding of complex diseases such as Alzheimer's, Mad Cow Disease (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington's, Parkinson's disease, and many Cancers and cancer-related syndromes. To add some interest to the furthering of scientific and medical research doesn't hold any interest for you, Stanford also has team- and user-based leaderboards, so folding is also a competition.

To fold on your GPU, visit the High Performance Client page and download the latest version. The client downloads work units (aka 'projects') from Stanford, and each work unit is worth a certain amount of points.

You can monitor your folding progress via the FahMon tool, which will calculate how quickly your card can get through the current work unit and extrapolates a points per day (ppd) figure. You can join the Custom PC and bit-tech Folding team (currently ranked fifth in the world) by using the team number 35947. Your contribution is valued.



The Gigabyte GeForce GTS 250 1GB, just as any GTS 250, is a very capable folder, producing around 5,500 PPD. The reason that the card on test performs slightly worse than the stock GTS 250 is likely due to the slight differences in folding projects and shouldn't be taken as a real difference in performance.

Similarly, the slightly higher folding power consumption of 280W in comparison to 270W for a 512MB GTS 250 is likely down to the differences at the GPU level, as each GPU off a wafer has different characteristics to the next. With that said, it's still comfortably the most thirsty card when folding in this test group.