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 bit-tech and Custom PC folding team (currently ranked fifth in the world) by using the team number 35947. Your contribution is valued.


Thanks to an enhanced core speed, the MSI GTX 285 HydroGen OC powered to a PPD result of 8294: a stonking result for a single core graphics card. This was with project 5762 combined with a credit of 384 points. If you're looking for a way to fold without cooking your graphics card, the MSI GTX 285 HydroGen OC is definitely worth considering, however multiple cards do have the barb issues we discussed previously.

Even in our lab which has been decidedly toasty in recent days, thanks to the very pleasant weather here in London, the delta T (temperature above ambient) after half an hour of folding was just 19°C, with GPU-Z reporting a maximum temperature of 46°C.

Power Consumption

Power consumption was unsurprisingly high compared to the other single core graphics cards with the MSI GTX 285 HydroGen OC topping every chart. It's important to remember here that we're adding a Laing D5 pump and high RPM fan to the equation which add around 30W to the total system power draw we've recorded since the HydroGen cannot operate without some form of additional watercooling loop.