What is the best graphics card for folding?

Results Analysis

The performance and power draw tests that we carried out highlighted major differences between the 17 different graphics cards in the bit-tech lab.

First and foremost, despite being the first graphics cards you could fold on, all of ATI's current crop of GPUs are massively outperformed by Nvidia's Fermi-based cards. For example, the GeForce GTX 460 1GB is an astonishing two and half times faster than the similarly priced Radeon HD 5850. Given that the GeForce GTX 460 1GB only draws 8W more than the Radeon HD 5850 when folding, the Nvidia card is clearly a lot more energy efficient too.

This trend continues at the high end of the market with the £380 GeForce GTX 480 dashing past the £500 Radeon HD 5970 more than twice as fast. As the GeForce GTX 480 draws 29W less than the Radeon HD 5970 when folding, this is a rare case when Nvidia's usually undesirable card actually becomes worth considering.

Conclusion

With these results in mind, we have to conclude that quite frankly, all the models of the ATI Radeon HD 5000-series of graphics cards are pathetically slow and inefficient folders.

To be honest though, this didn't come as much of a surprise to us. Ever since the first Nvidia GPU could fold, the legendary GeForce 8800 GT, ATIs GPUs have been in the shade of the speedy green demon.

There are various reasons suggested for this, ranging from accusations that's ATI hasn't optimised its CAL compiler very well, to Nvidia simply providing better support to Stanford when it was writing the various folding clients.

Whatever you believe, even Nvidia's previous generation GeForce 200-series cards are much better at folding than the Radeon HD 5000-series. What's more, unlike games, because you run a separate folding client on each GPU, dual-GPU cards are even better at folding than they are gaming.

As a result, the GeForce GTX 295 remains the fastest graphics card at folding. However, it is no longer the most power efficient graphics card when folding, that honour now falls on the GTX 480.


However, with the exception of these two cards, the Fermi-based GPUs are significantly more power efficient than GeForce 200-series when folding. This means if you have a significant number of these older cards in your folding farm, it's well worth considering upgrading to newer hardware as not only will your ppd increase, but your electricity bill will go down.

More than any other card, the GeForce GTX 460 stands out as a great buy for enthusaists who both game and fold. If you're doing both activities, we'd recommend buying the 1GB version, but if all you're intending to do is fold, then we think the 768MB version is the better buy as folding barely uses the on-board memory, so there's no benefit to be had from buying the more expensive, more power hungry 1GB version.