Save money by Folding @Home (A DreamBuild PSA)

Hopefully, all y’all know what Folding @Home is, so I’m not going to go into detail about what it is, but for anyone out of the loop here’s a summary of it: Folding @Home is a program that once installed, uses spare CPU or GPU power to simulate protein folding, and then sends the information to a database in Stanford University which will help scientist better understand the role of proteins in diseases like Alzheimers, Huntington’s, various cancers, etc.  It’s a pretty utilitarian project, or at least it was, until EVGA decided to take things up a notch.  You see, with Folding @Home you can either give data as an individual, or join a team (such as EVGA’s) and donate as a team.  Not much comes from having a big team except bragging rights, bragging rights that EVGA seems to desperately want.  So desperately in fact that they are giving away “EVGA bucks” (Money that can be used to buy EVGA products from their website) and 10% off the b-stocks, which are better than the title suggests.  Want in on this action? Here’s the link http://www.evga.com/folding/promo.asp.  You’re gonna have to register with the EVGA website, and download the GPU version of Folding @Home.  There are some requirements: A CUDA-class GPU’s for NVIDIA (primarily G80 and later) and R6xx or later GPU’s for ATI, as well as WINDOWS (Ominous Music).  If you can play TF2 I think you should be okay in both of these categories, but maybe you should double check.

Guide to joining the EVGA Folding @Home Team: Link

Stanford University’s Foldin@Home website: http://folding.stanford.edu/

Geforce GTX 275

Click the picture for specs

A while ago Nvidia announced and released a new video card, the GTX 275.  This graphics card is a beast, no doubt.  This new card is the fastest single GPU card on the market, outpacing the ATI Radeon HD 4890, which is ATI’s fastest single GPU card.  How does it stack up to Nvidia’s line of cards though?  Not surprisingly it is faster than the GTX 260, but not quite as powerful as the GTX 285.  Want more?  Engadget has a good little review round-up of it as well as the ATI Radeon 4890. By the way, the best price is only $20 less than Newegg.com which has much better customer service – your call.

Best Review: Engadget’s Review Round-up

Best Price: ($241) http://www.eworldsale.com/bfg-bfgegtx2851024oce-geforce-gtx-285-1gb-gddr3-pci-e-20-x16-video-card_5871_30380.html

ATI Radeon HD 4870 x2

Lets talk ATI Radeon HD 4870 x2, also known as the R700.  I know, I know, we just had post comparing this to the GTX 295 – and gave the nod to the GTX 295 – but lets take a second look from a second perspective.  The GTX 295 is a very powerful GPU, and no one is going to argue that.  In fact it may be the most powerful GPU on the market right now, but it is not necessarily the best.  Allow me to shed light on the subject, and give some ATI enthusiasts some much deserved justice.  While the video above is a little bias (ATI made the video for marketing) it’s point is still valid.  Even though the 4870 x2 is technically one card, it does squish two GPU’s into a single case, but guess what?  So is does a GTX 295.  Not only does the R700 (Radeon HD 4870 x2) hold it’s own in the FPS race, it also runs much cooler than the GTX 295 – which is known to have some heating issues.  Not only that, the ATI 4000 series stands alone in the GPU market as Direct X 10.1 ready. That’s one whole tenth of a number better! Sure it’s a technology not yet utilized in any software, but future proofing a PC adds to the value of the component. (Future Proof P.C. = oxymoron)   As for the cost?  Check out this deal for the 4870 at ewiz.com for $415.00 .  Comparatively, whats the best deal I could find for a GTX 295?  $487. OUCH!  Now, it’s time to be “fair and balanced.”  There is no clear cut winner in the GPU battle.  There is just too much variability in a PC.  What Mother Board your using, how much RAM you have, which OS you use, what company actually made your GPU, and maybe most importantly, what games you plan on playing (Crysis, for example, is optimized to run on NVIDIA cards.)  You can Google search “geForce GTX 295 vs. ATI Radeon HD 4870 x2” all you want, your never gonna find a definitive answer.  Because of this, I recommend the better deal($$$ wise), the ATI Radeon 4870 x2. Now please rise, and take off your hats, as we add the R700 to our Dream Build.  SPLADOW! – you may now be seated.

For ATI Radeon HD 4870 x2:

Best Review: http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2008/08/13/amd-ati-radeon-hd-4870-x2/1

Best Video Review: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTR3qXk83q0

Best Deal: www.ewiz.com

NVIDIA vs ATI – The Latest and Greatest

Brand loyalty. When I think of brand loyalty, the two companies that come to my mind are NVIDIA and ATI (and Intel vs AMD, but that’s another post… Oh, and Coke vs Pepsi, but that has nothing to do with anything). There are far too many pointless arguments on the web with little data to back them up. How about I shed a little light on the subject? Maybe a little data comparison of the latest and greatest of both?

Let’s start out with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295:

GPU

• 480 cores (240 per GPU- that’s right, there are TWO GPU’s in this puppy – quad SLI anyone?)
• Default core clock: 576MHz (easily overclockable to, 700MHz)
• Default shader clock: 1242MHz
• Texture Fill Rate (billion/sec): 92.2
• Fabrication size: 55mm

Memory Specs

• Memory Clock (MHz): 999MHz
• Standard Memory Configuration: 1792 MB GDDR3 ( 896MB  per GPU)
• Memory Interface Width: 896-bit  ( 448-bit per GPU)
• Memory Bandwidth (GB/sec): 223.8

Now for the ATI Radeon 4870 X2:

GPU

• 1600 steam processors (not to be confused with cores as NVIDIA uses)
• Default clock: 750MHz
• Fabrication size: 55mm

Memory Specs

• Memory Clock: 1000MHz
• Standard Memory Configuration: 2GB GDDR5
• Memory Interface Width: 256-bit

The ways that ATI and NVIDIA make their cards are very different, hense the stats are not directly comparable. Moral of the story – the cards both look great, the 4870X2 has more memory at a higher bandwidth (2GB GDDR5 compaired to the GTX 295′s 1.8GB GDDR3), however the 295′s 480 cores and tremendous bandwidth are nothing to scoff at. No matter which brand you remain faithful to, and I know you have your reasons, numbers do not lie.

As you can see, in this performance test, the GTX 295, by a simple calculation, performed 19.3% better (31.5 fps vs 26.4 fps) than the 4870 X2.  An EVGA GeForce GTX 295 comes in at around $560 (on Newegg.com of course), and a Diamond Radeon 4870 X2 will run you about $515 (you guessed it, Newegg.com). The almost 20% fps increase will run you about $45, which is well worth it to me. Plus, with EVGA’s step-up program and amazing customer service, I would put my money in the GTX 295 (if I’m already spending $500+ dollars for a graphics card, I might as well spend $45 more to get that extra ‘oomph’ of performance, but that’s just me).

I hope this has shed some light on the subject of Nvidia vs ATI, but I know that anything I say here most likely won’t change your loyalty, I just ask one favor – keep an open mind.

Great Deal

Newegg is easily my favorite Etail store.  Today they have a XFX Geforce GTX260 and a Seagate Barracuda 640GB Hard Drive for $200 (After a $30 mail in rebate).  Newegg is even throwing in a 4GB Flash drive to sweeten the deal.  Not that any of these things really belong in a Dream Build, they do fit very comfortably in a very respectable build.  Those GTX260s are more than capable for the hardcore crowd.  Given a shout out to SlickDeals.net for the heads up!

GTX260 + 640GB HDD + 4GB Flash Drive for $200.