a majority of people own cheap, low end computers. and trust me, even though a 2k computer might be around 5 times as pwoerful as a PS3, real world performance won't reflect it nearly so much as games on the PS3 are more highly optimized. On the flip side, it's still 5 times more powerful and you do inevitably get higher frame rates and more eyecandy in the same game. consoles have their strong points, namely every single one of them is effectively identical. While gaming, everyone is on equal grounds in terms of the game and games can be optimized. On the other hand, they need time to be designed developed and their hardware must be mass produced. The net result is that consoles are almost always a generation behind on launch and typically have very little RAM. On the other hand, PC games tend to be "one generation ahead" and more or less kill todays hardware but run flawlessly and beautifully on the next generations hardware. They also cost more, though the cost to some is debatable as economy builds can often game as well as more expensive ones, just they're well i can't really explain it but not as snappy or responsive for general use. I use a PC enough to justify making it my sole gaming platform and investing more money into it. ============= again as for folding, Cell is the King of F@H no doubt. The PS3 just needs more RAM to make the most of it. It doesn't even need to be fast memory, maybe just 512mb of 'slow' DDR2 RAM to be used as victim memory.
i Hope M$ does this with the xboxes as well. since those have twice the system RAM, they might be able to do a bit more complex things(albeit Xenon is slower than Cell) then again Xenos would probably kick ass based off of it's R580 brotheren's performance in F@H what I don't get though is why the hell didn't Sony make F@H use the RSX GPU? chances are it has comapreable performance as compared to Cell, so they easily could have doubled the PS3s power. RSX can't Fold as well as Xenos could but it's still competent.
Well at least it can do something [w00t post 666 - i wont be posting anymore for a long long long long time lol. I will stick with 66 forevar0z] Goodbye Evrybody, if anyone asks, its because im sticking with 666
Like this one Anyway, I used to run Folding@Home on my PC awhile back, but I got bored of it, my computer just gheys up slow with it on.
it shouldn't slow down whatsoever assuming you have a sufficient amount of RAM on it, it only uses idle clock cycles and then releases them when the system needs the power for other tasks. the only real downside to F@H is that it increases your electric bill and can shorten the lifespan of your hardware(then again any use of stuff shortens it and most hardware becomes obsolete long before death so this isn't much of a worry.)
I've had it for 2 years, and yes it does slow down your PC, and I have 4GB of RAM with not much installed - my computer is a pretty fecking good system. Even though I am not idle, FAH is using 97% CPU Usage, so of course it's going to slow things down, and in the two years of it running, it's only folded 77 WU with 17,000 points (I need 20,000 to get into Custom PC magazine). Don't underestimate things. Seb
then there is somethign wrong because while iw as running ti i never experienced any slowdown whatsoever. go run prime and F@H simultaneously and you'll see F@H go way down.
http://www.tgdaily.com/2007/03/23/ps3_foldingathome_stats/ PS#s overpower current PCs on F@H by almost threefold. It's to be expected, the average F@H computer is comparable to a 1.5GHz P4, and A p4 cannot outfold Cell by any mans. this basically means that GPU folding needs to be expanded upon. basically, what it comes down to is if you want a bag/$ folder, go with GPU based folding ok. ATi's R580 (X1900XT) has 375 GFLOP/s processing power (cost is around $250) The entire summation of the PS3's Processing power at PEAK is 218 GFLOP/s Core 2 Duo@3GHz: 12GFLOPs BUT, one of Cells SPEs is disabled, and another is reserved for running the PS3s OS, so that's probably a bit off. so basically we can expect an x1900XT to be double that of Cell in most cases. If you wanted the absolute bang/$ then you could get two x1900GTs/x1950GTs/x1900pros for around $130 each and more or less get around 60% more performance than an x1900XT it's only sad that Cell has such poor gaming performance, ti has so much potential as a processor, why the hell did sony use it in the PS3s insteed of something else when it's so expensive. they could have used a chip which was half the price and it would have been faster. That's sony forcing it's standards onto the market...
