Pharra

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

PS3 Dominates Folding@Home, but that doesn't mean what we think it does

The Folding@Home numbers (which show the PS3 as accounting for 2/3rd of all calculation power when it numbers 27,000 to almost 200,000 computers) imply a fallacy.

According to Folding@Home, GPUs account for the greatest amount of calculations (while CPUs are necessary for others). But the only GPUs supported are flagship tier ATI 1900XT & 1900XTX (presumably 1950XT as well), not Nvidia nor 1800XT's.

This makes the PlayStation 3 greatly weighted against the PC, because not only do they have seven Cell processors (GPUs, in Folding@Home's eyes), but most PC's don't have the required videocard to even try to take on the PS3.

This makes the PS3 seem to dominate computers, when the reality is that it's not an even playing field.