Download Folding@Home GPU Client 5.05 beta

The folks behind the Folding@Home project have released their first video card client. The GPU client v5.05 beta can be used on ATi’s X1900 series Radeon cards and requires the Catalyst 6.5 drivers for optimal operation. In order to run the client on the gpu, DirectX 9.0c is also required, with the file d3dx9_30.dll as the most important part. In addition to the console client linked below, a graphical client is also available. However, this will ensure that the performance is significantly lower, because both the graphics and the calculation of the results in that case rely heavily on the GPU. The current beta version of the Folding@Home client is not recommended for newbies. There is no changelog yet as this is the first release, but the release notes state the following:

Known Bugs

• The GUI pause core command doesn’t work
• The GUI Client will automatically quit when running fullscreen directx apps (games), it may be a little slow at doing this though
• In some rare situations, one needs to set the Hardware acceleration to max if the Catalyst install didn’t do this. To do this, go into the Display properties/Settings/Advanced/TroubleShoot tab and double check that the Hardware acceleration was set to “Max”.

Known compatibility issues

• One must use specific Catalyst drivers (6.5 or 6.10) and a recent DX version– see the HOW TO above
• The GPU core does not run under WINE in linux (nor do we have plans to support WINE)

Trouble shooting EUEs

• Some Alpha testers have found an excessive number of Early Unit End’s (EUE’s) — we have not reproduced that at Stanford or ATI and we need help from beta testers to help track this down. If you see many EUE’s (ie more than 20%), please make a post in the GPU section of the forum with your system configuration (ATI driver version, DX version, OS) and hardware (card, CPU, motherboard type). With the help of beta testers, we hope to nail down what’s going on.
• If you are seeing lots of EUEs, please download the ATItool application and check that your core voltage is set to 1.4V. This has been shown to lead to problems.