Do you know how well folding at home works on the PS3 compared to other PCs?
Also, I'm curious how well the cell is utilized, or what percent?
New PS3 client
Sony has released an upgraded client for the PS3. Check out Noam Rimon's (he's the lead developer at Sony) post:
Hello,The upgrade should significantly improve the networking performance.
Starting today a new version of Folding is available. This version is a minor fix to the previous 1.3 version and adds a better tuned algorithm that handles peak performance hours of Folding@home network, by acting differently to certain network errors if those occur.
It is recommended that you update to the new version by quitting the application and restarting it. Your current WU will not be damaged in any way, in-fact Folding will continue from the exact point you have stopped it.
Please also check the official Sony Folding site here: http://www.scei.co.jp/folding/en/update.html
We can already see a stabilized network activity for the last 5 days. With the new update we are certain that the network will continue to be stable for good.
At this point I would like to thank people again for being patient and continue to donate to our project while Stanford & Sony was working on the fix.
Thanks,
Noam
Sony Development Team
Do you know how well folding at home works on the PS3 compared to other PCs?
Also, I'm curious how well the cell is utilized, or what percent?
It works great, but the work units have short deadlines. I think the performance is around 900 PPD? That's very low in comparison with modern GPUs or even a quad-core CPU, but better than nothing if it's all you've got. That doesn't mean it isn't optimised, it's just how they score it.
My PS3 blows hot air out (comparative to that after a gaming session) the exhaust when it crunches F@H so I'd say it's probably utilising the cell to a high percentage. Not a very quantitative answer, sorry.
Is it still worthwhile to fold on a PS3? My PS3 is coming today(it's out for delivery according to the UPS website), and although I intend to mostly use it for gaming and Bluray, I'm wondering if it's worth it to use it for Folding.
If the figure (900 PPD) I mentioned in my last post in this thread was accurate, and you care about stats, then I wouldn't bother running it.
Most capable GPUs will pump out thousands of PPD, and so will a quad-core CPU.