Stanford releases folding client for Nvidia GPUs

Posted at: 6:07pm 18th June 2008 by Ben Hardwidge

Latest CUDA driver download and new BETA folding client finally opens up the Folding@home world for owners of Nvidia GPUs

Nvidia first told us that its GeForce 8-series GPUs were capabale of folding back in 2006, but it’s taken until now to get a working folding client for the GPUs. Yes, after years of faffing around trying to get Nvidia GPUs folding, Stanford has finally come up with the goods, and released a BETA folding client for Nvidia GPUs.

The new client hasn’t yet made it to the Folding@home downloads page, although the project’s founder, Vijay Pande, says that it will be there soon if the client works well for most people who try it. In the meantime, you can grab the BETA 6.12 client for yourself from here. Pande insists that the client is still an early release, and that there is still ‘lots to fix,’ including ‘issues with the visualization and the EUE handling.’ However, there is apparently a roadmap to get these issues sorted out.

If you plan on trying out the client for yourself, then bear in mind that you’ll need to use Nvidia’s latest CUDA-equipped driver, which you can grab from here. The current BETA CUDA 2.0 driver is 174.55, which apparently has some problems with games, though, so only download this if folding is a bigger priority for you than games at the moment. CPC forum user and top folder CPC_RedDawn has also provided a link to ForceWare 177.35 here, which has a modified INF file to support CUDA, and also apparently supports Nvidia’s new GTX 200-series GPUs. You’ll need a minimum of a GeForce 8-series GPU to run the new folding client.

Folding@home is a distributed computing project that simulates how proteins fold for the purposes of medical research. By getting thousands of people to donate their spare CPU cycles to the project, Stanford university hopes to help find cures for Alzheimer's, Huntington's, Parkinson's disease, and many Cancers and cancer-related syndromes. You can help the project by downloading the client, and joining Custom PC’s world-leading folding team by using the id 35947.