ZhengHe
03-25-2008, 12:10 AM
The short answer to this is maybe, assuming Microsoft can get it's act together. Although it is questionable whether or not they will see this as a valuable endeavor to spend their time on let's for a moment assume that they do.
If so then according to a variety of sources, including this article (http://www.theinquirer.net/en/inquirer/news/2007/05/10/xbox-360-could-beat-ps3-in-folding) from the Inquirer, it could. What it comes down to is a question of graphics cards. The PS3 runs off a the Nvidia Geforce 7900 while the XBox 360 runs off the Xenos Card, a rough approximation of a Radeon X1900XT.
Now while the PS3 cell processor could easily run circles around the 360's CPU Microsoft's ATi graphics card could easily outpace that of the PS3. This is not to mention that with some minor tweaks the 360's card is ideal for folding as we have seen from the prodigious production of ATi GPU's recently.
Of course this is all assuming that Microsoft catches on and decides to make is easier for it's users to fold in their spare time. We have seen what kind of results the addition of 50,000 PS3's can making for Folding@Home, but imagine how much 50,000 more XBox 360's could benefit the project. We could easily see speeds in excess of 2 petaflops by the end of 2010. Now wouldn't that be and achievement. Still, I'm not holding my breath since to Microsoft it doesn't appear to be quite so attractive a deal as it would to us.
This is the console that not so long ago was bursting into flames, because of inadequate cooling. Even though those issues have been more or less solved running a console a 100% for months on end, might exasperate other issues in the console. Additionally it is now that Microsoft is receiving major competition from both of it's competitors and they would probably rather concentrate and that then something like Folding@Home whose cost vs. benefit must seem comparatively minimal. In any case we will have to wait and see either way.
If so then according to a variety of sources, including this article (http://www.theinquirer.net/en/inquirer/news/2007/05/10/xbox-360-could-beat-ps3-in-folding) from the Inquirer, it could. What it comes down to is a question of graphics cards. The PS3 runs off a the Nvidia Geforce 7900 while the XBox 360 runs off the Xenos Card, a rough approximation of a Radeon X1900XT.
Now while the PS3 cell processor could easily run circles around the 360's CPU Microsoft's ATi graphics card could easily outpace that of the PS3. This is not to mention that with some minor tweaks the 360's card is ideal for folding as we have seen from the prodigious production of ATi GPU's recently.
Of course this is all assuming that Microsoft catches on and decides to make is easier for it's users to fold in their spare time. We have seen what kind of results the addition of 50,000 PS3's can making for Folding@Home, but imagine how much 50,000 more XBox 360's could benefit the project. We could easily see speeds in excess of 2 petaflops by the end of 2010. Now wouldn't that be and achievement. Still, I'm not holding my breath since to Microsoft it doesn't appear to be quite so attractive a deal as it would to us.
This is the console that not so long ago was bursting into flames, because of inadequate cooling. Even though those issues have been more or less solved running a console a 100% for months on end, might exasperate other issues in the console. Additionally it is now that Microsoft is receiving major competition from both of it's competitors and they would probably rather concentrate and that then something like Folding@Home whose cost vs. benefit must seem comparatively minimal. In any case we will have to wait and see either way.