Hd 4850 vs 9800 gtx+? Ur opinion?

[baron5]

im interested to know how folding works on the cards, are all vertex, geometry and pixel shaders all used? or does it use unified shader instructions that are sent across all three types of shaders. the 4870 has like 800 shaders, even if it wasnt under stress shouldnt it be able to process more in folding by using unified shader instructions? or does this come back to idea of having different types of shaders between ati and nV

[ricanflow]

The shaders are used in the form of parallel processing.

The cards do work in 3d mode, but there is no 3d rendering going on, the client uses CUDA/CAL as the api for processing the work units.

CPU usage is very low because all the CPU does is feed the data, the calculations are done by the shaders.

ATI does have more shaders, but Nvidia shaders work faster even though theres less of them...so Nvidia cards are slightly faster (for now).

The first generation client ran off directx and, thus was much slower and nowhere near as stable. And it wasnt very accurate in terms of science either. Instead of shaders, it used pixel pipelines.

The fastest cards were the x1900 series, which could get a good 700ppd when oc'd.

Now, an 8600GT can do twice as much at stock speeds.