As I understand it, if I run the graphical version, but I close the window that does all the drawing, it runs as fast as the command line version. Is that true?
I find that that is essentially true.
Yes, it seems to run pretty much the same speed that way. Just set your screen-saver to go to a blank screen and not spend cycles drawing pictures. :-)
It's "estimated" by what, I don't know, that the command line version might get you up to 5% performance increase, but I don't think anyone has stopped folding, long enough to benchmark that, and prove it right or wrong. If you've got a powerhouse video card, that offloads some of the processing from the cpu, I wouldn't think that there would be much difference at all.
And yes, closing the drawing window, removes a lot of overhead from the client, and is "close" to the speed of the command line version. But all computers are not alike, so actual mileage may vary :) But I would think that a 5% increase, would be the MAXIMUM performance gain you could expect, and realistically, a lot less.