News Quad GPU SLI!

[WilHarris]

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2005/06/01/quad_gpu_sli/

[kenco_uk]

Well, it should be around ten minutes into the interview by now.

The prospect of Quad GPU's sounds incredible.

[ralph.pickering]

There was nothing wrong with the GPU on my Commodore 64, goddarnit!! I remember the days when 8x8 sprites in 16 colours was all we were given and all we expected, and we were happy with it. Darn interfering nVidia and their wallet-busting dual-dual-GPU goodness!

Where do I get one? I mean two...

[LoneArchon]

If quad 6800 works that would be about 2 grand just for the video subsystem. Then the power use the msi card was stated using 230w at Idel. But still great none the less. I would like to see quad 6600 for a resonble price

[Jock]

Its all just far too OTT.

When is it all going to end.

Bring back just 1 VGA card where benchmarking is a skill, and not just down to how much money you have.

[Da Dego]

Originally Posted by ralph.pickering

There was nothing wrong with the GPU on my Commodore 64, goddarnit!! I remember the days when 8x8 sprites in 16 colours was all we were given and all we expected, and we were happy with it. Darn interfering nVidia and their wallet-busting dual-dual-GPU goodness!

Where do I get one? I mean two...

Oh how true, how true... *thinks of all the old-man rants he's issued from the days of dos*

Quad 6800s...I would like at this time to bring your attention to the thread where we're discussing the PS3 gpu, we have moved on to the idea of why the heck we don't just implement raytracing instead of finding 15 million algorithms that requires this much processing power. This thing will be a foot warmer that sounds like a jet engine. Sweet, but a foot warmer jet engine.

[RFID]

When discussing these issues you must consider two fundamental things that dictate the progress of technology - money and the limitations of the current market.

There will always be people willing to spend the excessive amounts of money to have the fastest GPU subsystem. And there are certainly hardware limitiations that dictate the size of the cards and thus the functionality of those cards. So it is logical that the dual GPU on one card is a natural evolution of what is currently available, and that the next logical step is combining two of these cards together to achieve a 'higher level' of processing power. Although at current it is unlikely that any software would 'need' that much power or would indeed be able to utilise all that power effectively - perhaps the new Unreal 3 Engine will be the intended use?

I foresee that this technology being coupled with the recent development of liquid metal cooling to avoid the situation described in the best quote I have heard in a while:

Originally Posted by Da Dego

This thing will be a foot warmer that sounds like a jet engine. Sweet, but a foot warmer jet engine.

But lets wait for the word to confirm the possibility of this development.

Just my thoughts on the subject.

[JADS]

You know I wonder if MSI is going to attempt to shove a couple of these into one of their new ZMAXd2 SFFs?

Quad CPU cores + Quad GPU cores + SFF = The ultimate one finger salute

[kickarse]

It's just simply amazing the possibilities

[Nexxo]

Originally Posted by JADS

You know I wonder if MSI is going to attempt to shove a couple of these into one of their new ZMAXd2 SFFs?

Quad CPU cores + Quad GPU cores + SFF = The ultimate one finger salute

No, the smouldering square hole in your desk and floor boards is.

I am thinking that this is going to be a solution more for large-screen/high-res gaming or CAD/CAM rather than very fast gaming. I also can't help but thinking that by the time that software has progressed far enough for this sort of power to come into its own (let alone be required), you will be able to get all this power on a single, cooler and more compact GPU solution. Think the Voodoo5 6000; a huge card that needed its own PSU. A few years later it was totally owned by a humble regular sized, frugal nVidea or Radeon card. Trust me; in three years all this power will come in a single standard PCI-e 16X card.

[-EVRE-]

WELL!!!! we want to know what you talked to nVidia about!
is quad core 6800 a reality?!

[The_Pope]

Hi Guys,

Thanks for EVRE for drawing my attention to this thread: Computex week was SO busy this year that it's not easy to keep track of everything.

While NVIDIA PR wouldn't confirm that Quad SLI exists, there apparently is little to prevent it existing... the official statement was along the lines of "The NV4x GPU has always been designed as a scalable platform, meaning you can take one and add another to create SLI, and you can even take two and use them on the same board. In theory, you could use more, but that decision is up to our board partners."

Please note that this is a paraphrase and NOT a direct quote. So, as we suspected, I would be possible... as I speculated, every-fourth-frame AFR wouldn't be hard, other than the existing issues with certain games not working with AFR. And despite my reservations, there was nothing to suggest that Quad SLI couldn't be used in "Scissor" mode: instead of dividing the scene into two halves, it would just be sliced into four segments.

However, I would suggest the overhead for calculating the load across FOUR GPUs dynamically would be even more than for two.

At the end of the day, this is all just a bit of fun - speculation based merely on the presence of the SLI connector on these dual-GPU cards. The reality is that SLI is expensive enough without doubling the price AGAIN; we can see a possible need for a dual-GPU card for those wanting SLI in their SFF box, but overall, it's hard to see why these cards exist, beyond a "look what we can do" marketing point of view.

[toyomatt84]

Is there any updates to the release/non-release of this card? I'm extremely interested in the abilities of this card, since I prefer not using 2 cards for SLi, seeing as it's not worth that second card purchase.

[Nexxo]

Three manufacturers have released one: MSI, Gigabyte and Asus. However Google as I might, I cannot find any for actual sale...

Just get a single 7800 GTX instead. Cheaper, and it pwns.

[Sea Shadow]

How about that ASUS card that has dual 7800 GTs on the same PCB? It was on the news page, and the article is over at PC Perspective. Crazy big card.

[toyomatt84]

Well, I'd have to see the numbers to compare the two cards. I'd like to see both in a one-on-one comparison.