Four Cards in SLI!

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^eMpTy^

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http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=22151

Pushing the price/performance ratio to ever more absurd levels...apparently those dual 6800ultra and dual 6600GT cards will be able to run in SLI with another like card...for FOUR GPUS...

At the very least I think it's safe to say ATi won't be winning back the 3dmark crown any time soon...other than that and the obvious wow-factor...this is going to be ludicrous...in a very cool way, but ludicrous!
 
^eMpTy^ said:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=22151

Pushing the price/performance ratio to ever more absurd levels...apparently those dual 6800ultra and dual 6600GT cards will be able to run in SLI with another like card...for FOUR GPUS...

At the very least I think it's safe to say ATi won't be winning back the 3dmark crown any time soon...other than that and the obvious wow-factor...this is going to be ludicrous...in a very cool way, but ludicrous!
Click to expand...

Isn't it going to be possible to link 4 Radeons in AMR? Personnaly I'd prefer 4 R520's. And I think 4 X850XT PE's would dump on 4 Ultra's.........Altho 3dMark means fuck all really

Also tell me if I'm wrong but aren't there only a handful of games that actually work with SLI? Along with 3dmark of course. Now what is know of AMR, are game profiles needed or will it play all games off bat, straight away?
 
This has been rumored for awhile. I can only imagine the speed. I'm quite impressed with dual 6600GT's, I can only imagine what 4 6800 class GPU's would do :eek:
 
^eMpTy^ said:
...this is going to be ludicrous...in a very cool way, but ludicrous!
Click to expand...


No. Its going to be very hot. I don't see how 4 GPUs are going to stay cool. :p

 
Tigerblade said:
Isn't it going to be possible to link 4 Radeons in AMR? Personnaly I'd prefer 4 R520's. And I think 4 X850XT PE's would dump on 4 Ultra's.........Altho 3dMark means fuck all really

Also tell me if I'm wrong but aren't there only a handful of games that actually work with SLI? Along with 3dmark of course. Now what is know of AMR, are game profiles needed or will it play all games off bat, straight away?
Click to expand...

Ummm...I dunno about AMR...no rumors there yet...

There are currently like 70 games that work with SLI (might want to read the front page from time to time)...
 
Isn't this impossible since the cards are already utilizing SLI? Just having SLI over one pcb instead of two?
 
shadowbreaker513 said:
Isn't this impossible since the cards are already utilizing SLI? Just having SLI over one pcb instead of two?
Click to expand...

Whats wrong with Sli +Sli? Or Sli inside of Sli?

 
I said nVidia would probably upgrade their SLI config some time this year along with releaseing their new G70/G80 cores possibly towards the end of the year.

And as far as game profiles go, nVidia is working hard to increase the number every day and the games that actually need support are most likely already supported. Nobody cares about running SLI in Quake II.

Some of you guys preach about the cost of a SLI rig but an AMR setup will cost just as much and since AMR isn't even released yet noone knows if it will even work right :).
 
Ati will again beat Nvidia's butt with their technology. Time will tell...
 
Tigerblade said:
Also tell me if I'm wrong but aren't there only a handful of games that actually work with SLI? Along with 3dmark of course. Now what is know of AMR, are game profiles needed or will it play all games off bat, straight away?
Click to expand...

There are many games supported by SLI... and you can write your own driver profiles to tell it which mode of SLI rendering to use. Basically, the nVidia people run benches over and over again on a game to determine which mode of SLI works better for it then they write it to the driver... but now you can do it yourself with coolbits so *all* gamse are in essence supported (YAY I ran Diablo II with SLI :eek: )
 
Intel_Hydralisk said:
but now you can do it yourself with coolbits so *all* gamse are in essence supported (YAY I ran Diablo II with SLI :eek: )
Click to expand...



Yay for 40,000,000 FPS :eek:
 
Tigerblade said:
Isn't it going to be possible to link 4 Radeons in AMR? Personnaly I'd prefer 4 R520's. And I think 4 X850XT PE's would dump on 4 Ultra's.........Altho 3dMark means fuck all really

Also tell me if I'm wrong but aren't there only a handful of games that actually work with SLI? Along with 3dmark of course. Now what is know of AMR, are game profiles needed or will it play all games off bat, straight away?
Click to expand...

Err... there are already issues brought up here on AMR's bandwidth usage. Some people (me included) are already considering the performance issues of using the motherboards PCI bandwidth to facilitate communication between two AMR cards.

With two GPU's on two cards (As the article says). That would mean that the amout of data sent between the two cards is atleast doubled right? And if this trend continues. You might be able to add as many dual GPU cards as the number compatible slots on your mobo. How does 4 dual GPU cards in SLI sound? ;) Now imagine AMR and all that card-to-card data being sent through the mobo :eek:
 
I think the major problem would be the CPU bottleneck. With two GPU's, the cpu is already limiting how fast they can go... Even when benched with a 4000+, the cpu was limiting the speed of the two cards. How much of a bottleneck would the cpu be with 4 GPU's ??
 
Intel_Hydralisk said:
I think the major problem would be the CPU bottleneck. With two GPU's, the cpu is already limiting how fast they can go... Even when benched with a 4000+, the cpu was limiting the speed of the two cards. How much of a bottleneck would the cpu be with 4 GPU's ??
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More and more reason to push for PPU's eh? :D
 
Sly said:
Err... there are already issues brought up here on AMR's bandwidth usage. Some people (me included) are already considering the performance issues of using the motherboards PCI bandwidth to facilitate communication between two AMR cards.

With two GPU's on two cards (As the article says). That would mean that the amout of data sent between the two cards is atleast doubled right? And if this trend continues. You might be able to add as many dual GPU cards as the number compatible slots on your mobo. How does 4 dual GPU cards in SLI sound? ;) Now imagine AMR and all that card-to-card data being sent through the mobo :eek:
Click to expand...

Lol, yeah it would be shit off a shovel, and PS3.0 would at last be useful on the 6XXX series, but I think any more than 4 gfx cards (?!) or 2 x dual core would be overkill and a serious power drain. Imagine trying to feed 4 6800 ultra's? What kind of PSU is that gonna need?
 
Theoretically speaking one has to think that if you keep adding more and more video chipsets together that eventually the latency will nullify any increase in performance you'd get with multiple video chipsets.

Just thinking outloud
 
Tigerblade said:
Lol, yeah it would be shit off a shovel, and PS3.0 would at last be useful on the 6XXX series, but I think any more than 4 gfx cards (?!) or 2 x dual core would be overkill and a serious power drain. Imagine trying to feed 4 6800 ultra's? What kind of PSU is that gonna need?
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Probably the same kind of PSU your going to need for R520's.

The transistor count on the R520 is suppost to be around 300 - 350 million. The transistor count on a 6800 Ultra is 220 million whereas the transistor count on an X800XT PE is 160 million.
 
Before long.

Our power supplies are going to be rendered null.

IN their place will be micro-fusion reactors.


Atleast, thats what I predict if things keep going this way :D
 
burningrave101 said:
The transistor count on the R520 is suppost to be around 300 - 350 million.
Click to expand...

Doesnt this mean its yeilds would be poor or they got some new process? cooling it is going to be a nice and loud too heh.

The only 4x PCI-E slot motherboards i can ever see being produced would be dual cpu and aimed towards the graphics developer market(4xSLI quadros would be rather nice), not gamers. That means it'll have that nice server overhead on it too so the board'll probably cost about $650 :p.
 
Can't remember where i seen it but ati had something like 32-34 r300's working together for some military sim.
 
Wow, that's very cool. I'm sure every super rich person is gonna get it.


Correct me if I'm wrong though, but doesn't AMR also have the same capacity?
 
Tigerblade said:
What kind of PSU is that gonna need?
Click to expand...

Mine might be able to handle it, and the 850w pc power and cooling with 60amps spread over 4 12v lines would handle it with ease.
 
MeanieMan said:
What kind of off-topic, fan-boy, assholish comment is that?
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Its not off topic. He is suggesting ATi's SLI will be better than NV's, whih is on topic. Good job resorting to name calling though. :rolleyes:
 
T-nm said:
Ati will again beat Nvidia's butt with their technology. Time will tell...
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Dude c'mon, I prefer ATI stuff to, but I'm not blind, if Nvidia releases better tech, which is also faster, I'll get an Nvidia card, I won't really feel good about it, but if Nvidia makes a card that gets 100FPS in my favourite game, and ATI releases a card that gets 80FPS in that same game, Ill get the Nvidia, just because it is faster...


You give ATI Fans a bad name (Super Fan Boy)
 
fallguy said:
Its not off topic. He is suggesting ATi's SLI will be better than NV's, whih is on topic. Good job resorting to name calling though. :rolleyes:
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The OP never mentioned anything about ATI tech. Just about SLi and what it can do. Thus his post was off topic flame bait. I called it as such.
You want a topic about how some unreleased AMR tech is supposed to stomp something thats going have at least a year of consumer feedback, go right ahead.

 
Hate_Bot said:
Dude c'mon, I prefer ATI stuff to, but I'm not blind, if Nvidia releases better tech, which is also faster, I'll get an Nvidia card, I won't really feel good about it, but if Nvidia makes a card that gets 100FPS in my favourite game, and ATI releases a card that gets 80FPS in that same game, Ill get the Nvidia, just because it is faster...


You give ATI Fans a bad name (Super Fan Boy)
Click to expand...


same


I went from a 9700 pro to a x800xt-pe to a 6800gt to 6800 ultra's in SLI. And to be honest, I liked them in this order:

1. SLI
2. X800xt-pe
3. 6800GT
4. 9700 pro.

Faster it is, more I like it. I like both brands.
 
MeanieMan said:
The OP never mentioned anything about ATI tech. Just about SLi and what it can do. Thus his post was off topic flame bait. I called it as such.
You want a topic about how some unreleased AMR tech is supposed to stomp something thats almost a year old, go right ahead.

Click to expand...

Ok ok, stop, noone wants this to become a flame war.




Back on topic:


I wonder how it will split the screen up between 4 cards! Should be mighty complicated. Like one frame is one card, the next frame is the next card, the next frame is the next card, and the last frame is the last card, then it starts over again...


Also, cooling 4 ultras will be hard enough, it will be damn near impossible to find a waterblock that fits a dual GPU card!
 
computerpro3 said:
same


I went from a 9700 pro to a x800xt-pe to a 6800gt to 6800 ultra's in SLI. And to be honest, I liked them in this order:

1. SLI
2. X800xt-pe
3. 6800GT
4. 9700 pro.

Faster it is, more I like it. I like both brands.
Click to expand...

Ya SLI Is damn fast. Once nvidia releases a card that has Dx10 support, Ill see which is better (AMR with R520s, SLI with 7800Ultras)
 
It's not surprising though, considering that SLI=Scalable Link Interface. The only problem is that no board today can handle it short of Tyan's dual-nForce4, the S2895(?)- and that's only in theory. The reason for that is the if you check the traces on the dual-GPU cards, each GPU gets half of the x16 slot, or a dedicated x8 apiece. IOW, you need a motherboard with at least 32 PCIe lanes, and I don't know of any chipsets that can supply that yet.

And I think it was SGI that had a huge multi-R300 rig; these graphics chips had built-in support to load-balance with up to 255 other VPUs simultaneously, as did R350/360 afterwards. I'd be surprised if R420+ didn't have it as well.
 
I have a question. I remember there was an SLI mobo that, when one of the PCI-E slots wasn't used, couuld be used as a PCI-Ex4 slot. Couldnt you have like... 4 PCI-Ex16 slots.and say you want like 4 ultras or X850XT-PEs there, you can put them in, but when you only have 1 or 2 cards in there, the remaining slotscould b switched to x4 mode, so you can put various network adapters and sound cards etc...
 
computerpro3 said:
same
I went from a 9700 pro to a x800xt-pe to a 6800gt to 6800 ultra's in SLI. And to be honest, I liked them in this order:
1. SLI
2. X800xt-pe
3. 6800GT
4. 9700 pro.
Faster it is, more I like it. I like both brands.
Click to expand...

Very good scaling chronology there. I feel the same. Both brands are good. Most real professional type gamers (more like flight sim-type gamers that play LOMAC for instance) and understand flight dynamics - and need a reliable platform as a mainboard and just a really fast graphics setup with as little tweakage as can be and just fast running. Some just bypass overclocking altogether and get the fastest stock platform they can get. That way it's always 'game on' and never 'reboot'. The older i get the more i just don't give a damn about overclocking. Just a fast reliable setup.
 
This sounds like even more power that people dont really need at all. CPUs are already bottlenecking sli setups, but dual cores might help that a little. What people also dont realize is that it doesnt matter if your computer can run HL2 at 10,000 fps, if your monitor cant show more than 60fps. As for the waterblock qestion, I could see 4 Maze 4s or 2-connected M4s + a bunch a ram sinks cooling everything, on its own seperate loop. Then of course you would have to make a mount for the cards so that they wouldnt bend in half with all that weight.

dualsli.jpg


Right now, games need to catch up to technology it seems, although nothing really graphically intense has come out recently. S.T.A.L.K.E.R., F.E.A.R., Q4, Elder Scrolls 4 (forgot name right now), etc. might be able to pull a quad sli setup below 100fps :p
 
FunkStar said:
The only 4x PCI-E slot motherboards i can ever see being produced would be dual cpu and aimed towards the graphics developer market(4xSLI quadros would be rather nice), not gamers. That means it'll have that nice server overhead on it too so the board'll probably cost about $650 :p.
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Actually i think chipsets a few generations out will have 4 if not more pci-e. With backwards capabilities i dont see why all the pci slots of today wont be phased into pci-e. Bigger bandwidth for raid cards and other pci cards. It will be an option but im sure there will be chipsets available to just about any motherboard manufacture to use that will utilize 4 if not 6 pci-e slots...
 
ok, wow, 4 GPUs, thats like 50,000,000 in 3dmark '05 and you can get like 300fps in HalfLife2 or something. That is something I want to try. 4 6800 ultras, sweet.
 
Chameleoki said:
And we all know that the human eye can't see over 24fps.
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I thought it was 60, same difference.

Also, the Nforce Pro 2200, or something like that, isn't it supposed to support like a boat load of PCI Express lanes? like 80? Anyone remeber the articles about it?
 
http://www.legitreviews.com/article.php?aid=152&pid=1 said:
According to the information we have received from NVIDIA, each nForce Professional 2200 MCP has the capability to be matched with up to three of the nForce Professional 2050 chipsets on a single board
Click to expand...
Each one has 20 PCIe lanes, so you were right about the eighty! However, I would be hesitant about running SLI off of two different sources- different latencies could cause problems, though I guess it could be done if Tyan is comfortable with its design.
 
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