Multicore vs SLI

[leSLIe]

so is inevitable to arrival of dual or multi-core GPUs in the new vid cards, having a multi core vid would be like having a SLI setup right outta the box?, or parallel progaming techniques would have to be implement in software in order to take FULL advantage of the extra cores?, cuz there are a only a few applications that can take full advantage of the dual core capabilities of today dual-core CPUs, could the extra cores also be used as PPUs?

Would that be the dead of SLI?... nah!!

 

[RoffleCopter]

the thing with video cards is that they are already essentially 'multicore'. graphics processing is highly parallel and that is why SLi and X-fire work so well, whereas cpus work linearly, therefore you wouldn't see the kind of performance boost u get with gpus

 

[DJ_007]

well i beg to differ.... first of all this is a very poor comparison... ok video cards are only used intensly in some applications therefore you will see a more performance gain with an SLI system in say games... then you will in games with a dual core CPU vs. a single core unless the game is SMP capable which you still wont see as much of a difference... however lets say ur doing video editing while encoding music... ok a dual core CPU is going to help more there than having SLI vd cards... i hope my opinion is accurate and of help to someone........

 

[Entropy]

well i beg to differ.... first of all this is a very poor comparison... ok video cards are only used intensly in some applications therefore you will see a more performance gain with an SLI system in say games... then you will in games with a dual core CPU vs. a single core unless the game is SMP capable which you still wont see as much of a difference... however lets say ur doing video editing while encoding music... ok a dual core CPU is going to help more there than having SLI vd cards... i hope my opinion is accurate and of help to someone........

I think he meant multi-core GPU's VS SLI

 

[texuspete00]

well i beg to differ.... first of all this is a very poor comparison... ok video cards are only used intensly in some applications therefore you will see a more performance gain with an SLI system in say games... then you will in games with a dual core CPU vs. a single core unless the game is SMP capable which you still wont see as much of a difference... however lets say ur doing video editing while encoding music... ok a dual core CPU is going to help more there than having SLI vd cards... i hope my opinion is accurate and of help to someone........

That's random. I don't know what your talking about, but RoffleCopter is right on.

 

[Brent_Justice]

SLI/CrossFire is to GPUs what Dual Core is to CPUs

 

[Digital Viper-X-]

i think having 2 cores on 1 pcb/chip would be more efficient then SLI/Xfire

 

[MrWizard6600]

i think having 2 cores on 1 pcb/chip would be more efficient then SLI/Xfire

it is a little more expensive, your not the first to suggest that idea. it has been around since the 6600GT pci-e, giga-byte has 3 single PCB-dual core solutions, Asus has EN7800GT DUAL, uhh msi has a board thats not official, its sort alike a concept car, that is infact socketed graphics card, able to run two Goforce 6600GTs on a single PCB, plus the two minor PCBs of the Goforce cards.

as for multi GPU vs Multi CPU, both give huuuge increases in performance, i mean CPUs have just a differant case. lets say a single core has two threads, it has HT, and a game, ex Hl2, requires two threads to run, inorder to run ANY background apps, they would have to use the already bursting at the seams threads that HL2 is using. but id you have two of these CPUS, ie 4 threads, you could run HL2 (two threads) maybe a iTunes (one thread) and i donno Limewire (one thread) all at the same time. the HL2 threads have less strain and therefore higher FPS in high CPU stressed areas, and you get to listen to Rammstien while you blow up City 17! not to mention the wonders dual core CPUs do for encoding...

but multi gpu, is always beeing stressed, you want your multiGPU config. to go as high as it can! slap on that AF and 1600X1000--ifie that game!

more and more games are coming out to use the threads available on dual core systems, and pretty quick you can expect some "manditory" dual core games.

 

[Brent_Justice]

GPUs are already multicore, there are many "cores" in one chip as it is, it has been that way for a long time

Even multiple chips on one PCB or many PCB's is not a new idea and has been done already, both in the professional field and now in the consumer field

I'm trying to explain this to you all as easily as I can, maybe it is a limitation of text communication, the easiest way I can say it is like I said it above

SLI/CrossFire/Multiple Chips on one PCB or multiple PCBs is to GPUs what "Dual Core" is to CPUs.

People keep posting they want "dual core" or "multiple core" GPUs, but THEY ARE ALREADY MULTIPLE CORES

 

[SuperGee]

The problem with SLI and CF is in my opinion the need for texture copies for each GPU local Vidmemory.
The benefit of two seperate cores on one die and a shared crossbare mem controler would be one texture in video mem for both GP-Cores.
Think how ATI ring bus could come in handy or not?

So 512MB needed instead 1024MB of expensive Vidmem.

 

[Brent_Justice]

The problem with SLI and CF is in my opinion the need for texture copies for each GPU local Vidmemory.
The benefit of two seperate cores on one die and a shared crossbare mem controler would be one texture in video mem for both GP-Cores.
Think how ATI ring bus could come in handy or not?

So 512MB needed instead 1024MB of expensive Vidmem.

That doesn't make sense, chips are already multiple cores on one die!

All you have to do is double the various pipelines to double the performance.

Why don't people understand

 

[Digital Viper-X-]

GPUs are already multicore, there are many "cores" in one chip as it is, it has been that way for a long time

Even multiple chips on one PCB or many PCB's is not a new idea and has been done already, both in the professional field and now in the consumer field

I'm trying to explain this to you all as easily as I can, maybe it is a limitation of text communication, the easiest way I can say it is like I said it above

SLI/CrossFire/Multiple Chips on one PCB or multiple PCBs is to GPUs what "Dual Core" is to CPUs.

People keep posting they want "dual core" or "multiple core" GPUs, but THEY ARE ALREADY MULTIPLE CORES

I think what people mean is that they want 2 actual G71 "Chips" on one or 2 R580Chips on one die instead of having 2 seperate ones

which would also double the pipelines wouldnt it ?

 

[InorganicMatter]

I think what people mean is that they want 2 actual G71 "Chips" on one or 2 R580Chips on one die instead of having 2 seperate ones

Yeah, which doesn't make sense. Video cards right now have around 20 pipelines, that would be like having a CPU with twenty cores! Let me ask, would you rather have: a dual-core Opteron, or two single-core Opterons. The truth is, there's no difference in performance, and the single Opteron is waaay cheaper! Tough choice. Same thing here: why add a second GPU core (which would require a huge engineering feat), when you can just add more pipelines to the first core?

 

[Brent_Justice]

I think what people mean is that they want 2 actual G71 "Chips" on one or 2 R580Chips on one die instead of having 2 seperate ones

which would also double the pipelines wouldnt it ?

That would be way more expensive and pointless.

If you want double the perf just double the pipelines, that would be a lot cheaper and easier.

 

[Digital Viper-X-]

That would be way more expensive and pointless.

If you want double the perf just double the pipelines, that would be a lot cheaper and easier.

I'm just saying what people mean ><
Id rather have 2 gpus on 1 pcb then 2 seperate PCB meself just cuz of space constraints of having CF or SLI and not having any left over PCI slots :<

 

[Brent_Justice]

Of course the drawback to that is that the GPUs on this card won't be as fast separately as one separate video card because of power and heat constraints having two on one card. They will typically be clocked lower on core and mem.

 

[InorganicMatter]

Of course the drawback to that is that the GPUs on this card won't be as fast separately as one separate video card because of power and heat constraints having two on one card. They will typically be clocked lower on core and mem.

Plus, you have to come up with a way for the cores to communicate (read: huge latency hit).

 

[leSLIe]

yeah. SLI in one card, i´ve seen one of those before, i think it was from Asus, but there is already a Quadro FX 4500 X2 on the market, two gpus in one pcb.(http://www.nvidia.com/object/quadro_fx_4500_x2.html)

 

[BBA]

SLI/CrossFire/Multiple Chips on one PCB or multiple PCBs is to GPUs what "Dual Core" is to CPUs.

I just have to interject, because your kind of right...GPU's are heavily multicore already (the current 7900GTX has 24 cores so to say)

Your analogy is right in the case of Intel but wrong in the case of AMD. The CPU's in AMD dual core are interconnected, much like the GPU cores, where the Intel version is two seperate cores side by side on one plastic package.

To be accurate, current state SLi is analogous to multiple physical CPU workstations with AMD multiple core CPU's.

Multiple cores in seperate packages are not quite as efficient as multiple cores in teh same package sharing the same cache/memory storage.

 

[Anarchist4000]

I think what people mean is that they want 2 actual G71 "Chips" on one or 2 R580Chips on one die instead of having 2 seperate ones

I'd rather have 1 core that was twice as big instead of 2 cores that to do the same job. Who cares if it's the size of a quarter and I can cook hamburgers off of it.

Also a pair of single core opterons would be faster than a single dual core in certain situations. With 2 sockets used you have different memory busses for each so you can get double the memory bandwidth. You're only going to see a difference if you find a situation where you're limited by that bandwidth however. But if someone has dual sockets they're probably using 4 cores anyways.

 

[Lo Pan]

Having two vid card cores would not take a monstrous feat of engineering. The difficult and the impossible are two very different things. Putting them on the same die would actually reduce latency rather than increase, you'd have just about zero space between the two cores.

 

[DJ_007]

if in not correct all of the dual core GPUs that have been released have been quite unsufccessfull.... like not stable and dont always get nearly the performance of a true SLI system... maby someday that will be perfected but untill then i will continue my multi card setups...

 

[MrWizard6600]

The problem with SLI and CF is in my opinion the need for texture copies for each GPU local Vidmemory.
The benefit of two seperate cores on one die and a shared crossbare mem controler would be one texture in video mem for both GP-Cores.
Think how ATI ring bus could come in handy or not?

So 512MB needed instead 1024MB of expensive Vidmem.

interesting point.

does anyone know the actual mbps of a dongle cable and an SLI bridge?

 

[texuspete00]

Having two vid card cores would not take a monstrous feat of engineering. The difficult and the impossible are two very different things. Putting them on the same die would actually reduce latency rather than increase, you'd have just about zero space between the two cores.

Still seems you guys are missing something. If your die space is not yet out of hand, "you add a quad." There you go. That's what they do. Putting it further away on the pcb or another core on another card is to get around process limits. A pcb and cooler, to dual core a XT without the use of crossfire, would be dealing with 600million transistors plus if an "x1950XT2" were to be released on one die. The cores already have a bunch of units in parallel. You let your engineers go nuts and design a behomoth chip within producable limits because it's for less than 1% of the market and costs a bunch, 7950's and SLI are for when that is not enough. It's the next step becuase what you guys want is how they are made in the first place.