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Nvidia SLI and ATI multi Rendering
- Thread starter IndyJoe
- Start date
IndyJoe said:
Heh. That's what I've been wondering too! I wanted to start buying pieces to make a new computer once I see how the performance of multi-rendering, but I want to make sure it's compatible. I mean it is basically just two PCI express slots, but is it specifically just for Nvidia cards
Intel_Hydralisk
Supreme [H]ardness
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- Feb 6, 2005
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The SLI mobo doesn't just have two PCI-E slots. It has special logic that lets it control two cards in tandum... and I'm thinking it's specialized for nVidia... *cough* nVidia nForce4 *cough*... only time will tell though.
Well if you look at what ATI is doing: designing motherboards for the first time...
Seems obvious to me they are doing this for a reason... To support their Multiple Card format (obviously they are starting simple with one 16x slot solutions, but that is probably because they have never done this before).
Anyway, if I was Nvidia I would make absolutely sure that ATI wouldn't be able to run their multiple card solution in my motherboards. (i.e. do you see Intel making Chipsets that work with AMD procs?!?!?)
Seems obvious to me they are doing this for a reason... To support their Multiple Card format (obviously they are starting simple with one 16x slot solutions, but that is probably because they have never done this before).
Anyway, if I was Nvidia I would make absolutely sure that ATI wouldn't be able to run their multiple card solution in my motherboards. (i.e. do you see Intel making Chipsets that work with AMD procs?!?!?)
Intel_Hydralisk said:
From what I understand it's just to x8 PEG slots, the rest is the bridge connector and logic on the nVIDIA cards and of course the software drivers.
You have the nForce4 SLI chipset provide the ability to provide to x8 channel PCI-E slots instead of one x16 slot when enabled to SLI mode.
As shown with Tom Hardwares trial with both a 6800 and an ATI card simultaneously, each graphics card was able to function "independantly" without SLI rendering of course.
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20041123/sli-performance-32.html
What's that mean? IF ATI's solution is also software "read drivers" issue and utilizing the tiling features that already exist, this solution "could but not necessarily would" work with nForce4 SLI boards. If they go proprietary then ATI has eliminated a section of the market that could otherwise just get two ATI boards instead. The other reason is that VIA is also releasing a chipset that provides to PEG (PCI-E Graphics, or two x8 slots) to the market so as to not be left out of the picture.
The other point that's important to know is that the nVIDIA solution could work without the "bridge" connectors but that the performance took a big hit as the framebuffer information between the two cards has to go over the PEG busses instead of through the bridge connector. I suspect that if ATI were to use a bridge connector the performance would also increase, they just may be advertising that it's not required so as to lower the outrage of existing X800 and X850 customers that would need to upgrade to a card that is identical except for the missing connector. They may still release future cards that have the connector for instance. Of course this is all entirely speculative since we don't see the end products working yet. What's telling is that ASUS acidentally showed an MVP motherboard at CBit and had mentioned the need for a bridge.
The multi-GPU technology ATi is using isn't exactly something 'they've never done before'. It's a somewhat watered down version of one of their commercial technologies, used in flightsimulators and similar VR setups, whereby up to 34 GPUs can work together.J-Mag said:
Hightest, thinks for the info. That was actually my original thought. That the Nforce 4 chip just allowed the two x8 sockets and the card did the rest for SLI.
So it actually sound as though ATI's multi rendering solution potentially could work on an Nforce 4 board. This is all going to be very interesting how it plays out.
So it actually sound as though ATI's multi rendering solution potentially could work on an Nforce 4 board. This is all going to be very interesting how it plays out.
J-Mag said:
They have been making their own chipsets for a little while now, you appear to not be aware of this. Niether company makes their 'own motherboard'. They sell chipsets that they create to motherboard manufacturers such as ASUS, ABIT, MSI, DFI, Gigabyte, etc...
J-Mag said:
Not necessarily, ATI has been making motherboard chipsets in the past, this isn't their first try. VIA and others are also working on chipsets that provide muliple PEG slots (PCI-E Graphics slots), so I imagine that ATI is also doing the same so as to not be left out of the mix for those looking into motherboards with multiple PEG's.
If this ends up being a different implementation than nVIDIA's and VIA's only time will really tell, but I imagine that it'll be very similar so as to be someone of a standard. I still think that the majority of the ATI MVP magic will be with the software drivers and hardware support of the video cards themselves. There's been the talk about the GPU's currently out supporting supertiling capabilities, but doesn't incidate what support they'll require motherboard chipset wise.
So as to not break the PCI-E standard, I don't think there's anything extra added, just a similar method of taking an x16 PEG slot and converting it to two x8 PEG slots for example. Personally, I see the possibility of the PCI-E standard evolving to having all the slots on the motherboard being x16 and allowing the end user the ability to designate how many channels are available per slot. Chipsets may change first though. One of the things about PCI-E is that a chipset manufacturer could setup two or more PCI-E "cores" (simplification of function) to allow many PCI-E slots, since current chipsets only support 24 channels (each channel being equivalent to a single x1 PCI-E slot).
ATI has already said their solution will work on ANY chipset so long as it has two x16 slots. I don't remember, though, if they said each card still needed x8 or higher in order to work, but I wouldn't be surprised if they said x4+.
And ATI's commercial solutions allow up to 256 VPUs, not 34.
And ATI's commercial solutions allow up to 256 VPUs, not 34.
...and this is from XBit's CeBIT '05 coverage.XBit Labs said: