Running Video Cards in Parallel

G.A. Wells writes "Ars Technica has the scoop on a new, Alienware-developed graphics subsystem called Video Array that will let users run two PCI-Express graphics cards in parallel on special motherboards. The motherboard component was apparently developed in cooperation with Intel. Now if I could only win the lottery."

Comments

Press Release

[Anonymous Coward]

over here: clicky

Re:Voodoo

[scum-e-bag]

The company was 3dFx, and it was thier Voodoo II cards that allowed the use of two cards a few years back, sometime around 1998 IIRC.

Re:Man am I out of the loop.

[Laebshade]

PCI-Express is meant to replace AGP. From what little I've read into it, it will require lower voltages than AGP and has a wider bus.

this isn't new

[f13nd]

Alienware didn't invent this
the PCI and PCI Express have had this written into spec
AGP does too, but when was the last time you saw dual AGP slots on a mobo? (they do exist)

Re:this isn't new

[BenBenBen]

The AGP port spec lays it out; AGP is a preferred slot on the PCI bus, with four main enhancements (pipeline depth etc) designed to... Accelerate Graphics. Therefore, if you had more than one PCI bus, you could technically have more than one AGP port. However, I cannot find a single motherboard that offers 2 AGP slots, including looking in numerous AV/editing specialists, where I'd expect this osrt of thing to tip up.

Re:Voodoo

[UnderScan]

SLI - scan line interleve, was available for 3dfx Voodoo IIs (maybe even Voodoo 1) where the first card would process all the odd lines & the second card would process all the even lines.

Re:Man am I out of the loop.

[Randolpho]

After I posted that, I did a quick google:

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,94724,00 .asp

Re:Quad-screen?

[houghi]

I want tri-head or quad-head video, but with at least AGP speeds

So order one now. They are available here at Matrox.

Re:Man am I out of the loop.

[Plutor]

You've been out of the PC market for about a decade then, if you've never heard of PCI-Express. It's been proposed and talked about and raved about for years, but it's just now finally coming to market. The best thing is that it's not limited to a single slot per board! That's why this parallel thing is even possible.

Nice, A complete Vapor-article.

[Gr8Apes]

From the article: "The answers may have to wait until Q3/Q4". There are no performance numbers, no real statements of how it works, nothing much at all. Just wow, gee whiz, dual graphics cards in parallel. What exactly does "in parallel" mean? That's not even addressed.

Some things I thought of immediately reading this, great - two displays each driven by a separate card, or, better yet, quad displays driven by two cards. Nope, not a word about either possibility. The implication of the PR/article is that 3D graphics will be processed faster. How? Do they have some nifty way of combining two standard off the shelf graphics card signals into a single monitor? (Hint, it's hard enough getting the monitor to properly synch up with a single high performance graphics card!)

Since when does ArsTechnica merely regurgitate PRs? This was 99.999% vacuum.

Re:Man am I out of the loop.

[Auntie Virus]

There's a White Paper on PCI Express from Dell: Here

Re:Next comes dual AGP graphics.

[DaHat]

Nay, the AGP standard is built around a single slot and a single graphics card. To permit two AGP cards running natively (via the AGP bus) in a single system would be quite difficult if not impossible, far easier to look to the future and a new technology to make it work better then any sort of hack job that could be done today.

The Return of Voodoo 2 SLI

[MoZ-RedShirt]

History repeating: Who can (or can't) remember

Re:How is this different than what I've been doing

[IAmAMacOSXAddict]

If you read the short article. they are talking about pushing all the data for a SINGLE monitor, through two PARALELL cards. Essentially allowing for twice the GPU power to crunch the graphics for the monitor.

You are running a bunch of video cards INDEPENDANT of each other. Clearly NOT THE SAME THING...

Re:Next comes dual AGP graphics.

[Jeremy Erwin]

It's in the AGP 3.0 spec.

AGP3.0 allows a core-logic implementation to provide multiple AGP3.0 Ports. Each AGP3.0 Port is a bridge device with multiple AGP3.0 devices hanging off the secondary bus. Each Port has a separate Graphics AGP aperture and GART that is independent and not shared with another AGP3.0 Port; however, these are shared across the devices within a single AGP3.0 Port.

ATI will be doing this it's Catalyst drivers soon

[89cents]

Ok, so they havn't explicitly said so, but have been hinting at it

Ati's Terry Makedon says: "Something big is coming for CATALYST in the next 2-3 months. It will take graphic drivers to a brand new level, and of course will be another ATI first. It will be interesting to see how long before other companies will copy the concept after we launch it."

Hmmm... just in time for PCI Express and it's not something specifc to Ati's hardware.

Re:Man am I out of the loop.

[WuphonsReach]

You've been out of the PC market for about a decade then, if you've never heard of PCI-Express.

That's rather over-stating the case.

Roughly 10 years ago, PCI was finally just supplanting EISA/VESA and ISA boards were still common.

I build a few machines per year, and PCI-Express only just hit my radar screen in the past 12-18 months. Even today, I have yet to see mainstream motherboards or cards for it, so it's still rather ephemeral at this point.

It is an interesting design. Whether or not it will live up to it's promise remains to be seen.