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Dual Video Cards Return
Kez writes "I'm sure many Slashdot readers fondly remember the era of 3dfx. SLI'd Voodoo 2's were a force to reckoned with. Sadly, that era ended a long time ago (although somebody has managed to get Doom III to play on a pair of Voodoo 2's.) However, Nvidia have revived SLI with their GeForce 6600 and 6800 cards. SLI works differently this time around, but the basic concept of using two cards to get the rendering work done is the same. Hexus.net has taken a look at how the new SLI works, how to set it up (and how not to,) along with benchmarks using both of the rendering modes available in the new SLI." And reader Oh'Boy writes "VIA on its latest press tour stopped by and visited in the UK and TrustedReviews have some new information on VIA's latest chipsets for AMD Athlon 64, the K8T890 and the K8T890 Pro which supports DualGFX. But what has emerged is that DualGFX after all doesn't support SLI, at least not for the time being, since it seems like nVidia some how has managed to lock out other manufacturers chipsets from working properly with SLI. VIA did on the other hand have two ATI cards up and running, although not in SLI mode."
Dual video cards... soon dual-core CPUs, is it a sign that we're slowly approaching the Moores Law limit? The 'dual' strategy allow for further performance gains.... but I can't see myself using more than 2 video cards (hell, I can't even see myself using more than 1), so that will be a very temporary solution.
And we're not even speaking of how much power (wattage) these 'dual solutions' consume...
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...because you can see more than 1 colour (black).
Every review I have seen has claim SLI to be the wave of the future giving you ridiculous speed boost. But don't all video card reviews do that now? Last I checked on some of the older Tom's hardware, anantech reviews, my hardware should be polling in 70 fps for some games. I'd be lucky to hit 35 consistently... that's reality.
It is worth noting that NVIDIA will be bringing SLI to the Intel platform according to this press release:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_17070.html
I'm looking forward to a P4 NForce board.
http://www.kubuntu.org/
You can already buy from the alienware luxury collection some gaming systems featuring SLI
http://www.alienware.com/ALX_pages/choose_alx.aspI wouldn't mind you in my head, if you weren't so clearly mad -Lews Therin Telamon
First it is mildly interesting to note that SLI from Voodoo was "scan-line interleaving", as in every other line was alternated between the 2 cards. Nvidia SLI is "scalable link interface" and instead renders the top half of the image on one and the bottom on the other.
... ie ... more than 2 cards? Could be useful for scientific simulations or even getting closer to the idea of "ToyStory in realtime" (and no arguments here ... using the same shaders as Pixar used in the movies in realtime is not feasible today ... cheap tricks to get close, maybe).
It does make me wonder if the technology is capable of truly scaling
However, given the cost, and looking at what the 6800 can handle by itself, and comparing -those- to the evolution of games it appears to me that it will be no more costly to simply upgrade to a 6900/7000/whatever when it is required, as I can easily get by for the next year or two on a 6800 Ultra especially if including the fact that I would need a new computer to run it on since I don't have PCI-E (though I do have PCI-X, but not for gaming needs). And will be saving on electricity and mean time to failure (though that doesn't seem to be an issue much with video cards).
Not saying I don't see the attraction, but I don't get anywhere NEAR interested in 3D gaming enough to be spending that kind of dough.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
So the guys at Nvidia were sitting around when in walk the PHB and says "Guys, we need to make more money". And flunkie one says "Hey, let's release a new card, all the fanboys will rush out and buy it!" PHB says "Well that's ok, but we do that enough already". Flunkie two says "I know, let's convince the users that the one overkill video card they buy is not enough, let's convince them that the need to buy TWO!" And the rest my friends, is history! Stay tuned for the new quad-card cash-vacuum, coming soon.
SLI = Scan Line Interleave, the cards alternate drawing lines on the monitor.
My question is whos got the 1100watt power supply that running 2 6800's is going to "require"?
Dual webservers. Would have delayed the Slashdotting.
TWO Cards! (Score:-1, Redundant)
I think that's the first time the actual moderation of a post has made me laugh more than the post itself.
I find it funny that some of the people who lamented the $15/mo. for WoW in the last article are probably the same people who will go out and drop $600 for a top-notch SLI video setup.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
No, it doesn't work that way.
Each card renders half of the same image. So each card needs access to the full texture set.
So 2x256 cards still only gives you 256 megs for your textures.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
LOL a link off the front page to a page filled with hundreds of screenshots?
I weep for that man's router.
I can't imagine shelling out another couple hundred bucks for another XT pro and then shelling out even more money for a more robust power supply and better cooling as well. Its prolly great for those who can afford it, but I know I won't be doubling up anytime soon.
News Reporters Make Tasty Polar Bear Treats!
I'd like to see something set up so onboard video hardware can take advantage of this. It's difficult to get a motherboard that doesn't have onboard video anyway, and if you buy the right video card (ie: same manufacturer) they can both run to get an added performance boost. (You should, of course, be able to install any graphics card, but won't get anything extra for it)
=Smidge=
This month the UK "PC Pro" magazine has a review of the Scan White Cobra gaming machine.
This is a fine example of SLI running with jaw dropping performance...a quote from the review puts Doom 3 running at 98fps!
Now I know what I want for Christmas, just not a snowball's chance in hell of getting one! :)
-- Pete.
Monochrome - Probably the UK's largest internet BBS
--
so really, who is hotter? Alley or Alley's sister?
The real benefit, from my perspective is that it's a low-cost way to upgrade your video card in between new computers. I bought my first Voodoo 2 for $300. My second cost $30.
--
So really, who is hotter? Alley or Alley's sister?
The PCI Express standard allows for 32x lanes. The nVidia SLI uses two 8x lanes. Wouldn't it be nice if a motherboard supported two (or more) 32x lanes and 32x graphics cards working in parallel? Think ray tracing because at those bandwidths, and the fact that there is a ergonomic limit on how small a pixel on a display can be, one can have the average size of a triangle be smaller than a pixel. This isn't true ray tracing but the effect is there.
On a similar note, are GPUs a good platform for genuine ray tracing?
SLI power consumption can be significant!
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Check out http://www.gpgpu.org/ for cool stuff. And if I'm not mistaken, it is already possible to use SLI.
Cheers,
Hurricane Ivan: A 17th century prison collapsed. All of the inmates escaped.
its only compatible with like cards capable of SLI, you cannot just throw 2 cards in your box and run the latest drivers and get SLI.
there is a bridge adapter for the cards, if you look around they apparently come in PCB and Ribbon styles, and connect to a funky new cutout on the PCB on top of the Card.
moo.
nVidia some how has managed to lock out other manufacturers chipsets from working properly with SLI
A case of nVidia acting on the SLI?
Right now, the answer is pretty simple. If you want a game to use multiple processors at the same time, you need to include more than one execution thread--the programmer has to divide the work in such a way that two or more processors can do it. It's quite hard to build a multithreaded game; there was some SMP support in Quake III, but it wasn't very stable and didn't provide a huge performance boost.
With a multithreaded application, you have to guard against strange bugs that are very, very hard to fix. If your multithreaded application runs into a deadlock every hundred thousand frames or so, it will be next to impossible to isolate, and production will end up being slower than it already is. While I'm sure that writing multithreaded games will happen in the near future, I don't think it will catch on very quickly.
I'll wait for the dual GPU on a single card solution. You gain nothing from having 2 cards, the dual PCI express boards still have the same bandwidth the lanes are just split between the two.
This simply forces you to get a new motherboard. Which I guess is a win for intel and nvidia eh?
Let's see, get dual cards which requires a new motherboards, or wait and get a new video card that has gual GPU"s which takes about 10 minutes to install at most.
I bet you ATI will do the dual GPU solution first and nvidia will go "fuck we should have learned from 3dFX's voodoo 5500"
I had a 5000 series card, dual Gpu's on the SAME card amazing concept!
The dual voodoo cards made sense in a day when you had a lot of spare pci slots. But ever since we've gone to the methodolgy of a single graphic slot it's not simply a matter of slapping in a new video card and connecting an sli connector, you have to get a whole new motherboard.
I DO agree with a previous statement made that is if we could go up to 4 cards and 4 cpu's on a system. that kind of flexibility would be awesome.
If you get two 6800 GT's working together, well if one GT is bottlenecked from most CPU's (the GPU has to actually wait a little bit more for the CPU to catch up), how can that CPU possibly catch up to two?
I say that we should wait to buy SLI technology until better CPU's come out, or if you have a dual CPU setup, or even until dual core CPU's come out.
Well, that sounds expensive to me, better start saving...
I was sitting around yesterday wondering to myself "How can I make the inside of my computer hotter than the fires of hell?".
This sig is part of your complete breakfast.
3.4 GhZ P4 with a gig of RAM: $3000
2 nvidia SLI cards: $600
Getting 4 FPS anyway because 40,000 people are on the same server as you: Priceless.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Would you happen to be using a motherboard with a VIA chipset? My old MB used a KT400 chipset. I didn't notice anything strange when using a Radeon 7200 on it but when I upgraded to a 9800Pro the speed I got was way slower than what it should have been. A couple of nights on tweaking and googling and I came to the conclusion that KT400 AGP support was s**t, especially with ATI video cards.
One more night of examining other motherboards and I decided to buy a mb based on nForce2Ultra chipset. After installing the new mb my actual FPS's almost doubled. Bying a new mb might seem a bit drastic but considering that it cost "only" ~120e vs. the 250e of the R9800Pro it seemed quite reasonable to me and I haven't regretted it.
Personally I will never use VIA's chipsets again if I have any other choices.
As a lover of flight sims I'll be first in line to buy a mother board that can support 10 video cards. Along with an array of cheap monitors I will finally have a wrap around view of the sim world. This can apply easily to any game.
First person shooters could finally have peripheral vision (one center and two on the sides) along with a inventory and map screen. Brings the grand total to five.
Driving games could finally have a true perspective instead of the stupid 3rd person or 1/3 screen in car view. So at least three monitors.
RTS resource monitors, sat view, and ground maps. Well that could become quite the array depending on how much you wanted covered. Say anywhere from 3-12 monitors.
Same for Massive Multiplayer Online Games. I could see a use without trying hard that would require at least six monitors.
You could double, tripple or even quadruple up on the number of required cards for any one monitor that would require higher end graphics. There are always those twisted monkeys that come up with graphics that won't run on any one GPU these days. For example those lovely to the horizon maps that show up in various games that add about 100meters of high detail every year. I see another scenario where people boost their systems performance by picking up cheaper versions of cards they own to keep their graphics improving without breaking the bank. (We can all remember when GF 2 cards cost $400 each, that'll buy you 50 of them these days.
Who could afford all this you ask? Well just about anyone these days. I've got a stack of 17inch CRT monitors in the garage I picked up for $5 a piece that are just begging to be used. With the advent of sub $100 video cards and CRT monitors, and the fact that not every output would have to be super hi rez. Perpheral views, 2d maps, and inventory lists would be just fine on something to the equivalent to a GeForce 4 MX ($32 new). You could seriously enhance your gaming machine for the price of one top of the line latest and the greatest video card from ATI/Nvidia.
So you keep your two monitor display, for me I'm going to check to see if the wiring in my computer room can handle the extra 10 monitors I plan on adding.
It seems to me we need a solution that will detect framerate and adjust detail automatically.
This way, when we've the desire to gawk at some doodad in the game world for three minutes at a time, we can enjoy it in full detail, but when you're being bumrushed by five beasties, your first reaction isn't to bask in the per-pixel lit glory. That is when the engine can crank down the detail and turn up the FPS (and potentially the amount of carbohydrates being pumped into your bloodstream.)
Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.
Does this mean that if I spend $600, my pr0n will be twice as detailed?
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
There's a couple good reasons you need more than 30FPS. For one thing, you never want the framerate to drop below smooth. So, even if you can average 30FPS, that doesn't mean you aren't going to sometimes drop to 15FPS or lower.
However, there's a much more important factor at work here that confounds the film-vs-video-card comparison: video game frames are not the same as film frames. The biggest problem in this regard is motion blur. Here's a little exercise. Try it out in real life if you have the equipment, or just think along through it:
Let's say you were to use a video camera and capture 30 frames in 1 second. The subject is your own hand, waving up and down quickly.
Now let's say you rendered a 1 second video using the 3D engine du jour, also 30 frames, of a hand waving up and down quickly.
If you were to look at the 30 film frames, they would not be crisp. Each one of them would likely exhibit motion blur. However, when played at a rate of 30fps, to the human eye, that motion blur looks smooth.
If you were to look at the 30 rendered frames, there is no motion blur. Each frame is rendered crisply. The problem with this is, when played at 30fps, instead of smoothly moving from one frame to the next, the hand appears to jump between frames. There is no intermediate data to allow a smooth flow from frame to frame.
There are two ways around this: first, you could simulate motion blur in the engine. Second, you can pump the FPS up high enough that there is intermediate data for your eye to take in, and do the motion blur on it's own. The former of these options seems much more likely.
-[Blaine]- "'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic."
How about all those lazy PC games programmers actually stick with a single game engine for a while and spend time optimising that rather than recreating the wheel for every new game.
What happened to all the slick programmers that were able to push "fixed" machines like the Amiga and Commodore 64 beyond their capabilities through neat programming tricks and constant code improvements?
I've really had it now with constant upgrades and with hardware that is never tried and tested long enough to see what can be done with it.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.