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Gigabyte's 3D1 brings SLI to a single card
An anonymous reader writes "Gigabyte have implemented nVidia's SLI on a single graphics board, dubbed the "3D1." The card features two GeForce 6600GT cores (I would imagine two 6800 cores would draw too much power and create too much heat for a single PCB.) Hexus.net have a review of the board, which in various tests was able to compete with a 6800GT, but will it be marketed at a favourable price? You may also want to read Hexus' article - 'An Introduction to SLI' - for a look at how SLI technology works."
"I would imagine two 6800 cores would draw too much power and create too much heat for a single PCB."
I don't know whether it would or not, but I will be willing to test that for you. Send me one, and I will fill out all the forms and keep track of heating and power levels.
- Your stupidity got you into this mess, why can't it get you out? -Will Rogers
Let me just be the first, of many, to say when can we SLI this card (or a revision of this card) and have the power of 4 6600 chips?
There are PCBs available which have a thicker copper layer thus are able to be used for even higher current. You can make PCBs for some 100s of Amperes.
Jerry
http://www.syslog.org/
It's basically the a little less than performance of the 6800 at the cost of the 6800, but with more heat than the 6800. Didn't the multiple 6600s perform better than this at a lower cost?
Am I missing something here?
And what's this all about? Putting a video card on the carpet? Or a towel? Static electricity kills, people!
Anandtech has a review on the same.5
Source: http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=231
I'll be getting a 6600GT any day now, and fully recommed it.
Quite simply, look at the benchmarks and decide for yourself.
I would imagine two 6800 cores would draw too much power and create too much heat for a single PCB.
The power issue doesn't really have to do with the PCB. It mainly has to do with the connector and the number of power pins. If a card draws too much power, the pins or fingers on the connector act as fuses and melt. (I have seen this happen on VME and cPCI boards.)
(S(SKK)(SKK))(S(SKK)(SKK))
No, not yet. But it looks like in a not so distant future it might be cheaper to use one standard air-conditioning system for the whole case than one for each of the 10 processors on various video, audio and processing boards (most of which you will absolutely need in order to play the next [Doom|HL|Halo|...]).
Just
I can't figure out what Gigabye's roadmap is. I mean, the dual 6600GTs on a single card came out of no where. Now there is the dual PCI express board coming out that allows any two Video Cards to run in parellel, it's not SLI. Now they come out with this.
I dunno what they have in mind, but they sure are stiring things up a bit, but arn't they risking alienating nVidia with these "almost" SLI competetor alternatives?
How the heck is the above post redundant?
At any rate, no real worry. You've still got real SLI, meaning you can use two 6800GT's, or two of whatever comes along in the future. As others are saying, this runs slightly less than a 6800GT and has disadvantages.
Anandtech didn't seem to be too impressed by this solution.
From Anandtech: Unfortunately, in light of the performance tests, there really isn't much remarkable to say about the 3D1. In fact, unless Gigabyte can become very price competitive, there isn't much reason to recommend the 3D1 over a 2-card SLI solution. Currently, buying all the parts separately would cost the same as what Gigabyte is planning to sell the bundle.
The drawbacks to the 3D1 are its limited application (it will only run on the GA-K8NXP-SLI), the fact that it doesn't perform any better than 2-card SLI, and the fact that the user loses a DVI and an HD-15 display connection when compared to the 2-card solution.
Something like this might be very cool for use in a SFF with a motherboard that has only one physical PCIe x16 connector with the NVIDIA SLI chipset. But until we see NVIDIA relax their driver restrictions, and unless Gigabyte can find a way to boot their card on non-Gigabyte boards, there aren't very many other "killer" apps for the 3D1
They pretty much say Stick with true SLI unless size restraints force you into a single card solution
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So when hexus reviews the card, they seem to have problems keeping there graphs consistent. Mainly the colours of the lines. The 6800 was yellow in all the tests, but the other two cards would switch colours from one set to the next, and go from blue to red for the SLI 6600 and from orange to green for the single 6600. It would be more logical that if you wanted to switch colours, you'd go orange to red, and then blue to some other blue shade or something. And especially don't us similiar colours (the orange and red) for the different cards when you switch tests. That just leads to confusion or, more likley, a more difficult time in interperting the results.
But at what point do people say, "Gee, that's neat but call me later?" I'm not against the expansion of technology, but there becomes a point of diminishing returns for the price. Is this that point?
Also the article points out "...the 3D1 requires Gigabyte's own GA-K8NXP-SLI motherboard to operate." How much does that add to the price and does the GA-K8NXP-SLI offer all the features in a MoBo that your average user would need/want?
I actually want more effort and research put into making our computers quiet, did you see the size of the fan on the 3D1? My computer is noisy enough without having to have not just active cooling on every major component, but massive active cooling on every major component.
Hey, technologists; I can play all the games I care to on my current hardware, work on making things quieter and consume less electricity!
Ok, I seriously don't get this SLI thing. I mean, sure there are nuts out there who simply must get 10,000 fps in their favorite games at full resolution. You know, because it make a difference. Just like those audiophiles who buy $5,000 power cables.
Seriously, what modern PC game wont run well with just one card? I've got an FX 5900 non-ultra 128MB. Doom3 and Half-Life 2 are both my bitch. And if I recall there haven't been any other PC games this year worth mentioning. And if you're not using the extra power to play games, and you're doing some serious 3d work you should have some professional SGI style equipment. The only reason I can really see to have this is if you were developing a PC game that is going to come out in a year or two and you need to have hardware as fast as what we will probably have then.
So um yeah. Who's wasting their moneys? In fact, with those moneys you can buy a better monitor. Which makes a much bigger difference if the monitor you have is not super awesome.
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The anandtech review recommends a two card solution over this single card, so you win.
Oh no... it's the future.
You should find this board outrunning the 6800Ultras. This is basically a $400 board outrunning a $500 board (that goes for as much as $600 depending on brand/features).
The lowdown (using individual boards here but the dual is about the same):
Doom3 1600x1200:
6600GT SLI = 77.1fps, Cost = $376 (188x2)
6800Ultra = 73.9fps, Cost = $489
According to a great article on www.Anandtech.com it doesn't really outperform two individual boards though. It may be wiser to get a single 6600GT now and SLI later.
This board somewhat defeats one of the great features of SLI: future upgrades. The idea is you can buy a "good" card today and at some point when it gets a little bit dated you can add more performance at a lower future cost.
However, a single board SLI solution should help offset the nasty cost of an SLI motherboard right now. The NF4 SLI boards are running about $100-$150 over where they should be simply due to shortages (spanking new product overdemand).
$255, Gigabyte NF4 SLI mobo
$188, 6600GT today
$59, 6600GT 2 years from now (Based on the cost today of a $200 graphics card two years ago, the GF4 4200)
Total: $502
Or you can opt for 6600GT performance today and tomorrow without SLI in the picture:
$149, Gigabyte NF4 non-SLI mobo
$188, 6600GT today
$269, 6800Ultra 2 years from now (Based on the cost today of a $500 graphics card two years ago, the GF 5900 Ultra)
Total: $606
As you can see even with the badly overpriced SLI motherboards it's still a better deal in the long run. If SLI motherboards get back to reality you could see the savings increase from $104 to ~$200 as well but that's just speculation.
References:
All new prices are from www.newegg.com. For the older boards (4200 & 5900U) that are not available at Newegg I used pricegrabber. Anandtech was used for the benchmark and 2 year old reference articles.
You fully recommend a product you don't have yet. Who needs a marketing department when you've got an army of fanboys?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
From the aritcle: The drawbacks to the 3D1 are its limited application (it will only run on the GA-K8NXP-SLI), the fact that it doesn't perform any better than 2-card SLI, and the fact that the user loses a DVI and an HD-15 display connection when compared to the 2-card solution.
I know what the Internet is, what the hell is this Interweb business?!
Man, talk about good coverage. A single board getting TWO Slashdot posts when new GPUs often don't merit one.
6 24 7&tid=152&tid=137
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/12/16/191
Changing from the 3 or 4 versions of AGP to PCI express is going to create a large enough ripple when it comes to upgrading and purchasing new motherboards and video cards, do we really need to have PCI-X that work on one MB and not another?
--
So who is hotter? Ali or Ali's sister?
Isn't this what the spare drive power connectors would be perfect for? Kinda like my PowerLeap Slocket adapter - don't want to crowbar the onboard CPU PS, add power with an onboard (or in my case - a cable) power connector.
;-)
And heat dissipation is a job best for a chip/set fan(s).
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Kenny P.
Visualize Whirled P.'s
I need to look up the melting temperature of FR-4.
There is something big that annoys me with 2 card SLI. With 1 card you use the 16x slot as a 16x slot. With 2 cards though they throttle back to be 2 8x slots instead of 2 16x slots. Why do that? Maybe next generation pci express will let you have 2 full bandwith 16x slots on the mb. Throttling back to 8x for 2 cards does impact performance. SLI is pretty awesome but I view the current implementation as version 1.5 (version 1 being 3dfx's attempt).
Some people just have far too much disposable income IMHO. WTF do you need a dual 6600GT video card setup for anyway? The most demanding games out there (Doom 3 and Half-Life 2) work just fine with a "lowly" GeForce FX 5600. Sheesh.
So the whole static thing is dependant on where you live to a large degree.
Not really. I forget the exact number, but IIRC as little as 20V is enough to zap a component or cause a soft failure. Visible discharge is around 1000V or so. If you spend enough time working with hardware (eg, board design) you will learn the dangers of static.
(S(SKK)(SKK))(S(SKK)(SKK))
One of the new tyan motherboards for dual opterons has 32 pci-e lanes. It has two Nforce4 chipsets on board giving it two pci-e slots with the full 16 lanes each. Of course the board costs something like $500-$700.
"When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes. When you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it
Some of us actually do research about a product before purchasing. It's been out for what, a good month or more now? You really think there's a shortage of information?
A much better review is to be had here:5
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=231
So when are they coming out with a SLI version of this card? :-)
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
As a gamer I will have to agree fullheartedly on Doom 3.
I've played and own all three of these games and I have to say HL2 > Farcry. They both have a good story and both have outstanding graphics. But HL2 was infinitely more enjoyable.
Peace
Of course! They're using a beta card and beta drivers!
;-)
It's causing this color flickering on the graphs.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
And just for the record, this is Hanners (Andy Hanley) first time breaking the new site he works at Hexus. :)
:D
He used to love crashing Elite Bastards all the time, but this is his first official time crashing Hexus.
I'm so proud of him I could cheer, he's one of the good guys.
- "When I say dance, you'd best DANCE motherf*cker!" -Violent Femmes
Where's the better review? All I can see in your post is a link to Anananananand. :?
:(
You aren't SERIOUSLY suggesting that Anand has a better review up than Hexus, are you? On a good day I'd say that is highly improbable, but when it's Hanners doing the review I'd call it much more like impossible.
I don't trust Anand since the FX debacle, their true colors showed thru.
- "When I say dance, you'd best DANCE motherf*cker!" -Violent Femmes
Unless you simply must run IRIX, these days you're doing 3D on PC hardware. Probably studly PC hardware.
If you're using 3D Studio Max (which may displace Maya as the Gold Standard the way things are going -- sure flame me and say it never will) then you have no choice but to use PC hardware.
Huge texture memory sizes and the ability to manipulate large polycount scenes in real time are far more important to such folk than gamers.
The product was announced three weeks ago, these are the first actual reviews of it.
:roll:
This IS news.
- "When I say dance, you'd best DANCE motherf*cker!" -Violent Femmes
My PCI based VooDoo 5500 had an extra cable to hook into an unused hard drive power cord. I assume they could not pull enough power off the PCI bus.
The card also basically took two slots since both GPUs had big honkin cooling fans.
Ah, the good old days. Quake 3 at decent FPS in 1600x1200 was sweet, but not as sweet as nethack on a vterm...
Without all the gold and chrome what else will reflect the light from your glowing IDE cables through the picture window in your case? :)
If you are not the type to do that then you see the gold and chrome for the 5 minutes it takes to install the thing and you don't have to see it again until the next upgrade and probably won't care.
The buzz word of 2005 is "dual core". It just stands to reason that Gpu's go down this same road. You can find "dual core" concepts in the gamming console, server, desktop and gamming pc, and now video cards. One person gets a good idea and everyone jumps on board. If you want to see multi-core taken to the extreme, Check out Suns 32 way server on a chip. http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/jonathan/20040910
Ah, heat dissipation and graphics engines. That brings back memories of working in the local University graphics lab one summer doing some project work. Alas, the HVAC vents for the room were stuck full-open; the place was freezing cold. To combat this, I'd make sure the old GE Graphicon graphics engine (at the time, very high-end) under the desk of my workstation was turned on... it was a _very_ effective space heater. 8-)
What I think a lot of us are waiting for is a cheap DDL capable card for the PC to drive a larger monitor. PNY has the Quatro series but they are all priced for the "workstation" market.
Nvidia has the 6800 DDL for the Mac (to drive the 30" cinema display) but nothing for the PC as of yet.
Pat
it is transparent to the game. The video driver takes care of it.
my poor servers, they're killing them.....
It's official
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I've got an FX 5900 non-ultra 128MB
I've got you beat on those settings, and three games that still have my system chugging are WoW (auction houses and pvp), Wish (R.I.P.), and GuildWars (with those huge mob fights). Doom and Half-Life are both carefully designed so that no more than a certain number of polygon will be visible in your field of vision at any given time. But in MMO games that design restriction goes out the window. When 40 players are trying to kill 40 opposing players, your system needs the speed to draw them all, otherwise you're dead.
I welcome our new 99% overlords.
Why is this so hard for you? I recommend it based on the research I've done on it and other cards. If you don't like it, fine, so be it. As I said in the start, do your own research, draw your own conclusions. I never claimed to be reviewing the card.
Recommend:
To praise or commend (one) to another as being worthy or desirable; endorse:
Oh hush up digi, and go back to your hole over at B3D. There's no postcounts here. :o)
the game will just run, and won't HAVE to support anything directly. The drivers are responsible for choosing what sort of load-sharing mechanism is appropriate for the game (via a list of games/engines), and the user can override those definitions. HOWEVER, nVidia does make public an interface for actual programming of SLI systems, so you can program optimizations with dual gfx cards in perspective.
no, actually that's how the capitalist model works. In theory it's no better or worse than many others. Its pervertion at the hands of large corporations is actually the problem, but the general "I innovate, get money from being good at it, and haev funding for further innovation" is actually quite sensible
Actually SLI for the vodoos were quite usefull for cad cam and designing.
.... but admiting can not afford such a card right now. Oh well. Time to upgrade to a geforce4.
I use to work at liz claiborne and all the folks in the graphics department for retail design wanted them over the WildCat 1 cards.
So in essence they do have commercial use and appeal. Last I want to code again and coding opengl and directX apps are more fun to me.
Maybe its a guy thing? I dunno.
But writing a mariokart clone on my spare time sounds fun and I have a right to spend money on personal things to make me happy just like some people spend $700 for a skirt.
http://saveie6.com/
- No Video Array yet
- The only company even rumoured to be working on a 2x 16 channel PCI Express motherboard (Tyan) won't even confirm it yet
- The motherboard BIOS has to be tweaked to cope with the card
- The card is only dual 6600.
Given that there are single-card solutions better than this dual-GPU single card, and that it only works on one motherboard are a real problem. Currently, it's just a cute stunt. When it performs better than any other single card and can be paired with another for a record-breaking 4 GPU solution, that's when we need to see aSLI does NOT need to be supported by a particular gsme.
The SLI drivers are optimized on a game-by-game basis, running in either half-screen render mode or alternate-frame render mode.