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Quad PCIe Motherboard
SlipKid writes "PCI Express Graphics cards have allowed for some new and innovative ways to increase rendering horsepower in Desktops and Workstations. Recent introductions of NVIDIA's SLI and ATI's CrossFire technology have enabled dual PCIe Graphics cards in a
load-sharing architecture. Motherboard manufacturers are jumping into the fray now and Gigabyte has released a Quad PCI Express graphics enabled motherboard, capable of running four cards at once. The board is not capable of running Quad SLI, mostly due to lack of NVIDIA driver support currently but it does offer support for eight simultaneous display outputs on four Graphics cards."
Even if you could do Quad SLI, would it make that much of a difference in performance? At what point would splitting the rendering task be more work than it's worth?
I like the idea of an eight-head computer. I wonder what the price difference would be to equip a computer lab with octoheads instead of singles.
In fact, if I could get some long enough wires, every television in my house could be just another head of one master computer. Master Control! Huzzah!
Carpe Daemon
I like the idea of an eight-head computer. I wonder what the price difference would be to equip a computer lab with octoheads instead of singles.
Why would you do this? You risk losing eight desktops instead of just one to a single component failure (eg, a faulty motherboard).
Standard entry-level desktops and workstations are commodity items now: their prices are so low, and they are so easy to acquire that I doubt that there would be much in the way of cost savings to be had when comparing eight single-CPU PCs to one eight-headed hydra.
Don't forget, to be able to run standard applications at the same speed as even the cheapest of today's desktops the hydra solution would have to have a serious amount of processing power, memory, etc. Once you factor all those things into the equation then you'll soon realise that, in almost every case, there is little or nothing (financially, technically or even physically) to be gained from going down that road.
Of course, a home is a little different from a computer lab. For one thing, in a home solution any bottlenecks would be fewer in number and far less severe than they would be in a lab environment, which makes such a solution more viable.
Even so, I know that I for one would rather prefer a dedicated desktop, a dedicated home theatre PC, etc connected by a LAN/WAN than a single-PC, all-my-eggs-in-one-basket solution.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Note I didn't say optimal performance or peak effenciey or any other term to make it seem like more cards would just equal "OMFG MORE FPS, YESSZZZ!". No. With games like BF2 that are starting to require specific actual components of stuff coupled with how much things like DirectX are a huge huge factor in games, you are going to need massive amounts of GPU power to get alot of stuff to run.
I mean (not to plug them or anything) but look at games like Project Offset, which plans for real-time rendering of everything no cutscenes nothing. The processing power of that game is going to be astronomical. I bet it will hit at the least a 2 PCI-E card requirement with at least 1.5 or 2 gigs of ram and 3.0+ GHZ processor, probably 3.4+. And we all remember how systematically intense past games like Farcry were, imagine cranking out a game that's five times as powerful as Farcray or even P:O you're going to require so much raw processing power it's insane.
Which itself is within the true nature of computing, technology evolves, advances, grows faster or more powerful or more advanced. I still think it's sad though, I mean you look at some of the top of the line cards these days required for games, they are insanely priced (200,300 even 400-500 or more). And yes while you can go with something slightly slower and save alot of money, as I originally said I think it will hit the point where they simply will not run without X amount of cards or equipment. Just like I can't run modern games like BF2 or HL2 on my current setup, same thing in a few years for people wanting that hot new title that needs quad cards. The price will be fucking outrageous too. You thought $400 for an Xbox 2 was bad, wait until you need to drop $300 per graphics card, two three or four times plus all the other components just to play games.
Nvidia and ATI are wetting themselves awaiting that day. Why sell them one GPU when Game X they want needs quad cards to even execute.
Aw Frell this
There did not appear to be much written in the review on the way the PCIe lanes could be configured. The default apparently has that the four physical 16-lane slots are electrically 1-lane, 16-lane, 16-lane and 1-lane respectively.
What excites me about such a board is the possibility of having simultaneously a fast SLI rendering set-up, together with fast I/O with 10Gbit ethernet and SAS. Having everything on PCIe rather than a mix of PCIe for graphics and PCI-X for I/O cards would allow more flexibility (at least, once there is a bit more range available in PCIe non-graphics cards!). Yet, if the configuration of channels only allows 1-lane on all but two of the slots, then it's not going to work out.