NVIDIA Do-It-Yourself Quad SLI Launched

Spinnerbait writes "Today, NVIDIA will be releasing their Forceware v91.37 drivers and with them will be officially endorsing Do-It-Yourself Quad-SLI. HotHardware has put together an article detailing the steps necessary to assemble and configure a high-end Quad-SLI rig, and they give some thoughts regarding XHD Gaming and its associated costs. Those of you that are hell-bent on gaming ultra-high resolutions (1920X1200 or 2560X1600 for example), along with the highest available image quality, might want to give one of these setups a look." Before making a purchase I would recommend building that water-cooled credit card first.

Comments

Rediculous

[The_Pariah]

And this caters to less than 1% of the PC gamer market?

Re:Rediculous

[oskard]

Doesn't matter, nVidia needs to showcase that they're at the forefront of GPU technology. Its a type of advertisement, word of mouth stuff. Consumers that hear about this will automatically link the best video cards to nVidia's product line.

Re:Rediculous

[Anonymous Coward]

That's "ridiculous", bub. Ridicule + -ous.

Re:Rediculous

[SaDan]

More like less than 0.01% of the PC gamer market.

Re:Rediculous

[Chosen Reject]

I've heard of +=, -=, *=, and others, but I've never seen +-. Would that be undefined like divide by zero or do they just cancel each other out, making it a no-op?

Re:Rediculous

[Anonymous Coward]

The 1% or less argument reminds me of the 640K barier on PCs. Sure today it is expensive. Sure today it seems like over kill. But in the near future every thing will be highly parallel. 5 years from now you will have 32 GPU cores on a single chip driving games and entertainment. 10 years from now a 256 GPU core (or equivalent) chip will be about $50.

Re:Rediculous

[kimvette]

It may be .01% of the PC gamer market but with this kind of offering they stand a good chance of capturing 100% of a niche market: visualization workstations, where they are willing to pay a premium to buy top of the line $500, $1,000, or even more expensive cards where the profit margin may be 500% rather than 5% to 10% on a $50 card.

Why blow money on an outdated (and yet current offering?) SGI workstation when you can get better performance out of a quad-(dual core) (8-way processing) PC? The question is though (having not RTFA yet): will this work on Linux, and what boards offer four PCI-E x16 slots? It's hard enough to find a GOOD board with just TWO PCI-E x16 slots with stable SLI while offering plenty of other standard PCI and a couple of PCI-E x8 or x4 slots.

Re:Rediculous

[KingMotley]

Oh well. I'm in that 1%, so it's useful to me. Dell alone is selling some 4000 240xFPW monitors a week, that alone comes pretty close to 1% of the total PCs sold. That doesn't include the 30" that dell and apple sell, nor any other 1920x1200 resolution monitors from other manufacturers.

But ok, let's just assume it's 1% of the market. I don't know of any major company that wouldn't be willing to dedicate a couple programmers (if that) for a few weeks to possibly increase their sales by 1% (probably MUCH more with the PR of being known as the fastest/best).

Re:Rediculous

[Vancorps]

Board with 4 PCI-E

I'm sure more boards will be out with it now that the driver support is there. I wouldn't throw a rig like that out of my room although I might need to upgrade my air conditioner. Coindentally I already need to upgrade the AC in my office. Amazing what passes for a datacenter these days.

Re:Rediculous

[Anonymous Coward]

What is 49+(-7)? What is -6-(-48)?

Re:Rediculous

[TubeSteak]

Consumers that hear about this will automatically link the best video cards to nVidia's product line.

It's called the halo effect and is the tendency for positive or negative perceptions to spill over from one product to another.

Halo products usually cost an arm and a leg too.

Re:Rediculous

[Jerry Coffin]

The question is though (having not RTFA yet): will this work on Linux, and what boards offer four PCI-E x16 slots?

I can't say one way or the other about Linux (yet). You don't need four PCI-E x16 slots though. This is based around the nVidia 7950 GX2, which connects two graphics processors to the motherboard via a single PCI-E slot. Each of those takes up two slots worth of space (in fact,it's two boards connected together) but the high-end single-GPU boards (e.g. 7900GTX, ATI X1900) do so as well. Most SLI motherboards leave quite a bit of room between their x16 slots, so the physical installation should rarely (if ever) cause a problem.

In case anybody cares: apparently during development, they did build a few dual-GPU boards that required two slots -- but they were never put into real production.

Re:Rediculous

[TheRaven64]

what boards offer four PCI-E x16 slots?

The new Mac Pro has four PCIe x16 slots, and some built-to-order options have 4 nVidia GPUs. As far as I know, however, you will need to run something other than OS X to use SLI; Apple just advertise it as supporting 8 displays.

Re:Rediculous

[Hoi Polloi]

You left out the cost of air conditioning your room after you put 4 of these space heaters in it.

Re:Rediculous

[Braino420]

Yes... the richest 1%.

Re:Rediculous

[Quintios]

I know this one!!!

42

and

-54

And I did it without a calculator!

Well... I *checked* my work tho. I mean, any good engineer would!

Re:Rediculous

[rtaylor]

And this caters to less than 1% of the PC gamer market?
Exactly. The triple cheeseburger at your local burger joint is the same way and exists for the exact same reason.

If a $1200 product is available, people can feel good about the money they saved by purchasing the $600 product and laugh at the people wasting their money on the bigger item.

If the $600 product is the top of the line then less people will buy it, they'll get the $300 item instead.

Re:Rediculous

[Ramjet350]

If you read the specs of the Mac Pro - it has 4 x16 physical slots but it only supports 1 x16, 1 x8, 2 x4's lanewise. It is not 4 full x16 lanes of bandwidth according to the specs.

Re:Rediculous

[Millenniumman]

Probably not. The richest aren't that because they spend thousands on a graphics card that will be obsolete in a year and won't give them any more noticeable performance than one for $400.

Re:Rediculous

[Ruff_ilb]

Actually, the moderately wealthy aren't that because they spendd thousands on a graphics card. The RICHEST can afford to blow a few grand once a year, and it won't really set them back that much.

Re:Rediculous

[DarkJC]

I couldn't tell if this was supposed to be sarcastic but...they're both 42.

Re:Rediculous

[dbdweeb]

And 20% of the /. market.

Re:Rediculous

[Braino420]

True. I was just trying to point out that they are more concerned with money than with a headcount of the people who use their products. That 1% probably gives them more money than the 'cheap' 99%. Which is why this whole thing really isn't that ridiculous at all (they just found a way to sell 4 gfx cards to 1 person).

Re:Rediculous

[kimvette]

- Four PCI Express X16 slots:
- Two PCI Express x1 slots
- One PCI slot

Worthless.

Re:Rediculous

[Vancorps]

Haha, well true, but it does exist! Of course six slots is fairly standard for a motherboard unless you move to a passive backplane scenario.

Re:Rediculous

[bumptehjambox]

hahaha c'mon mod this up!!! +5 Misspelling!@11!!

Sender: 4th Grade Spelling Teacher
Subject: RE:RE:diculous!

1% Brain Utilization!

Re:Rediculous

[bombshelter13]

"The question is though (...) what boards offer four PCI-E x16 slots?" I think I heard someone mention something about some computer with four PCI-E x16 slots the other day, but I can't quite remember what it was called... the name is stuck right on the tip of my tongue.. um... Quack Pro, maybe? No... that's not it... Oh well... maybe I'll remember later.

Re:Rediculous

[Billly Gates]

It would be alot ore than 2% or 3% if Nvidia released quadro versions of their consumer cards. Artists and engineers really could use this more than gamers. Aren't quadro's just consumer cards with different drivers? THis is why Nvidia's drivers are closed source.

But still cool for gamers but even greater for more productive uses for this when money is involved. I think archcad and proengineer would scream on such a system.

Re:Rediculous

[Anonymous Coward]

Quadro FX 4500 X2

Re:Rediculous

[Billly Gates]

unless I am mistaken I believe that quadro is based on the FX5700 chipset in non sli mode.

Re:Rediculous

[Anonymous Coward]

The second sentence of the linked web page on the FX 4500 X2 says: "Architected with two NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500 graphics processing units (GPUs)". And, as indicated by viewperf results it runs in SLI mode (compare that to a normal fx4500

I'd stab someone

[Majere]

If I went to someone's home and they had a Quad SLI setup running to play video games, I think I would stab them and blame GTA. I'm not saying it's not useful for scientific computing, hardcore designing, or driving some sort of crazy display exhibit but spending that kind of dough to play games is sorta asking for a punch in the face.

Re:I'd stab someone

[Anonymous Coward]

My question is, does it really help?

Re:I'd stab someone

[Random Destruction]

Yes it does. It's much easier to take their shit after stabbing them.

Re:I'd stab someone

[non0score]

On the one hand, I can understand your frustration with wasting resources. But before you go ahead and stab these people, you should start with the people who drive SUVs with 20" chrome wheels, Chinese (IAAC) who order $1000 worth of food just to display their wealth and only eating $20 of that, or people with really, really expensive home theaters (obviously, the former two examples are just plain wasteful, but the last example isn't *that* bad).

Re:I'd stab someone

[Matthaeus]

So you'd also go out and start punching people who have really nice home theatre systems? After all, spending that kind of dough to watch movies is sorta asking for it too.

I've got no problem with the early adopter crowd...they make things cheaper for the rest of us. If someone has that kind of disposable income, hey! More power to 'em!

(My sincere apologies if you were joking and I missed it.)

Re:I'd stab someone

[Majere]

Yeah, I'm joking. It's not really clear. I have not, so I hate the people who have. I don't actually lay around and plot the death of people with money to spend.

Re:I'd stab someone

[brunokummel]

That depends on what you consider investment
you could get some money out of it renting it for parties perhaps, opening a LAN-House, or even better you could build a hyper-resolution arcade with it and resell it with profit!

It all depends on how much you see opportunity where others see entertainment....

Re:I'd stab someone

[sanborn's man]

Stop punching and think this kind of people do a great service to us. If those "punters" doesn't exist, surely the most powerful card you could buy today will be a S3 Virge 3D. Companies go ahead with new innovations because they know there will be always people spending insane amounts of money just to have the "greatest" and the "latest". Or you really think companies will develop a product as fast knowing they couldn't market it until it could be affordable to the mainstream? So don't punch them and think instead they are subsiding your next great video card ;-)

Re:I'd stab someone

[mrxak]

It only really helps if you have a monitor capable of insanely high resolutions, like 2560x1600. Otherwise anything you'd be displaying is essentially CPU-bound.

Re:I'd stab someone

[andrewman327]

I think it is just asking for a new best friend. Come on now, those people will a true friend, someone to tell him he's great. Someone to rub lotion on him. Someone he can hurl whiskey bottles at when he's feeling low!
Props to anyone who can place the quote without Googleing.

Re:I'd stab someone

[Anonymous Coward]

So would you go have a Mac Pro and set Quad SLi on that?

Re:I'd stab someone

[russ1337]

or you want 4 monitors each run by a 7800 for super wide screen counterstrike..

Re:I'd stab someone

[Anonymous Coward]

BZZZZT! Games become CPU-bound at very low resolutions. CPUs today are fast enough to run games at ultra-high resolutions; the lag happens because the GPU can't keep up. When it comes to 1600x1200, a 3.2 GHz or 3200+ is never, never, never the bottleneck.

And you're fracking kidding yourself if you think anyone games at 1600x1200 with less than a 3200+.

Re:I'd stab someone

[Joe The Dragon]

The mac pro only has one slot at full x16 and quad-sli needs two full x16 slots to work. Also sli only works on nvidia chip sets.

Re:I'd stab someone

[himurabattousai]

If I were going to stab anyone, it'd be the game developers. They'll look at this and decide that everyone needs to see every pore on the face of every NPC in every game on the market just because a credit-card melting video setup allows them to program that. In a few years, this kind of setup will be less than bare minimum for whatever the big franchise title is while the gameplay will be below that of the worst Atari 2600 games. No one needs QuadSLI set-ups for playing video games, save for the fact that by buying them just to have them, they encourage game developers to try to use up every bit of all the pixel pipelines. For those of us who don't have the resources to make such a rig, a whole boatload of games will be either unplayable or a completely different experience than intended. Whether or not this is bad is left to debate once those games come out.

On the other hand, if you professionally need such hardware, you'd want to encourage this type of irresponsible spending. For home video enthusiasts, it's just one more step towards being able to leave the world of cut-and-paste video editing behind for good. If you're into graphic arts, it puts (previously) mega-corporation graphics proccessing power on your desk at home. In the professional world, there's nothing but good times ahead.

Re:I'd stab someone

[ZiakII]

It only really helps if you have a monitor capable of insanely high resolutions, like 2560x1600. Otherwise anything you'd be displaying is essentially CPU-bound.

Take my setup of two monitors I can run resolutions at 2560 x 1024 and 3200 x 2400, do I for gaming, no I stick to 1280 x 1024 but I could some people easily doing two projectors running at it if they got the cash to spend it.

Re:I'd stab someone

[mrxak]

I think you missed the point. I'm saying that a graphics set-up like this is only going to give you improved performance on high-resolution set-ups. I'm not saying CPUs are slow, I'm saying that they are slower than this graphics system on low resolutions. Anybody with a smaller monitor would get just as good performance from a less expensive GPU set-up. It's about the number of pixels, not the speed of the CPU.

Re:I'd stab someone

[BrookHarty]

Its their hobby, can be cars, motorcycles, boats, video games, movies, etc. Nothing wrong with spending money on your main hobby, and a quad SLI system is still cheaper than a tricked out Honda Civic or home theater.

Re:I'd stab someone

[Eccles]

a quad SLI system is still cheaper than a tricked out Honda Civic or home theater.

Except now I have to figure out how to project 2560x1600 from this quad SLI system in my home theater...

Re:I'd stab someone

[Tweekster]

Home theaters serve a purpose, the only thing being wasted is money. The rest of those waste more resources. It gets more convoluted to say the theater wastes resources (the production I suppose...

The theater makes someone happy, and more importantly does not negatively impact other people. The SUV does cause real problems for others, the waste of food since it is just wasted should be handed over to people that need it etc.

Re:I'd stab someone

[WebWeasel2006]

Sad sad loser me. The simpsons... Lisa to bart.... Radioactive man film episode, talking about Millhouse.

Re:I'd stab someone

[andrewman327]

You win! Glad to see more Simpsons geeks here. It seems that too many of today's geeks forget that The Simpsons was one of the first things discussed on the Internet. Now it has become the latest fashion to bash their newest episodes.

Re:I'd stab someone

[man_ls]

That'll cost you at least a Honda Element, if not a Toyota Prius.

Re:I'd stab someone

[Jherek Carnelian]

Steve Balmer?

Re:I'd stab someone

[Sj0]

History seems to disprove you. My first "good" video card was an S3 Savage4 GT, one of the weakest cards of the era unless you kept well away from it's fill rate. It lasted several years despite it's initial crappiness. My second was a Geforce 2 MX 200, which I got for 50 bucks -- I never had a problem running anything. Later on I upgraded my computer to a brand new nforce based system so I upgraded the video too. I ran a Geforce 4 MX, one of the weakest cards of the era I bought it in, and only relatively recently did it become a detriment to playing modern games acceptably at some detail level. I've also got a Radeon 9250 which is absolutely ancient(it's a powered down Radeon 8500 -- think back to when that card came out), and I'm still able to play almost every game out there (Oblivion needs hacks, mind you, but that's because Bethesda are retards.)

You're never more than 100 bucks from playing modern games these days. Your statements are factually incorrect.

Re:I'd stab someone

[hedwards]

IMHO, it makes a lot more sense to invest in a really good stereo or home theatre system than in a video card setup like that.
A good home theatre setup from when DVDs hit mainstream would have been useful for at this point more than 7 years(counting when from about the time they hit walmart).

I fail to buy the idea that a set up like the one based in the article is going to hold up like that. If we compared it to a Stereo system, the comparason is even less in favor of this sort of extravagance. My parents are still using the pioneer receiver that they purchased before I was born (more than a quarter century). The sound quality is still more than good enough for radio and CD input.

Obviously, I am not either hugely wealthy or really into the latest FPS or such.

But can it run

[Timesprout]

Tetris at decent FPS?

And the server...

[konigstein]

Died about 2 pages into the article, 1 minute after its /. debute... oh well. A new record perhaps?

From what I've read so far however, unless you have a big screen HDTV that you game with that supports high resolutions with a fast response time and refresh rate(1% of the gaming market), you WILL NOT need the ultra expensive quad SLI.

I sold my wife and car, and I get my quad sli setup when it arrives in the mail tomorrow.

Re:And the server...

[Vigile]

Looking for another article that isn't down?

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=283

Re:And the server...

[fanblade]

When it comes to video cards, size does not matter :-)
 
Contrary to what you might think, HDTVs actually have pretty low resolutions and refresh rates when compared to regular old desktop CRTs. If you're trying to make a ridiculous case for someone that would need this, say they have a high res CRT.

Re:And the server...

[TrancePhreak]

I guess 1920x1080 at 100hz is pretty low res to you.

Re:Doing It All

[Anonymous Coward]

We could write them... in Java.

Other markets

[everphilski]

... like people doing scene generation, rendering, etc. Small biz and hobbyist type work.

Umm 91.45 Got Released Today

[NiZm0]

Quad NVIDIA SLI Technology
Windows XP/2000

ForceWare Release 90
Version: 91.45
Release Date: August 9, 2006
Please make sure to read the Driver Installation Hints Document before you install this driver.

U.S. English
File Size: 32.8 MB
http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_91.45.html

Re:Umm 91.45 Got Released Today

[Ant P.]

33MB? Ouch, are all the Windows drivers that bloated?

Re:Umm 91.45 Got Released Today

[Kenja]

"33MB? Ouch, are all the Windows drivers that bloated?"

No, they're that "Feature Packed"!

Re:Umm 91.45 Got Released Today

[prisoner-of-enigma]

33MB? Ouch, are all the Windows drivers that bloated?

Remember, this is a "Unified Driver." That means it has drivers for a huge variety of video cards in one big, tidy package. I also most likely includes stuff for multiple languages, only one of which you'll actually use. Also, with the 9x.xx release of nVidia drivers you get both the "new" display driver interface (based on a web browser motif) and the "classic" interface (what we all know and have loved for the last five years or more).

Add all that up and you get a 33MB installer. The actual driver code, however, is far smaller. Not all of that 33MB ends up on your hard drive after the install is done. It's not bloated, it's just aimed at a very wide array of possible applications, and nVidia wants to put all that in one installer to simplify things for the end user. Bloat implies there's a lot of cruft in there, and that's not the case.

Re:Umm 91.45 Got Released Today

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember, this is a "Unified Driver." That means it has drivers for a huge variety of video cards in one big, tidy package.

I haven't picked the installer apart but normally "unified driver" means "drivers for all cards in a single binary".

I suspect it's the control panel app that takes all the space. ATI's driver-only download is half the size of the driver-and-control-centre download.

Re:Umm 91.45 Got Released Today

[Kjella]

I also most likely includes stuff for multiple languages

No, that'd be the International driver, File Size: 62.6 MB. If you had clicked the link you would have seen it.

RE: I sold my wife and car...

[SPQR_Julian]

You sold your wife? Lucky man. Hell, I couldn't give mine away.

Only on /.

[HexaDex]

will you find an article on Quad SLI gaming rigs, following close on the heels of an article on gaming addiction in World of Warcraft. Kinda like advertising bigger hypodermics at a methadone clinic...

Re:Doing It All

[vostok4]

This has been addressed before. nVIDIA cannot open up the source to their drivers because of source code included from their 3DFX acquisition. They have stated time and time again, they would LOVE to open it up, but they legally cannot.

That is miles more than ATI have provided for Linux. Hopefully when the NDA on the contract runs out we will see open drivers actively supported from nVIDIA.

Coral Cache mirror...

[markild]

When will they learn..

http://www.hothardware.com.nyud.net:8080/printarti cle.aspx?articleid=856

I'm still giggling about the fact that they called their site "hothardware".. It doesn't get any hotter than this! :P

Not particularly useful against a lower resolution

[mobby_6kl]

Most of the comments thus far are replies to some jealous asshole, so I'll try to steer this back on topic.

It's been possible to do for a while now, although it required some effort. From the benchmarks I've seen, QuadSLI is almost counterproductive for resolutions at or below 1600x1200. It does have a reasonable advantage in FEAR, but most other games showed very little improvement. That review didn't cover the 1920 and 2560 resolutions, but that's where the advantage should be quite significant. Of course, whether it's worth it or not depends on how many more hours you'll have to spend flipping burgers to pay it off.

Re:Doing It All

[Henry V .009]

Who owns the 3dfx code?

TFA on one page...

[SenorCitizen]

...this might work a bit better:

http://www.hothardware.com/printarticle.aspx?artic leid=856

Mmmmm... Doom 3

[Anonymous Coward]

Just imagine how fast black can be!

2560x1600 with AA

[Anonymous Coward]

I have had a rig capable of 2650x1600 at work for a couple of months but only recently put a couple of games on it to try out the video card.

Even with a moderate card (NVIDA Quadro FX 3450 SDI) Half Life 2 runs pretty darn good at 2560x1600 with 2x AA. I don't even have the high end card and SLI.

Of course, this specific game is a couple of years old, but I think this is the future of gaming. Like everyone, I drool over a quad SLI rig.

Consoles are still trying to get 1080p games out while PCs are running 1600p (??) games quite well.

I remember working to get my crappy 486 to run 1024x768 games back when VGA 640x480 was the norm... And I remember just five years back running my sweet VooDoo card at 1600x1200. Good times, but when does it stop? What is enough?

Re:2560x1600 with AA

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhmm, no offense dude, but are you sure you were running a Voodoo card over 1024x768? Because at least the Voodoo3 (not sure about the 4/5/6's) lacked hardware accel above 10x7@16 or something I believe.) Ran into that limitation attempting to play Ubisoft's horrible Ruins of Myth Drannor game way back in like last '99/early '00 and remember finding out it didn't accelerate above 10x7, which since the game simply played in desktop resolution (12x10 with the monitor I was using, and hell if I was gonna switch it every time I started to play), I ended up having to buy a Radeon 7200 which didn't have that limitation (although it did seem to have some issues, what with blowing up three motherboards before finally burning a trace off the AGP connector, showing me where it died.)

captcha: confuse
Yes, Yes I did.

New hardware

[JustNiz]

It seems crazy to be investing more than $1k in new videocards at this point in time, as nothing out currently is DirectX 10 (full windows vista) compatable. The new nVidia cards that are will be out in less than a month or so (if you believe the press).

Re:Doing It All

[mickwd]

"That is miles more than ATI have provided for Linux."

ATI may not be brilliant, but at least they're putting some sort of effort behind their Linux drivers now.

They actually support XOrg 7.1 now, whereas nVidia don't yet (officially).

Re:Doing It All

[Joe The Dragon]

Amd has been very open with linux in the past I hope they do the same with ATI now that they own them.

Re: I sold my wife and car...

[Anonymous Coward]

I couldn't give mine away.

Does she?

that's dope

[fearanddread]

Who cares if it's complete overkill. Overkill is good kill.

Re:that's dope

[Hoi Polloi]

Lemmy Kilmister agrees

Re:that's dope

[Ragnarrokk]

Lets just say, we do it to make sure it's dead.

Not quite sure what we're murdering though. Probably our bank accounts...

``Ragnarok

Re:that's dope

[RESPAWN]

There's no such thing as Overkill. There's just Kill and Enough Kill and that's it.

hmmm...what about linux?

[Marin3]

Can someone give me the link for the drivers linux version? Because i haven't found it myself.... :X

Re:hmmm...what about linux?

[lotsotech]

Kind of overkill to play Quake4.

Re:hmmm...what about linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt the linux driver supports quad SLI yet... It barely supports basic SLI

Re:hmmm...what about linux?

[bohemian72]

I'm mainly hoping for the 9xxx series driver so I can safely upgrade to xorg-7.1. So far I've heard mixed results about whether or not the 8xxx driver works with the newest xorg.

HotHardware?

[Gr8Apes]

Sure sounds like the right name for a site reviewing this beast. What would the heat output of that rig be?

Re:Doing It All

[BigDumbAnimal]

You said 3dfx, but you meant SGI. How would 3dfx code hurt them? They own all of 3dfx's assets.

Pointless

[AC-x]

Everyone knows the main bottleneck in a modern gaming PC is the network card, not the graphics card!

Re:Pointless

[Majere]

That isn't useful unless you get gold plated cables, and don't forget to get the 150$ power cord.

Re:Pointless

[ericlondaits]

Video cards aren't a series of tubes. They're a truck.

Re:Pointless

[JustNiz]

To totally alleviate CPU usage and ethernet bottlenecks I advise using RS-232 instead. The other benefits are that you can connect to that new-fangled Compuserve BBS service if you also have an acoustic coupler. You can also save on cabling costs by using damp string.

Niz 123342,9987

Re:Pointless

[wild_berry]

Sir, you disgust me by bringing down the repute of this fine network with your false Compuserve address.

Re:Pointless

[hritcu]

> Everyone knows the main bottleneck in a modern gaming PC is the network card, not the graphics card!

Strange, I thought it was the speed of light.

Re:Doing It All

[theGreater]

So, erm, why not binary blobs + wrapper code? Technically it would fulfill the letter of the law, while giving the dev community at least _some_ of the openness they want. I mean, if they would LOVE to open it up, Solomon the drivers; half for the lawyers, and half for the devs.

-theGreater

Re: I sold my wife and car...

[JustNiz]

Yeah I have a serious compatability issue between my wife and new PC hardware. She's AGP (a grouchy person).

Re: I sold my wife and car...

[laffer1]

Should have married a CS chick. My wife let me buy 7 computers as long as she got her 3 :)
Two are servers which host her mail and website.

Re:Doing It All

[Glacial Wanderer]

ATI released register specifications for R100 and R200 ages ago and there are open source drivers for these older cards. At Siggraph last week ATI announce CTM (close to the metal API for GPGPU uses). CTM opens up the register specification for pixel shaders on ATI's newest cards (x1900). This should go a long way towards having open source drivers for ATI's newest graphics cards.

Re:Doing It All

[kimvette]

This has been addressed before. nVIDIA cannot open up the source to their drivers because of source code included from their 3DFX acquisition. They have stated time and time again, they would LOVE to open it up, but they legally cannot.

Bull----. If they "acquired" 3DFX property, they OWN it. If they OWN the "IP" then there is NO legal issue blocking them from opening up the source.

However, if it is "licensed" (-sic), then they ought to set up a second engineering team, give them notes on the architecture (but include no reference to any of the "licensed" code), then have them reengineer the drivers from scratch. There you have it, now legally clean drivers they own outright and can "legally" GPL.

lost your mind?

[onedobb]

Does it run Vista? Ok seriousely, Video cards have been powerful enough. Games aren't made to require anything that powerful. A monitor couldn't render a screen that fast. I'm not against producing better hardware, but that's a absurd amount of money just for a video card. There's still the factor of the motherboard, processor, ram, hard drive, Operating system, power supply, and that's all before optimization. A top of the line computer could cost as much as a good size down payment on a car. A properly configured computer will last you years with small upgrades.

Sounds good to me

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't mind having a setup like that. Right now I'm using dual 24' monitors at 1920x1200 each (3840x1200 desktop)w/ a radeon x1900xtx. It'd help me rip out these auto & achicad documents much quicker and have some fun battlefield 2 after hours! As soon as people start migrating to larger dual monitors, there's no turning back.

Re:Doing It All

[Doc Ruby]

Moderation -1
    40% Flamebait
    30% Interesting
    30% Overrated

What kind of TrollMod thinks reasons for nVidia to open their drivers source is "Flamebait"? Or somehow "uninteresting"? Sounds more like they want Linux nVidia drivers to stay closed and bad. Or they're just the usual anonymous TrollMod abuse. Or both.

Re:Doing It All

[mrchaotica]

That is what they do!

Re: I sold my wife and car...

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, you usually have to pay a lawyer a whole bunch of money to have her taken off your hands.. much like a car wreck on the front lawn... some people might come and take it away for free, others have to pay to have them removed..

Re:Doing It All

[Chirs]

Contrary to vostok4's statement, it's not the 3dfx stuff that's the issue but rather the algorithms/code/etc. that was licensed from SGI.

As to the binary blob plus wrapper code comment, that's exactly what they have now. They could conceivably move more code out of the binary blob, but they probably don't see much benefit coming from that as the number of free software users that also need high performance 3D is fairly small.

Yes you can, but why?

[Tycho]

Sure you can do Quad-SLI, but why? Most games are CPU limited rather than GPU limited. What is becoming more and more important for many gamers is the image quality and nVidia loses in convincingly in all cases. The ATI X1k series can do angle independent anisotropic filtering which improves image quality. However, the nVidia 7900 series is stuck with angle dependent anisotropic filtering, which produces quantitatively worse image quality. Both ATI cards in Crossfire mode and nVidia SLI cards have high quality Anti-aliasing modes, however Crossfire AA modes actually are playable unlike the nVidia 16x and 32x AA modes which are in practice unsuable because of low frame rates. I could go on about the reasons why nVidia cards are just not as good as ATI cards and why Quad-SLI is kind of useless so I will just list a few more problems that nVidia cards have. No HDR+AA, inferior texture filtering, driver settings tricks just to get the output to look equivalent to ATI cards, texture shimmering with AA, and lower performance in general.

Re:Yes you can, but why?

[Toreo asesino]

I think you underestimate the importance of GPU horse-power...not that I think you don't have a point.

For example, my work-machine; a not-so-sluggish Dual-core Pentium 3.2GHz, 1.5Gb Ram, 400Mhz FSB, ATI-something-standard-with-dell-machines graphics cards pales into insignificance in high-detail 3d environment against my home machine: Athlon 2400+, 1GG RAM, 133Mhz FSB, G-Force 6600 graphics card (Not even a high-performance card).

Seriously, even in the likes of Quake 3, when things get frantic, the work machine will slow to around 40fps at it's worst. Home PC will not drop below 60fps ever in Doom 3. The difference in gaming is amazing.

Anyway, that's my two-cents.

DISCLAIMER: I'm not a complete waster at work - an IDE does occasionally get loaded into memory (very quickly).

If only there were Mac SLI...

[frankie]

...then people might actually have a use for the 4 PCIe slots in MacMac Pro.

Of course, having driver support for COTS video cards would be at least 60% better than that. Charging $150 for a card that's $90 retail, sheesh!

Re:Doing It All

[Ant P.]

They don't do it in even enough proportions.

It's nice how you make and break the argument

[drachenstern]

Why blow money on an outdated (and yet current offering?) SGI workstation when you can get better performance out of a quad-(dual core) (8-way processing) PC?

The question is though: will this work on Linux, and what boards offer four PCI-E x16 slots?

It's tremendously important to both note and keep in mind that the reason why any individual would purchase an SGI system is two-fold.

One, your department already runs SGI? Or the application that you want to run runs on IRIX (ya, so they support a linux kernel ...).

Two, you know the hardware is going to work with the operating system and vice versa out of the box. The same reason why you would tell a family member to purchase a laptop/notebook/ultraportable from Dell/HP/Gateway/Lenovo/Whomever, so you don't have to support it for everything.

Now, my question is this, does the quad-pci board allow you to run two sets of duo-sli cards instead of one quad-sli or one duo-sli? Any graphics gurus?

Big Screen vs Big res ?

[Brit_in_the_USA]

Big Screen vs Big res is something I have been thinking of more and more of lately.

Most HD TV's
Most single mid-range graphics cards can drive that resolution fine.

However, PC monitors scale resolution with screen size (17" 1280x1024 , 24" wide 1920x1200, 32" wide huge x huge)

So, Slashdotters-
Would it not be adequate and a lot cheaper to buy a 32" HD LCD screen and a mid-range graphics card and do your gaming at approx 1280 x720 on a 32" screen for
What are the Pro's + Con's of doing this (e.g. response time, general desktop use, too low a res for modern game play?)

Re:Big Screen vs Big res ?

[ChronosWS]

I plan on doing this myself, moving from dual 20" monitors to a 37" or 42" Sceptre running 1920x1080 (Full HD res.)

Fortunately, the modern HDTVs are getting pretty good with respect to repsonse time, brightness and contrast. While you may not want to use them for certain kinds of imaging work (photo editing, where you need to calibrate the screen may not be possible due to limited TV calibration options or imperfect color reproduction,) for most applications this will be fine. Additionally, the larger screen will nominally be easier on the eyes, assuming you pick an appropriate viewing distance, as the individual pixels are larger making normal text easier to read.

Unfortunately perhaps, these monitors do not provide more resoultion for the space. If you are used to a dual monitor setup, you will sacrifice a lot of available pixels for the same physical space. At my home, my dual monitor system has 3.2M available pixels, whereas the HD res TV will only have 2.1M pixels. If you do a lot of coding or word processing where you like to have multiple pages of text available, you'll either want to continue to run another monitor alongside the TV, or stick with the existing higher-res setup. However, if you already only run a single monitor system at 1600x1200, you actually get MORE screen real estate with the HDTVs, and the widescreen layout is, in my opinion, more conducive to multiple documents open simultaneously.

If you are considering moving to a big screen, you are probably also considering the ultra high resolution displays available from Apple and Dell. The 30" screens running 2500x1600 give the benefits of both large display size AND a large number of pixels. However, remember that the individual pixels will be quite small, and eye strain is something you should think about if you deal with applications that are rendering a lot of text. If your answer to this is to just increase the text size, consider whether it's really worth it to have more resolution (and thus more pixels to push) if you aren't going to be showing any additional useful information with them. Ultimately, that is what drove me away from those displays, since I do a lot of text reading, and the pixel pitch would be a killer. These monitors also require special cards capable of linked DVI output, so be aware of that potential upgrade requirement. Also, you will find that the HDTVs cost less than these big monitors.

Re:Big Screen vs Big res ?

[oneils]

I think the problem is related to pixel width. On a 32" HDTV that is 720p, the pixels are much wider than those on a 24" dell (1920x1200?) lcd monitor. So, if you sit up close to the HDTV with a mouse and keyboard, you will actually see the pixels more easily - which can put a damper on image quality. To use an HDTV as a monitor, you would be better off playing sports/action titles from a couch rather than playing fps or rts games at your desk.

*wonders how far this joke can be pushed*

[SPQR_Julian]

It sounds like you need to upgrade to a new wife that supports PCI-E. (professional coitus interruptus- ejaculation)

Re:Only on /.

[Hoi Polloi]

Sort of like how every Woman's magazine in supermarket checkout aisles (Redbook, etc) has an article titled "Make this delicious chocolate cake for your family!" followed by and article titled "Lose 10 lbs in two weeks!".

Re:Doing It All

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm just guessing here, but I'd say it's because it was a negative comment only tangentially related to the topic. Off-Topic would have been a smarter mod, in my opinion, but Flamebait serves the purpose just as well.

Aside from that, you gave no compelling reason for Nvidia to do as you wish.

Yes

[drachenstern]

But then, as far as the ATI 200m is concerned, 10meg of that is an application "for users benefit". So you can ... I still don't know. Maybe for the sake of science I'll launch the application, eh?

Upgrade Path?

[aniefer]

What are people's opinions of SLI as an upgrade path? The idea is to get a single SLI card now and then go parallel in the future when needed. The thing I wonder about is that I need to upgrade my GeForce4 Ti 4600 because it doesn't have some hardware features (ie pixel shaders 2.0) and not necessarily because its not fast enough. If this ends up being the reason for upgrading in the future, then going parallel doesn't help.

Re:Upgrade Path?

[Slashcrap]

The thing I wonder about is that I need to upgrade my GeForce4 Ti 4600 because it doesn't have some hardware features (ie pixel shaders 2.0) and not necessarily because its not fast enough.

Yes, but generally the unsupported features can be emulated in software (e.g. Direct3D can do it). Of course that's really slow. So in summary, you don't need to replace your card because it doesn't support PS2.0, you need to replace it because it's too slow (which just happens to be because it doesn't support PS2.0).

Sorry, that doesn't really help a great deal does it?

Re:Upgrade Path?

[HolyCrapSCOsux]

SLI capable MoBos are relatively inexpensive ( I have an ASUS A8N-SLI Premium $149 ) With an Nvidia 6600GT-SLI ($50 on ebay) I got much better performace for $200. Downside is, whenever I get the second card, I need to find another MSI 6600GT-SLI, as you can't mix and match.

Re:Upgrade Path?

[FuturePastNow]

You don't have to use another card from the same brand. Any 6600GT will do.

XHD Gaming?

[cortana]

Is that like regular HD gaming but more X-Treme?

For fuck's sake, quit this bullshit.

[Anonymous Coward]

You give the corporate apologists a perfect strawman when you keep repeating this crap. WE DO NOT WANT SOURCE. Just give us the specs, which they can do, which contains no "intellectual property", and which is all we want or need. Confusing the issue with demands for source just makes it less likely for us to ever get what we really need, the specs.

Re:For fuck's sake, quit this bullshit.

[Doc Ruby]

Not that I'm interested in cooperating with an Anonymous obnoxious Coward, but you should consider that "demands" for source also give developers the middle ground of specs to satisfy the requirements for developing independent drivers.

So fuck you, and best of luck.

Re:For fuck's sake, quit this bullshit.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, demands for source are completely ignored by the people at nvidia, and are used by the corporate apologists (who get modded up insightful replying to your crap) to confuse the issue and make people think that nvidia really can't support open source developers.

Truth in advertising!

[Jeff DeMaagd]

The box is on fire! And this might not be just a printing of a fire on a box, but a box that's really burning!

Latency: Serious Gamer Issue with AFR

[adisakp]

They were able to get 78.9 FPS with Prey but only with 4-way full AFR (Alternate Frame Rendering). There is a big issue with serious gamers and this configuration.

On 4-way AFR the driver builds a display list and sends it to a GPU that isn't busy. It is possible to have all four GPUs busy (rendering frames) while the current frame is being displayed and a new display list is being generated by the CPU. This means what you see with 4-way full AFR can be up to 5 frames later than what is going on in the game engine. At 78.9 FPS, this can translate into nearly 64 ms of latency which is enough to get you killed if you're a serious gamer.

Serious gamers with Quad-SLI are going to want to use SFR (Split Frame Rendering) which cuts latency quite a bit but takes a performance hit to the FPS. There are definite inefficiencies to 4-way SFR with having all four cards render portions of the same scene vs 4-way AFR. You generate 4 times as much display list info (GPU fifo data) and you have to replicate more data and uploads (if textures don't fit into the 512MB memory) across the GPUs.

I'm not sure if the Quad-SLI supports an AFR/SFR hybrid where you can have 2X2 (2 GPUs working on SFR each in AFR queue) - this might balance the performance vs latency issue better.

Re:Latency: Serious Gamer Issue with AFR

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it possible to drive a wall of four or even eight displays from a quad SLI rig using SFR?

We tried this for movie playback using four Nvidia boards in a Mac G5 without SLI and the performance for any window that spanned video cards was horrible. If we split playback into four stripes, using software called Jitter, we could get ~15fps for full res 7600x2400 (it was a wall of 8 1900x1200 LCD displays). We were clearly CPU bound and on a faster computer believe we would have been able to get watchable performance.

It would be nice to be ablle to do this without resorting to the Jitter-split step; that way we could use any app to drive the wall.

Super High Resolutions

[Coleon]

I think we are in a place in computer history that hardware is creating the need, not the user. I found myself watching prices of video cards, i own an ATI X850XT PE and i can play all my favorite games with any problem at great resolutions. But why could i need a quad SLI or an QUAD DUAL GPU SLI??? i know it doesnt exist but neither the software to handle it or to take advantege of it. My current operating system is running as fast as it can, my games are running smooth... so whats the need? Well i think that the hardware market is trying to sell us space crafts to go to buy bread at the next door market. Yes it moves you, it can be bought but it lacks of better use. Maybe the real goal right now could be investing more time and resources to in software domain to get this hardware in a better use.

-itmaynotbeabenchmarkbutitsgreatentertainment

[Kadin2048]

Quake4? Just think of the framerate you could get in glxgears!

Re:Doing It All

[forkazoo]

This has been addressed before. nVIDIA cannot open up the source to their drivers because of source code included from their 3DFX acquisition. They have stated time and time again, they would LOVE to open it up, but they legally cannot.

That is miles more than ATI have provided for Linux. Hopefully when the NDA on the contract runs out we will see open drivers actively supported from nVIDIA.

Well, that explains nVidia. What about everybody else? Basically, nobody has released full specs and open source drivers for their video card. I think that the whole area of computer graphics is so rich with obvious patents that basically everybody figures that they must be violating some IP with the cards or drivers. They may not even have any idea exactly what.

So, they come up with excuses, blame 3rd parties. They avoid releasing any real information because they know that it would result in them getting sued.

Personally, I find it hilarious that the GNU movement started out as an open printer driver. Now, we have learned to content ourselves with having everything open (On the typical Linux desktop) except for a closed driver for an output device. Remember to buy the Open Graphics hardware as soon as it somes out!

Re: I sold my wife and car...

[Nightlily]

LOL. No one else will understand why that is so funny.

Tangental? OT?

[Morosoph]

Hang on, this is certainly on-topic, or else the topic is absurdly narrow.

nVidia are promoting a DIY hardware hack, billed in those terms. Hacking is what we, as geeks, most want to do, or else know that others are doing so that we can extend a devices functionality, reliability, or freedom of use. The immediately larger context is that this is Slashdot; this is what the site's about.

Aside from that, you gave no compelling reason for Nvidia to do as you wish.

Now that is (marginally) flamebait. Producing free software isn't sufficient reason?

I'd say it's because it was a negative comment

Here we agree, political correctness is beginning to be applied to corporations; this goes beyond the standard of hurting someone's feelings...

Re:Not particularly useful against a lower resolut

[gardyloo]

That review didn't cover the 1920 and 2560 resolutions, but that's where the advantage should be quite significant. Of course, whether it's worth it or not depends on how many more hours you'll have to spend flipping burgers to pay it off.

    The computer manager keeps telling me to stay at home. I can't flip the burgers!

Whoah Goodness...

[convertxiii]

QUAD SLI!!!!1!...My E-Penis just grew to gigantic proportions.

Re:Doing It All

[mrchaotica]

the number of free software users that also need high performance 3D is fairly small.

Yeah, and it sucks. I'm trying to build a computer for my girlfriend to run Maya, and it's basically going to be impossible to do using Linux -- Autodesk specifically says all GeForce cards won't work (in Linux or Windows), consumer-grade ATi cards have crap drivers, and since she's a student she can't afford a Quadro or FireGL.

Re:Doing It All

[4D6963]

Hopefully when the NDA on the contract runs out we will see open drivers actively supported from nVIDIA.

Just being curious, when does that NDA run out? :-P

you dont need ram or a second cpu

[kemo_by_the_kilo]

Dood, i was looking at the pics...
because you are using 4 cards, your system doesnt need ram or a second processor to run! check out the e3 pic!
http://www.hothardware.com/articleimages/item772/b ig_nvidia_7.jpg
Look Ma No ram .... then again i didnt see a power/keyboard/mouse cable.... maybe its a new wireless mac board?
flamebait......

Re:Doing It All

[Anonymous Coward]

Your legal insight is astounding. May I have the contact information for your firm? Clearly, you have more knowledge of the situation than nVIDIA's entire legal team.

Re:Doing It All

[Doc Ruby]

Hey, you're supposed to post such insane assholery as AC. Someday when you've retired like I have from selling software and services you'll understand that making money off secret source is usually a false economy. Get your own parents to explain it to you - mine just like to tell their friends about their successful kid who's been independent since highschool, making money on those mysterious computers.

eVGA Watercooled Quad-SLI

[DeadBugs]

Here is a review of the eVGA "Black Pearl" watercooled setup. http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=6412&pa ge=1

Dual-Core

[Enrique1218]

Where are the dual core graphics cards? I would the better innovation would be to have four cores on 2 cards than four core on 4 cards. maybe something will come out of AMD/ATI.

Re:Dual-Core

[idonthack]

They were using dual core cards. RTFA again, and look at the pics.

Re:Dual-Core

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes! Its just becoming a freak show of "Who can bolt the most plastic into a case?" Maybe nVidia/ATI don't like dual core solutions because it means they are only being paid to produce one set of connections / PCB when they sell a single precious GPU ... or maybe its going to be their killer DX10 feature :b

Re:Dual-Core

[Enrique1218]

Well, shit. 4 core on one card then. I don't need to RTFA again. Personally, I just need one card with a lot of power that can stay cool without a refigerator. Put it in the iMac and I am a happy boy.

Re:Dual-Core

[FuturePastNow]

The term "dual core" is completely meaningless with respect to graphics cards- due to the parallelized nature of the core, it's the exact same thing as doubling the number of pipelines/shaders. In other words, if you want a dual core GPU, just wait and buy the next generation card.

Re:Doing It All

[kshade]

You could try to disguise your GeForce as Quadro Card with ncvlock.

Re:Doing It All

[kimvette]

Your bravery is astounding. Watch the AC bravely run away, away!

(AC: "I didn't!")

Meh. Monty Python reference in response to AC is a waste.

We're not buying into it until....

[Anonymous Coward]

We're not buying into Quad SLI until it supports Intels flagship Itanium processor...

Cards in the Picture

[treak007]

Wow, am I just really behind in the times, or do those graphics cards in the picture look exceptionally massive. Even if they have liquid cooling on them, they still look huge.

MOD PARENT UP

[nutsy]

"Flamebait"? What, would "... for OpenBSD" have been more accurate?

They will open the drivers eventually

[dbIII]

Given time whoever is objecting at Nvidia will retire or the IP agreements with third parties will expire. If nobody there wanted to open the drivers they wouldn't be making the effort to at least meet us halfway.

Closed does not always mean bad - it can often just mean inconvenient.

Re:Doing It All

[tehcyder]

Who owns the 3dfx code?

I do, and it's mine, all mine, mwah ha ha ha ha haaa!

ran out of cash

[indy_Muad'Dib]

anybody notice that in the pictures they had 4 vid cards but no CPU? http://www.hothardware.com/articleimages/item772/b ig_nvidia_7.jpg its cause after buying 4 overpriced GeForce 7950 GX2s they had no money left for the overpriced CPU.

Re:Doing It All

[tehcyder]

I'm trying to build a computer for my girlfriend

As opposed to the usual /. "I'm trying to build a computer to be my girlfried."

Re:Doing It All

[mrchaotica]

Correct. I'm a lucky bastard. : )

Re:Doing It All

[mrchaotica]

Hmm... good idea, I'll probably try that. Thanks for the tip!