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Asus Crams Three GPUs onto a Single Graphics Card

Posted by Zonk on from the when-isn't-cramming-a-good-thing dept.

Barence writes "PC Pro has up a look at Asus' concept triple-GPU graphics card. It's a tech demo, so it's not going to see release at any point in the future, but it's an interesting look at how far manufacturers can push technology, as well as just how inefficient multi-GPU graphics cards currently are. 'Asus has spaced [the GPUs] out, placing one on the top of the card and two on the underside. This creates its own problem, though: attaching heatsinks and fans to both sides of the card would prevent it from fitting into some case arrangements, and defeat access to neighbouring expansion slots. So instead, Asus has used a low-profile heat-pipe system that channels the heat to a heatsink at the back of the card, from where it's dissipated by externally-powered fluid cooling pipes.'"

12 of 115 comments (clear)

  1. Drivers first. by San-LC · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The technology for multi-GPU processing is already out there (SLI, Crossfire), and now the companies are trying to increase the number of GPUs that can be daisy-chained (CrossfireX, 3-way SLI).

    However, it seems with all of these methods, the weak link is always driver support. I think that drivers will have to develop further before anything like this can take true form and be useful.

    As an aside, did anyone notice that half of the Slashdot description sounded like an advertisement for Asus GPU cooling?

    1. Re:Drivers first. by LarsG · · Score: 2, Interesting

      the weak link is always driver support

      Kinda sorta. Splitting rendering across multiple GPUS has afaict become much harder lately. GPUs used to be mostly fixed function pipelines, while the current generation has more in common with programmable stream processors (e.g., shader programs).

      --
      If J.K.R wrote Windows: Puteulanus fenestra mortalis!
  2. Reminds me of Razors. by Forge · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Remember when All razors had a single blade? Then double blade razors were all the rage. These days, Triple and quad blade razors are around. Soon we will have 5 blades but I would call that a cheese grater.

    Same thing with CPUs and now GPUs. Problem is, at what point dose it become a pissing contest rather than a way to provide more performance for an application that needs it.

    And speaking of those demanding applications. Am I the only one who notice that some of the latest video games running on the best available hardware provide no improvement in appearance or game-play over older games of a similar type running on older hardware?

    It's bad enough that I am tempted to think the programmers are just adding fat to make sure the game demands a more expensive video card.

    Kevin.

    --
    --= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
    1. Re:Reminds me of Razors. by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      In defense of the razors, I absolutely love my Fusion (4 blades). It's each time they add a blade they reduce the spacing between the blades by a similar amount. So each blade only has to take off 1/4th of what a 1 blade model would.

      In a BadAnalogyGuy way I do hope that some computers (especially laptops) move in this direction. Why do I need a 2 gHz dual core processor for my EEE style laptop. Break it into a cheap, slower, power efficient general processor then have a few other small, cheap, power efficient dedicated chips. Much like the iPhone and its dedicated A/V chip.

    2. Re:Reminds me of Razors. by Captain+Splendid · · Score: 3, Interesting

      But I think we are getting to a point again where the details they can produce is beyond what is needed.

      Which is probably why we're getting a lot more chatter on the raytracing issue. I believe that'll be the next big step.

      --
      Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
    3. Re:Reminds me of Razors. by jellomizer · · Score: 4, Interesting

      While I am not sure why I got a Flamebate mod on my post. But Raytracing real time could have advantages on cleaning up issues that we do see. While now we can see each individual grass blade each grass blade looks and moves like a broken stick. But will it be good enough for a competive advantage. Or is it that the graphics artests are not good enough for realistice 3d images. Even the stuff that takes months to render for the movies still looks computer generated and seem unrealistic when things start moving. Much like the Final Fantasy movie (yea it is old but it is a great point) they showed adds before it was released with the people face as a solid image, and you couldn't tell if it was real or not. But when you see them moving and talking you knew it was fake, and lifeless. Pixar worked around these issues by not making people look realistic they use a cartoon aproach to make them seem like cartoon and have them different enough for us to connect with. But it is an issue is it performance and CPU or the fact that we don't have artests good enough for the work yet.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    4. Re:Reminds me of Razors. by Vectronic · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Thats true... "to a point"... but when that first point wears out, and starts just pushing the hair over, the second blade snags on, cuts the hair on an angle, the third cuts it almost straight (flush) and the forth cuts it flush...

      Also, how you roll the blade has some effect on which blade gets the first cut... similar to a surf board, its flat... however when you put your weight to the back, its only the back of the board thats touching the water...

    5. Re:Reminds me of Razors. by Cheeko · · Score: 4, Interesting

      That probably has more to do with the quality of the individual blades. Cheap $1 razor will cut like a cheap $1 razor.

      That being said I used to use the 2 blade Gilette razor and have since moved on to a 3. What I have noticed is that it does the job faster and the overall blade lasts longer. What i suspect is happening is that the first blade may dull, but its making the rough cut anyway, then one of the other blades which is sharper follows up with a cleaner cut.

      I think the more important advancement has been all the other stuff on the blade head. the mounted springs, the lube strip, the rubber precut strips that tension the skin, etc. I suspect all those contribute more to the newer blades being better.

    6. Re:Reminds me of Razors. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      I'm sure somebody clever out there in the game design world will make some must-have title that has multiple monitor support. Put all the up close action and such on one screen. The other screen will feature your stats, chat, mission map and player postitions, how much ammo you have, etc. Maybe have some other thing where another player can show you what he's viewing or something nifty like that which could help turn the tide of battle. If this is implemented well enough, the multi-monitor users would have an edge over the other players that have to change screens in the middle of gameplay.

      That might take up some GPU power that isn't really needed at this particular moment.

  3. It's not the GPU by Z_A_Commando · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The end of the article makes a good point. While we have dual- and tri-core graphics setups now, the programs are not designed to exploit them. This is the same issue that is being faced in the general CPU market as well. If you don't have a multi-threaded app for multiple CPUs, you only gain in multitasking, but not in a single program. A serial program can ONLY run serially. There's only so much parallelism that a CPU can infer. And at that point, you have out-of-order execution to make up for mutli-cycle instructions.

    The two ways to do multi-core graphics would be to have each GPU generate a separate frame. This would be done in the driver, but since video is dependant on the previous frame there's not as much gain as is theoretically possible because you're still dependant upon the result from the previous frame. The other option is in the app itself, which "knows" what's going to be where at a certain frame and can just send that to each GPU. This would create tremendous speedups because now each frame is generated independently. Thus a 3X setup would achieve 3X performance (again theoretically). These options are probably mutually exclusive though because an app written to take advantage of mutli-GPUs could be foiled by a driver written to take advantage of them. It's a choose your poison option. And currently we're not getting either.

  4. Why bother ? by billcopc · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I fail to see why they even bothered to build this thing. Anyone who's been paying attention would know that multi-GPU technology is a clusterfuck. Nobody has a stable, reliable implementation that actually yields respectable performance. A 20-30% increase for GPU-bound applications is simply pathetic... often times that increase is 0%, if a game is not SLI-enabled by its developer or by the graphics drivers.

    When they come up with a multi-GPU system that appropriately virtualizes the whole thing, enabling ALL apps to benefit, I'll buy. Right now, it's just double the money for none of the fun.

    --
    -Billco, Fnarg.com
  5. So we are back to the Voodoo 2 now? by seeker_1us · · Score: 3, Interesting
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voodoo2

    The Voodoo2 was a set of three graphics processing units (GPU) on a single board, made by 3dfx. It was released in February 1998 as a replacement for the original Voodoo Graphics chipset.

    :)