Asus Crams Three GPUs onto a Single Graphics Card

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.'"

Comments

Drivers first.

[San-LC]

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?

Re:Drivers first.

[eebra82]

As an aside, did anyone notice that half of the Slashdot description sounded like an advertisement for Asus GPU cooling? Advertisement or announcement? Does it really matter, since most news items could be considered as advertisements?

I think the talk about the cooling is important since one of the most difficult tasks is not how to get three GPUs on a single chip, but to get a viable cooling solution that doesn't sound like a vacuum cleaner and one that doesn't require too much space (or it would essentially kill the whole concept).

Re:Drivers first.

[Captain Splendid]

Is it really a slashvertisement when we're talking about something that's barely past the concept stage? Granted, this is good coverage for Asus (who, IMO deserve it), but I also thought news like this was exactly what Slashdot was for.

Re:Drivers first.

[timeOday]

Advertisement or announcement?

It's neither. In fact isn't nothing more than a report of a failed experiment - I quote, "A standard 512MB HD 3850 running our Crysis benchmark in high detail at 1,280 x 1,024 averaged 26fps, while switching to the X3 increased that score by just 3fps."

In other words, it doesn't work! I'll worry about cooling 3 GPUs when they are at least able to do something useful! Until then I would cool this board by unplugging 2 of the GPUs and enjoying practically the same performance.

onionistic

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck Everything, Were doing five cores.

Reminds me of Razors.

[Forge]

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.

Re:Reminds me of Razors.

[jellomizer]

Well to be fair the new games do have better graphics. But the problem comes down to the fact that graphics are improving beyond the average persons eye and interpret graphics. Much like sound cards a decade ago. We had some major improvements from the Ad-Lib up to the SoundBlaster 16. But after that even though the cards have massive improvements average joe doesn't know the difference. The same thing is happening to video cards now. The new games that fully utilize the card adds effects that are very subtile, or on the old systems they cheated to add the effects (Fixed background Bitmaped Images, A semi-transparancy layer to simulate haze. While now the background is getting nearly fully rendered so if there is a mountain in the background and you have a powerful enough graphics card and a high enough resolution you can see each blade of grass on that mountain, and the Haze is like real haze not as uniformed as before more like real life. But the average Game player wouldn't really focus on these details, if they are actually interested in playing the games.

Unlike the old days you can see a huge difference between a CGA, EGA, VGA and Super VGA. Then Super VGA held on for a while then the 3d Cards started coming out and there were huge improvements even now. But I think we are getting to a point again where the details they can produce is beyond what is needed.

Re:Reminds me of Razors.

[jalefkowit]

No discussion of how many blades there are on razors these days is complete until somebody posts this. So I figured I'd just get it out of the way :-)

Re:Reminds me of Razors.

[jellomizer]

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.

Re:Reminds me of Razors.

[Cheeko]

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.

How much power does it need?

[Anonymous Coward]

How many power supplies are required? Does it come with a 12 KV step-down transformer and 220V three-phase power hookup? Can I heat the basement with it?

2 GPUs is the limit, for now.

[default luser]

It's not necessairly a limit of the board design, but a limit to what game engines can be optimized for. Most game engines do not scale well beyond two cards, as can be seen here:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/zotac-9800gx2.html

While there are a few key games that get no boost out of 2-way SLI, the vast majority of games do see improvement. 3-way, on the other hand, can actually cause WORSE performance.

It probably has to do with limitations on how the SLI/Crossfire drivers can fake-out the game engine. There are probably limits to how many frames the game engine allows to be in-flight at once, limiting how much performance boost you can get from AFR SLI. And although you can get around game engine limitations with split-screen rendering, this mode needs specific game support, and shows less potential performance increase. Plus, split-screen rendering and has to be selected explicitly in Crossfire (AFR is the default).

Where are the more efficient GPUs?

[Yvan256]

Why can't we put our efforts toward more efficient GPUs? Just as most users won't ever be able to push their current CPUs at their maximum, most aren't even using the full power of their GPUs.

I want a fanless, 5W GPU with the power of GPUs from about 3 years ago. Can the new smaller transistors allow for this or am I asking for too much?

If ATI and nVidia keep pushing for raw power, they'll get beaten to the low-power finish line by the likes of intel and VIA.