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New Multi-GPU Technology With No Strings Attached

Posted by kdawson on from the here-process-this dept.

Vigile writes "Multi-GPU technology from both NVIDIA and ATI has long been dependent on many factors including specific motherboard chipsets and forcing gamers to buy similar GPUs within a single generation. A new company called Lucid Logix is showing off a product that could potentially allow vastly different GPUs to work in tandem while still promising near-linear scaling on up to four chips. The HYDRA Engine is dedicated silicon that dissects DirectX and OpenGL calls and modifies them directly to be distributed among the available graphics processors. That means the aging GeForce 6800 GT card in your closet might be useful once again and the future of one motherboard supporting both AMD and NVIDIA multi-GPU configurations could be very near."

2 of 179 comments (clear)

  1. My god... by bigtallmofo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Next you'll need a 1,000 watt power supply just to run your computer. How long until my home computer is hooked up to a 50 amp 240 volt line?

    I mean, if one GPU is good and two GPUs are better, does that mean 5 are fantastic?

    I used to have a Radeon 1950 Pro in my current system, which is nowhere near the top of the scale in video cards (in fact, it's probably below even average). It was so loud and literally doubled the number of watts my system took while running (measured by Kill-a-Watt). I took it out and now just use the integrated Intel graphics adapter. Man, that was fast enough for me but I don't play games very often.

    --
    I'm a big tall mofo.
  2. Re:Time to make them imcompatible! by im_thatoneguy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Don't you mean Wierd(er).

    The reason NVidia requires such symetrical cards isn't just because of speed and frame buffer synchronization but also because different cards render different scenes slightly differently. This is the reason why OpenGL rendering isn't used very often in post production. You can't have two frames come back to you with slightly different gammas, whitepoints, blending algorithms etc etc.

    I'm actually very very curious how they intend to resolve every potential source of image inconsistancy between frame buffers. It seems like it would have to almost use the 3D Cards abstractly as a sort of CPU accelleration unit not an actual FrameBuffer generator.