Screw SLI, when do we get this in our Macs...?!?

macroninmacronin
Posted:
in Future Apple Hardware edited January 2014
Just surfing over to the ATi website, and I ran across this...



http://ati.com/technology/crossfire/...ePaperweb2.pdf



Comments?



Possibility of a FireGL CrossFire solution?



You know, for when we finally get Pro OpenGL cards on the new Intel Powermac workstations...



;^p
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 161
    ebbyebby Posts: 3,110member
    One of the reasons I bought a 3Dfx Voodoo 5500. Dual processors... SWEET! 8)



    I wouldn't mind a Dual processor X800 AGP or PCI-X card for my G5.



    Not a fan of shared memory though. I would like 128MB soldered on the card with maybe an open RAM slot for user-upgradable DDR RAM (up to 1GB or something).
  • Reply 2 of 161
    lemon bon bonlemon bon bon Posts: 2,383member
    The ATI solution is better because it is backward compatible and everything receives some performance boost?



    SLI and Crossfire haven't reached the mainstream yet. And the performance boost I've seen on the Wintel side doesn't seem to justify the expense of motherboard, two expensive cards for improvements on 'some games' and an extra 10 fps or so on non-optimised games.



    With ATI and Nvidia more commited to performance with dual cards or gpus then...hopefully...it will become mainstream in the next couple of years...and that software will take advantage of it.



    At the moment we off optimisation for dual core cpus and gpus...



    Seems a bit hit and miss...



    Lemon Bon Bon



    PS. So, if you buy a master 'Crossfire' card, you can just piggy back a card on top? Does this need a supportive motherboard? AKA SLI? Or is this where ATi's solution is different. ie we wouldn't need Apple to support it. Because I don't see them supporting SLI, before or after the Intel transition...
  • Reply 3 of 161
    dfilerdfiler Posts: 3,420member
    SLI has never seemed like a viably mainstream technology.



    It simply isn't the most cost effective way produce machines at the mainstream price/performance level. If users need more power, it is cheapest to do it via a single interconnect and board. If the the single board is too slow, it's still cheaper to upgrade the interface in the next generation of machines.



    We could be running dual board mother boards... or even dual board sound or networking cards. The reason we don't is that it would be more expensive.



    There are computers which do use multiple motherboards etc and

    SLI definately has a place. However, it only truly makes sense when you need more than the average ammount of GPU power. If the average consumer could use the performance provided by SLI, card manufacturers will simply make a faster single board. It's cheaper for them and their customers.
  • Reply 4 of 161
    macroninmacronin Posts: 1,174member
    Ebby: Read the pdf, it will explain the memory usage...



    Lemon Bon Bon: Read the pdf, it will explain the main logic board requirements...



    dfiler: Read my original post. It is fairly obvious I am talking about using this tech from a Pro apps standpoint...



    Anyone else, please read the pdf fully before commenting... It seems that most folks are just skimming over really quickly (oh, pretty pictures!) and posting from the hip...



    ;^p
  • Reply 5 of 161
    dfilerdfiler Posts: 3,420member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by MacRonin

    Ebby: Read the pdf, it will explain the memory usage...



    Lemon Bon Bon: Read the pdf, it will explain the main logic board requirements...



    dfiler: Read my original post. It is fairly obvious I am talking about using this tech from a Pro apps standpoint...



    Anyone else, please read the pdf fully before commenting... It seems that most folks are just skimming over really quickly (oh, pretty pictures!) and posting from the hip...



    ;^p



    Somehow, I don't think your points are furthered by ordering everyone around and then arrogantly dissmissing their thoughts.



    (For the record, my previous post was a reply to the post directly above it, not your post. Not everything is about you... well, unless you succeed in ticking everyone off.)
  • Reply 6 of 161
    macroninmacronin Posts: 1,174member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by dfiler

    Somehow, I don't think your points are furthered by ordering everyone around and then arrogantly dissmissing their thoughts.



    (For the record, my previous post was a reply to the post directly above it, not your post. Not everything is about you... well, unless you succeed in ticking everyone off.)



    I would only "arrogantly dissmiss their thoughts" when it is painfully obvious that the pdf was not fully read and comprehended...



    And everything is not about me, but rather everything is about proper absorbtion of information... Sadly, most these days tend to skim and spout off from there... Rather than taking time to fully ingest and assimilate provided information...



    So, am I succeeding in ticking you off...?!?



    ;^p
  • Reply 7 of 161
    ebbyebby Posts: 3,110member
    I did read the PDF and although I worded my post wrong, my argument still stands. I would want the bulk of the memory directly on the cards themselves, and not on the other end of the north bridge. (Thereby reducing bandwidth use and requirements) I do understand the need for shared memory between GPU's but that should be the only thing not on the card. (In my previous post I used the term "shared memory" as that which belongs to the computer and allocated to the GPU.)



    Anyways, no hostility here. 8)
  • Reply 8 of 161
    onlookeronlooker Posts: 5,252member
    All it really looked like to me SLI with a few new rendering tricks. SLI does the every other image render. So does the ATI version. It's obvious where they got the idea, and see the need to be competitive with SLI. All the different new type of renders are pretty cool as well. It looks almost like they are doing a box render from every other processor in each frame, or switching boxes between processors on each frame in one of the new types. But it isn't.

    Needless to say I doubt Nvidia has fallen asleep. Their Dual card rendering development is most definitely still an active focus for them. I'm sure there will be an SLI 2 soon enough.



    Although unless Apple gets with the program, and finds a way for the intel Macs to use every standard PC graphics card. (excluding drivers I guess (maybe a driver rosette) ) then Mac users are still going to suffer by being out of the performance loop when it comes to graphics.
  • Reply 9 of 161
    macroninmacronin Posts: 1,174member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Ebby

    I did read the PDF and although I worded my post wrong, my argument still stands. I would want the bulk of the memory directly on the cards themselves, and not on the other end of the north bridge. (Thereby reducing bandwidth use and requirements) I do understand the need for shared memory between GPU's but that should be the only thing not on the card. (In my previous post I used the term "shared memory" as that which belongs to the computer and allocated to the GPU.)



    Anyways, no hostility here. 8)



    The division of memory in the ATi CrossFire set-up is tha same in any AGP/PCI-Express rig... Memory on the cards, and a path to memory sectioned out from the main system memory pool... Nothing new here...



    Not meaning any hostilities here either, just being my usual brutally honest self... Never anything personal...



    Cheers!
  • Reply 10 of 161
    ebbyebby Posts: 3,110member
    That is a very deceptive picture in that PDF for someone that doesn't know much about graphic cards. On one hand, it appears all the memory information is shown to pass through the north bridge, but on the other hand the hard wired RAM on the cards may not be included in that diagram. I'm sure the developers thought long and hard about this, but from the picture, it looks like there is a potential bottleneck in the north bridge. (Use of more colors would be helpful)



    Perhaps cached instructions and resources are stored in the Computer/GPU memory and the actual image information resides on the card. But now I am asking technical questions that this PDF can't answer.
  • Reply 11 of 161
    pyrixpyrix Posts: 264member
    You still need two graphics ports on the mainboard.



    While this does give better than nvidias - U HAVE TWO CARDS OR DIE!!! solution, I have to wonder which gives better performance. Will be interesting to see some benchmarks.



    But the most popular ATI card is STILL the Radeon 9800 Pro, becuase it is simply no worse than the newer X800 and things. You lose any possible performance gain elsewhere in the system. The 9800 is a AGP card, which means your backward compatiability only stretches so far.
  • Reply 12 of 161
    cubistcubist Posts: 954member
    The interesting thing about CrossFire is the interboard connecting cable on the DVI port. There is a nutshell of something simple there: just connect the two boards with a cable.
  • Reply 13 of 161
    macroninmacronin Posts: 1,174member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by cubist

    The interesting thing about CrossFire is the interboard connecting cable on the DVI port. There is a nutshell of something simple there: just connect the two boards with a cable.



    Cost cutting measure or or for "backwards compatability", I don't know...



    But it makes every X800/X850 board capable of being transformed into a CrossFire rig...



    The question now is this, can I run dual monitors off of this setup?



    Like an Apple 30" ACD & a Wacom 21" Cintiq...



    Make for a sweet DCC setup!



    Just wonder how dual monitors affects the performance, and would have the same query with the nVidia SLI setup...
  • Reply 14 of 161
    sunilramansunilraman Posts: 8,133member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by pyriX

    .....

    While this does give better than nvidias - U HAVE TWO CARDS OR DIE!!! solution.....



    what the hell are you talking about? i have one nvidia card running in my Asus SLI rig. it's sweet



    some games show definite improvements with SLI. in 6 months, should there be enough of a match between games that can take advantage of SLI and games i'm likely to get into, then i can pop in the same model of my nvidia card, albeit, much cheaper now since it's 6-months down the line, so i could get almost double the GPU power for guess what... half the price of my original GPU



    well, that's my gamble on the SLI deal.



    or maybe, i'll just buy two nvidia 7800 GTs just to get some stupidly high 3dmark2005 score, umm... for the sake of... getting a stupidly high 3dmark05 score...
  • Reply 15 of 161
    pyrixpyrix Posts: 264member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by sunilraman

    what the hell are you talking about? i have one nvidia card running in my Asus SLI rig. it's sweet



    some games show definite improvements with SLI. in 6 months, should there be enough of a match between games that can take advantage of SLI and games i'm likely to get into, then i can pop in the same model of my nvidia card, albeit, much cheaper now since it's 6-months down the line, so i could get almost double the GPU power for guess what... half the price of my original GPU



    well, that's my gamble on the SLI deal.



    or maybe, i'll just buy two nvidia 7800 GTs just to get some stupidly high 3dmark2005 score, umm... for the sake of... getting a stupidly high 3dmark05 score...



    Meant you had to have two IDIENTICAL cards at the same time to get SLIdge. Sorry, probably wasn't clear on that. The more I look at my posts, the more gramitcally non gramatical they come.
  • Reply 16 of 161
    onlookeronlooker Posts: 5,252member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by pyriX





    While this does give better than nvidias - U HAVE TWO CARDS OR DIE!!! solution, I have to wonder which gives better performance. Will be interesting to see some benchmarks.







    If your computer has an SLI equipt motherboard you don't need two cards. You do if you want to use SLI, but it is very deceptive to say "U HAVE TWO CARDS OR DIE!!! solution" when that is not the case.
  • Reply 17 of 161
    pyrixpyrix Posts: 264member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by onlooker

    If your computer has an SLI equipt motherboard you don't need two cards. You do if you want to use SLI, but it is very deceptive to say "U HAVE TWO CARDS OR DIE!!! solution" when that is not the case.



    I corrected that above your post.
  • Reply 18 of 161
    emig647emig647 Posts: 2,455member
    I would like to point out that SLI motherboards aren't expensive any more. For instance, you can grab a gigabyte SLI socket 939 NForce 4 ultra motherboard from newegg for around 110. Thats nothing compared to what they used to be ($200+). Also graphics cards have (pci-e) come way down in price as well. I'm almost considering purchasing that motherboard with 2 6600gts. But as stated above you just don't get the performance benefit as you could with purchasing better cards. I still feel crossfire and SLI are for bragging rights more than anything. A dual 6800gt SLI setup did not impress me. I'd rather have 1 6800gt for half the cost and lose a few seconds during renderings.
  • Reply 19 of 161
    emig647emig647 Posts: 2,455member
    Also, I still feel dual core graphics cards are the future. Onlooker doesn't agree with me on this one. Gigabyte did a great job throwing together a dual core 6600. The thing flys! The downside (if you can call it that) is it requires a certain motherboard at this time. It makes a lot more sense to have 2 cores on 1 card than 2 seperate cores..... just like processors.SLI isn't appealing to me for a few reasons... but mainly because it takes up too much space and doubles your heat distribution from GPAs. Some of these modern GPUs are running extremely hot. My AOpen 6600gt burned out from a slight overclock in memory frequency. I used to be able to grab a lot ouf of cards. They are just being pushed to the limits now days. I threw another fan on the AOpen and was able to grab 150mhz more with the 2nd card.



    Point is... room and heat can really kill a system. For the average person... i don't see this to be very appealing. For huge rendering farms...... I can see a slight advantage.
  • Reply 20 of 161
    pyrixpyrix Posts: 264member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by emig647

    Also, I still feel dual core graphics cards are the future. Onlooker doesn't agree with me on this one. Gigabyte did a great job throwing together a dual core 6600. The thing flys! The downside (if you can call it that) is it requires a certain motherboard at this time. It makes a lot more sense to have 2 cores on 1 card than 2 seperate cores..... just like processors.SLI isn't appealing to me for a few reasons... but mainly because it takes up too much space and doubles your heat distribution from GPAs. Some of these modern GPUs are running extremely hot. My AOpen 6600gt burned out from a slight overclock in memory frequency. I used to be able to grab a lot ouf of cards. They are just being pushed to the limits now days. I threw another fan on the AOpen and was able to grab 150mhz more with the 2nd card.



    Point is... room and heat can really kill a system. For the average person... i don't see this to be very appealing. For huge rendering farms...... I can see a slight advantage.



    I agree - Many people (myself included) just use 9800pro's, as there is no percievable performance difference between that and dual 7800XT's. Well, maybe there is, but the point is, that for most people running average systems, there is no gain.



    AND, I'm yet to see a 7800XT work on an nforce3 motherboard.
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