Screw SLI, when do we get this in our Macs...?!?
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
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
Comments
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).
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...
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.
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
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.)
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
Anyways, no hostility here. 8)
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.
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!
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.
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.
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...
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.