Stop Microsoft
Miscellaneous => The Lounge => Topic started by: obob on 3 August 2006, 01:38
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http://www.nvidia.com/page/quadroplex.html
September 2006, external PCI Express graphics release, in the form of nV Quadro Plex, and don't expect that price tag to be nice to you, lol, those cards cost something like $2500 each.
I'm guessing this is purely an answer to the issue of gfx card heat and power, and I remember myself speculating on the construction of such an external device, however the sheer SIZE of this thing blows my mind.
My real question is, does this indicate any advance on nVidia's part of entering the commerical IG world with it's Quadro series?
EDIT
after viewing their little flash movie, I think it's safe to say the IG is here now...but wow...I'd like to see the system that can take a number of those in rack config (afaik each one req 16 to 32 lanes of PCIe, and the PCIe standard from Intel only allows 32 lanes afaik (the hell i'm buying a PCI-SIG registration to view the technical white papers, I don't feel like looking around at Intel's site, so Wikipedia is good enough for me))
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http://www.nvidia.com/page/quadroplex.html (http://www.nvidia.com/page/quadroplex.html)
September 2006, external PCI Express graphics release, in the form of nV Quadro Plex, and don't expect that price tag to be nice to you, lol, those cards cost something like $2500 each.
I'm guessing this is purely an answer to the issue of gfx card heat and power, and I remember myself speculating on the construction of such an external device, however the sheer SIZE of this thing blows my mind.
My real question is, does this indicate any advance on nVidia's part of entering the commerical IG world with it's Quadro series?
EDIT
after viewing their little flash movie, I think it's safe to say the IG is here now...but wow...I'd like to see the system that can take a number of those in rack config (afaik each one req 16 to 32 lanes of PCIe, and the PCIe standard from Intel only allows 32 lanes afaik (the hell i'm buying a PCI-SIG registration to view the technical white papers, I don't feel like looking around at Intel's site, so Wikipedia is good enough for me))
There are some motherboards with dual 16x PCI-E ports, fully wired for 16 lanes each, allong with a few 1x or 4x slots. Usually around 48 lanes...meh
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So...yeah...
You think it can play diablo without freezing/stuttering at Baals legions?
:D
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haha, probably not, given that it's not wired for Direct3D, but then again you never know
also, in order to accomplish >32 lanes you'd need multiple controllers, which should be possible, however I see that as an increasing complexity to the board (more layers for the extra controllers etc) which increases cost
and I highly doubt consumer boards exist with a true "48 lane" configuration
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haha, probably not, given that it's not wired for Direct3D, but then again you never know
also, in order to accomplish >32 lanes you'd need multiple controllers, which should be possible, however I see that as an increasing complexity to the board (more layers for the extra controllers etc) which increases cost
and I highly doubt consumer boards exist with a true "48 lane" configuration
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the ATI xpress3200 chipset boards has dual x16 port, along with a few adtional PCI-E connectors for gigabit, and the southbridge
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OMG
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[offtopic]
OMG
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[/offtopic]
Professionals ranging from manufacturing designers and stylists to earth scientists to digital content creators can solve their most complex, graphics-intensive problems using an unconstrained dedicated visual computing system based on proven, industry standard architectures.
This has nothing to do with gaming...at all.
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Perhaps. But I'm in a weird mood and can't help myself.
And excuse me for being cynical, but I suspect that most gamers, when they see news like this, begin fantasizing about how awesome their games would play with it. Of course the price tag limits it to real-time modelling. But I bet you secretly don't care about any of the scientific/engineering applications it is designed for, and are only interested in its theoretical game performance. Admit it, if it were $250, you would want one.
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God, i am an asshole today. Sorry, everyone.
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I want one...but I do, do 3d modelling...not like that. It would be nice to render a complex peice though and not have to wait for it...
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the ATI xpress3200 chipset boards has dual x16 port, along with a few adtional PCI-E connectors for gigabit, and the southbridge
yes, that's still ONLY 32 lanes per controller, 32 from the north bridge and 4 or 8 from the south bridge :eek: isn't that amazing
VIA Technologies, nVidia, and Intel, ALL have competitive (and imo better) chipsets that accomplish the same thing
http://www.via.com.tw/en/images/products/chipsets/k8-series/k8t900_blkdiagram.jpg
Observe, 32 lanes are provided by the northbridge maximum (in this case it can provide a total of around 19) and an additional 2 or 3 provided by the southbridge
a GPU, to stay competitive with at least AGP 4x (which is the rough absolute MINIMUM bandwidth you can have between a GPU and system and maintain any sort of respectable performance, and AGP 4x's ability to function as such is slowly detiorating) needs roughly 4 PCI Express lanes, 16 provide it with around 4GB/s of full duplex bandwidth, AGP 8x, by comparison, is 2.133GB/s of half duplex bandwidth
so PCI Express x8 provides roughly 2GB/s of full duplex bandwidth, and PCI Express x4 provides roughly 1GB/s of full duplex bandwidth (which does have it's advantages over an interface like AGP 4x)
So, in a system like the Quadro Plex Model II, which features 4 GPU's, each GPU only gets x4 bandwidth, 8 times over if you're running 8-way SLI, now, you might be thinking, ZOMG, SO LITTLE, then consider that nVidia's created a massively parallel rendering scheme here, and you probably won't even be utilizing 1GB/s to each GPU (considering a conventional GPU can render full frames with 1GB/s and usually not have a ton of problems)
now after this little lesson on PCI Express and north bridges has been given, my original point was merely that each one of these things requires a very large piece of bandwidth to operate correctly, and given that nVidia is advertising these for rack configuration w/TWO for a single rack (width wise) that means each pair needs (basically) 32 lanes (although i'm sure if you played with drivers/intelligence you could get two to work on dual x8's, or if, for example, your motherboard only provided a total of 16 lanes, such as the original NF4 SLI, or the Intel 925x) SO! my original point is furthered to a question asking, how the hell would you build an IG out of these, given that PCI Express is A) a local interconnect and B) limited to 32 lanes per controller, and 32 lane controllers are rather expensive, a layout similar to Gigabyte's Quad Royal could be pulled off, but that could still only provide maybe at most 64 lanes
Quad SLI was speculating something like PCIe x40 on the original presentation, however it's being released to consumers to run on dual x16's, which is still inside that 32 lane configuration...in other words, to design a system capable of running more than a pair of these in tandem (lets just ignore the whole driver issue, the whole heat issue, the whole power issue, and for the sake of time and our sanity, the whole issue of physical distance's effect on a local interconnect's latency in this case...ummkay) would be a total pain, as you'd need at least 64 available lanes (so copying Gigabyte's Quad Royal configuration, you link a pair of NF4 or NF5 northbridge's together, Gigabyte linked the Intel Ed. to the AMD edition, as the AMD edition has no memory controller, so it can function as an SB, it provided a full 32 lanes in a 4 x8 config or 2 x16 config (they were gonna release quad SLI drivers for their 3D1 cards with it, but I guess that never happened, sadly, I wanted to see 4x6800GT, the performance would still be formidable))
ANYWAYS
considering the above, and considering the total worthlessness of this for an IG (it isn't designed like a true IG, like something from E&S or the old Quantum3D machines from the late 1990's that ran on VSA-100's) given the PCI Express thing, WHY WOULD YOU MAKE IT RACK MOUNTABLE, as you'd most likely never wanna stick something like this in a data center, and it makes no sense for a graphics workstation to sit in a rack (unless it's a small rack, similar to a DJ station, however a 43U rack would be totally overkill for a machine that shouldn't be much larger than a desktop)
The only advantage to the "rack" config I can see is if your workstation is a desktop and is similar in durability to the SGI Indigo2 (or similar) series, so you could stick your little 8 GPU IG farm on top of it, nonetheless, this technology seems almost entirely over the top, then again, it's the world of progl cards, what do you expect