Can one have a PC with four GF 9800GX2 cards ?

[Megadrive1988]

Is it possible to have a stanard highend PC rig with four GeForce 9800 GX2 cards (thus 8 GPUs) in it? Or is the limit just 2 such cards (thus 4 GPUs).

I know there are SLI rigs with 4 cards (Quad SLI) but those are single-GPU cards.

 

[ChrisRay]

Its possible. And Nway is capable of AFRing that many GPUs. But its not supported and couldnt be enabled as "SLI".

 

[Berek]

Even if it were possible there wouldn't be much point.

When you get to quad sli, not to mention 8x, you come across significant barriers in bandwidth, memory utilization between the cards (as each card is dedicated to a limited amount, not shared), and driver/support issues.

Just forget about it... EVEN if you're rich, it wouldn't really matter. If you're rich, waste your money on at most 2 of those, but forget 4.

 

[AnarchX]

Just forget about it... EVEN if you're rich, it wouldn't really matter. If you're rich, waste your money on at most 2 of those, but forget 4.

Or three clock-selected 88Ultra @ chilled water, which will beat an even oced 98GX2-QSLI in most situations...

To the main question:
- GX2 has only one SLI-connector -> only 2 cards can communicate, communication over PCIe is problematic through high latency
- 8 Way-AFR: extrem high synchronization-work needed, 7 FPS input-lag
- NV does not support it

 

[Megadrive1988]

I get the feeling that if this summer or fall, I invested in say, just one high quality, and nicely overclocked 9900 GX2 card (not 9800 GX2 I mean the upcoming stuff) which will have two GT200 GPUs, that'll be enough to anything, including Crysis and any game built on CryEngine2, for the next 2 years, until I can make a decision on one of the next-generation technologies: future Nvidia architecture, Larrabee, Fusion, R800, etc.


It's hard to believe that an 8800 Ultra from early 2007 is still the best card around.

 

[Berek]

My friend, who posts on here, is quite adamant about getting one huge power non-sli-anything card. And I'm beginning to agree with him on his reasoning. Just get one huge beast and it'll be good enough for most games (except Crysis, which doesn't matter much).

Sure, we all could go SLI, and it does help in a lot of cases, and I may still do that, but I'm going to try and fit in a purchase with one major card first before hand if the performance is good enough (GT200 or RV770...).

 

[Davros]

Heres an idea - only for the stinkin rich
buy a supercomputer with a few 100 cpu's and run swiftshader on it

 

[gl33k]

I get the feeling that if this summer or fall, I invested in say, just one high quality, and nicely overclocked 9900 GX2 card (not 9800 GX2 I mean the upcoming stuff) which will have two GT200 GPUs, that'll be enough to anything, including Crysis and any game built on CryEngine2, for the next 2 years, until I can make a decision on one of the next-generation technologies: future Nvidia architecture, Larrabee, Fusion, R800, etc.
It's hard to believe that an 8800 Ultra from early 2007 is still the best card around.

Forget it for the next 5 years. at the very least.

 

[Megadrive1988]

Forget it for the next 5 years. at the very least.

Heh, in 5-7 years, according to Intel, we'll have hundreds of cores running thousands of threads on a chip with tens of billions of transistors (Platform 2015) :lol

 

[imsabbel]

I personally do not think that AFR is sensible in any way anyway.
1frame delay with 2 gpus is still aceptable, but the further we go the more ugly it gets.
Especially because it also restricts usage of the gpu (you cannot know what the last frame looked like, for effects).
7frames input lag... well, i hope you wouldnt want to play online. Or guitar hero. Or anything remotely interactive thats running at less than 400fps...

 

[suryad]

I am a big fan of SLI to be honest. I am a resolution whore and a quality whore. My rig purchase was justified when I ran AC on it, Vegas, GRAW1/2 all at maxxed out settings. Crysis is next. I dont understand all the venom about SLI. I am not rich by any means but I know that if you want high end you gotta bleed money for it lol.

 

[Rainbow Man]

I like SLI also. It enables me to run most games at 1920*1200 res with 16xAA so I have no "venom" about it at all.

I guess the problem is it doesn't do much good once you go beyodn 2 GPUs. Like mentioned, input lag and such.

Many games also don't display even 100% improvement over 1 GPU with 2 GPUs and much much less than 300% with 4 GPUs.

Many GPUs pull a lot of power and create a lot of heat. My quadcore box and SLI 8800s heat up my entire apartement several degrees by themselves. Last summer was quite uncomfortable. (Sweden, no AC as standard and all that.)

 

[kjoost]

Is it possible to have a stanard highend PC rig with four GeForce 9800 GX2 cards (thus 8 GPUs) in it? Or is the limit just 2 such cards (thus 4 GPUs).

I know there are SLI rigs with 4 cards (Quad SLI) but those are single-GPU cards.

Yes, this is possible. Check out our "research" system at http://fastra.ua.ac.be

I am not sure if this fits your definition of "standard highend PC rig" though

 

[shiznit]

Yes, this is possible. Check out our "research" system at http://fastra.ua.ac.be

I am not sure if this fits your definition of "standard highend PC rig" though

I saw this on XS the other day, pretty impressive. Shame you guys had to go with AMD though.