My next brilliant idea: SLI in consoles

[Bill]

What is console hardware, exemplified by PS3 and X360, really all about?

Packing as much leading edge hardware as humanly possible for the time frame of release! To best hold up 5+years.

I mean PS3 is highest end, so is X360 arguably. They even try to go beyond cutting edge. Cell and Xenos.

Well, the logical step is SLI. Mark my words. The first manufactorer to do that will be brilliant.

Imagine SLI'd R520's in X360? We sure wouldn't be having these power debates then! Or SLI 7800's in PS3, if you like it better.

Drawback is cost. But MS particularly could bit that bullet.

 

[Bill]

I mean MS has thown billions at the market already. With a dual GPU solution, at least I think they could be reasonably gaurenteed 60-80% of the market for their money, provided they launched at same time as PS3.


As it is they throw billions and have no gaurentee..

 

[Bill]

I mean, SLI has shown to be a terrible upgrade path.

It's most value is what?

"providing next gen performance now"

IE, dual 6800's are somewhat close to a 7800GTX, right? But you could own the former 20 months ago.

And in a console, you could really get a lot closer to the theoretical performance. You wouldn't have a "dongle", etc.

 

[Mmmkay]

You should probably stop posting now.

 

[Bill]

Why?

Who wants "next gen performance now" better than a console?

Sure, cost would be extreme. But do you think say, dual NV2A's would be expensive now? But you would have much closer to top end PC games on Xbox..

 

[Bill]

How about Dual Xenos? Cut out the EDRAM, and with Xcpu being smaller, your overall transistor count might not be much above PS3!

I should be running MS. No joke.

 

[Acert93]

Bill you do realize that almost 50% of your posts are in this single thread AND you replied to yourself not once but TWICE in a mere 8 minutes! You have a lot of exuberance!

The idea of SLI, like Gigabytes SLI on a single board is interesting. The concept is plausible on a console but it would also cost more money. In some ways offering a 2nd GPU "upgrade" chip down the road, when the chip is cheaper, similar to what Nintendo did with the 4MB upgrade, could be interesting.

But the problem you get is developers then begin developing their games with it in mind and non-upgraded SKUs get the short end of the stick. And of course with a chip there is power and heat issues and how to easily allow people to upgrade.

In theory it would be really cool that a game like Halo 3 in 2007/2008 or GTA4 2nd edition for the PS3 came with a 2nd GPU addon for SLI.

But it opens up a huge can of worms too...

As for shipping as SLI... cost cost cost. MS could not justify shipping with a HDD. I am not sure how Sony or MS, both with cutting edge flagship model GPUs, could justify, "Yeah, it is the best on the market... so lets just double it".

These are gaming consoles in the $300 range. Basically you are asking for the same performance as a retail $1000 dual-GPU setup! Your nuts! hehehehe Sure, it may only cost $50-100 more for the chip, extra board considerations, cooling, power, etc... but wow!

Of course this also assumes that you could rig SLI to use shared memory and NOT have 2 Memory pools. Because if that was the case that is a no go right there.

 

[Acert93]

Mark that, over 50% of your posts are now in this thread!

 

[Bill]

No, I mean the console would SHIP STANDARD with dual GPU's, of course.

Not an uprade!

 

[Bill]

It would all be inside of course. I just mean the GPU's would be connected using something sort of like SLI.

I guess you could build one huge chip, but then I think yield would kill..

 

[Carl B]

Bill.

If you have more to say - like one or two more sentences - just edit your last post!

This is seriously out of control.

EDIT: By the way, I see where you're coming from Bill. That being said, for MS I don't think it would have worked out this gen because where they were on the timeline during development, CrossFire wasn't quite 'there' yet, in terms of making it into 360. A better bet for them would have been to make Xenos larger/stronger/wider and eat the cost in reduced yields. This is in effect the same concept anyway: $$$ for performance.

As for Sony, they could probably have done the SLI thing if they really wanted (nevermind the heat and power), but instead of two RSX's and one Cell they might as well have fulfilled the 'original' expected vision and gone four Cell's. Now that would have been novel!

 

[Bill]

I cant edit..guess I'm too new.

TWo CEll;'s would have been useless in my opinion..but two RSX would have ended the console war haha!

 

[Dave Glue]

(Going on the assumption you're not a troll...)

The board is not intended to be a personal blog for your own stream of semi-consciousness for pete's sake. Stop, relax, think of a coherent thought, THEN MAKE IT IN ONE FRICKIN' POST.

And SLI is absolutely ridiculous for a console. You've already got a small package with air & water cooling in the 360 to dispense the heat, and you want to further ratch up the power draw and temperature to create a fragmented market, eroding the main advantage the console has? Not to mention it's at a time in the consoles lifespan when the parent company is finally seeing a healthy return on their investment.

No, you shouldn't be running MS. You shouldn't be a clerk at EB Games.

 

[Bill]

Xenos uses like 35 watts.

I'd like to run a console my way versus yours. Three guesses which the consumer prefers and would buy like hotcakes. My monster at 399, or your costcutter at 299. Gamecube?

Transistors would only be like 460 on a dual Xenos, Possible.

Hell, I'd do a dual 100 watt RSX too. Hot yeah. It could be dealt with.

You would have bandwidth problems without EDRAM. They could be dealt with for a price too. Overall raise the price to 399 and I think you could do it. Especially MS.

 

[Acert93]

No, you shouldn't be running MS. You shouldn't be a clerk at EB Games.

::Ahem:: Your point about coherent posts and making a single thoughtful post is relevant. This personal jab is uncalled for. Thanks for being nicer in the future

 

[blakjedi]

I'd prefer dual Xenons to dual Xenos'. With dual xenos' essentially one would become a 48 pipe pixel shader and the other a 48 pipe vertex shader... one edram to bind them and voila... at some point in time in think this idea was mentioned (last fall maybe..? ) but i dont feel like search for the post.


Rational exuberance at its best.

 

[Reznor007]

Bill.

If you have more to say - like one or two more sentences - just edit your last post!

This is seriously out of control.

EDIT: By the way, I see where you're coming from Bill. That being said, for MS I don't think it would have worked out this gen because where they were on the timeline during development, CrossFire wasn't quite 'there' yet, in terms of making it into 360. A better bet for them would have been to make Xenos larger/stronger/wider and eat the cost in reduced yields. This is in effect the same concept anyway: $$$ for performance.

As for Sony, they could probably have done the SLI thing if they really wanted (nevermind the heat and power), but instead of two RSX's and one Cell they might as well have fulfilled the 'original' expected vision and gone four Cell's. Now that would have been novel!

If I remember right R300 chips can support up to 256 chips operating together. I think E&S have an 8 chip R300 board for high end workstations. It's not Crossfire, but the chip itself supports it. I think the big delay with Crossfire was getting it to work with current boards and be upgradable. I'm not sure about Xenos, but I assume they suport it to.

 

[PG2G]

I think the problem with the idea is that the money and silicon spent on including that second GPU could have spent adding pipes and what not to the original GPU. GPUs are already massively parallel, there is little to be added by adding in a second GPU when you could just make the original that much bigger.

It survives in the PC space only as an upgrade mechanism and for people with far too much money to waste

 

[jvd]

There are tons of problems .



1) Heat , your now dumping another gpu worth of heat into a small box



2) cost , your now paying twice as much for gpu costs

3) ram , sli and cross fire and the other types all need thier own ram and the all write the same data to thier ram pools . So your either cutting your ram in half or doubling your ram . Which will either cripple your gpus or double your cost in ram .



So to conclude your getting anywhere from a negative to a positve gain and your going to double gpu costs and most likely ram costs of your console .

Its better to just invest in more ram for the single gpu as your most likely giong to see a bigger increase in graphics from double the ram than another gpu or take the cost of the second gpu and second ram pool and spread it over to your transistor budget for cpu , ram and gpu . Or perhaps add in dedicated sound hardware

 

[Carl B]

If I remember right R300 chips can support up to 256 chips operating together. I think E&S have an 8 chip R300 board for high end workstations. It's not Crossfire, but the chip itself supports it. I think the big delay with Crossfire was getting it to work with current boards and be upgradable. I'm not sure about Xenos, but I assume they suport it to.

Well, that's true I do remember something to that effect. Still I thought that was one of those things that ended up working much better in theory than in real life, and that Crossfire is just a different angle on the whole thing entirely in lieu of it. I'll trust that you're clearer on it than myself though, as I'm certainly not. Still, I will say that for the mindshare advantage that NVidia gained with SLI, ATI would have been remiss not to have implemented a counter earlier were it a fundamental (and functional) aspect of the architecture.