'Quad' SLI mainboard from Gigabyte

[Rys]

Wheee!

And is it just me, or does that hint that all their early hardware leakage comes from Giga?

 

[MuFu]

Wheee indeed.

Someone I met recently pronounces Gigabyte as "Jigga-byte". Brilliant.

 

[Tim Murray]

The real question is, willl it have a quad-SLI connector. Cause that would be hilarious and cool.

 

[MuFu]

They should put an axle through all the boards and have a big motor at one end spinning all the fans.

Wheee!


Edit - how about they do that anyway? You could mount the motor on the back of the card, a hole through the PCB would be no problem and it'd allow you to have more blade area => slower rotating fan => lower noise.

 

[MasterBaiter]

So I'm assuming this is using the respinned NF4 chipset with the 2 dedicated 16X lanes, and have them all split to x8?

P.S. Wheee for the consumer whores!!!

 

[digitalwanderer]

STOP MULTI-MULTIPLYING VIDDY CARDS!!!!!!

Jeese Louis! I'm starting to feel really bad about just having one, yet it rocks for me!

 

[Sxotty]

It could be pretty darn cool if performance scaled better than it does. Plus the power of 4 7800gtx cards would be staggering if it was even 70% of the aggregate.

 

[Cartoon Corpse]

too bad it'll be obsolete in a year....dx10 hardware/vista.

 

[Karma Police]

I thought all of the 8x 4 motherboards were just split into 2 SLI setups, rendering 2 separate programs. I don't think all four cards are helping to render the same program (frame 1 = card 1, frame 4 = card 4). Instead it looks more like SLI set 1 works on Doom3, while SLI set 2 works on HL2, for example.

Otherwise, you'd have to have some type of connection between the two SLI sets to coordinate, and the pictures show there isn't any.

 

[_xxx_]

too bad it'll be obsolete in a year....dx10 hardware/vista.

Assuming it arrives on time ( ), it'll take at least two years till Vista becomes a requirement for games.

 

[wireframe]

Someone I met recently pronounces Gigabyte as "Jigga-byte". Brilliant.

Heh. Funniest thing I read all day (possibly week or month). Not sure why. LOL.

Wow, Quad SLI. Just when I thought I would give the whole multi-GPU thing a miss, this comes along and slaps me in the face. For some reason I was expecting two dual-GPU cards and not this...behemoth of a rig. Thank goodness for onboard LAN and audio.

 

[Sobek]

I thought all of the 8x 4 motherboards were just split into 2 SLI setups, rendering 2 separate programs. I don't think all four cards are helping to render the same program (frame 1 = card 1, frame 4 = card 4). Instead it looks more like SLI set 1 works on Doom3, while SLI set 2 works on HL2, for example.

Otherwise, you'd have to have some type of connection between the two SLI sets to coordinate, and the pictures show there isn't any.

Divide the rendering areas into quads?

 

[Karma Police]

Divide the rendering areas into quads?

nVidia doesn't do tiling, only AFR or load-based frame thing. Besides, there still isn't any way to physically co-ordinate between SLI sets. You see in the pictures two separate displays being worked on, with only one in the pictire, and the other going out of the picture.

 

[Sxotty]

Wow, Quad SLI. Just when I thought I would give the whole multi-GPU thing a miss, this comes along and slaps me in the face. For some reason I was expecting two dual-GPU cards and not this...behemoth of a rig. Thank goodness for onboard LAN and audio.

Which of course begs the question when will Gigabyte lauch their dual GPU single 7800gt's? Then you have the possibility of 8 GPUs in there.

You have to admit it would be funny. Maybe it is just me, but I would get a kick out of it in a weird way. Of course no one would buy such things, but imagining ATI and NV trying to get the best 3dmark score with 8gpus and calling it a consumer gaming machine seems humorous to me.

 

[MasterBaiter]

Might be good for a simulator type environment perhaps. :|

 

[Geo]

Jesu H. Christo. On a crutch. Forget external power; check the house circuit ratings!

Tho I'm enuf of a ho to want to know the scores.

 

[Fate]

I headr OCZ is releasing a 1,100 Watt PSU. That might help.

 

[Rys]

I headr OCZ is releasing a 1,100 Watt PSU. That might help.

It's less than 100W per card with those 7800 GTXs, full load, in terms of output power needed from the PSU. So less than 600W for that full system pretty much. I can think of a whole bunch of PSUs that could cope at good efficiency.

The PSU they're using doesn't seem that special. People way overestimate the output power needed from a PC PSU.

 

[AlphaWolf]

It's less than 100W per card with those 7800 GTXs, full load, in terms of output power needed from the PSU. So less than 600W for that full system pretty much. I can think of a whole bunch of PSUs that could cope at good efficiency.

The PSU they're using doesn't seem that special. People way overestimate the output power needed from a PC PSU.

Base of 200 is pretty low, if you move into more ram and drives, raid controller, platinum audigy card. You can easily exceed 300 watts before the vid card.

 

[Richard]

nVidia doesn't do tiling, only AFR or load-based frame thing. Besides, there still isn't any way to physically co-ordinate between SLI sets. You see in the pictures two separate displays being worked on, with only one in the pictire, and the other going out of the picture.

Both pairs could mix through the regular PCIe connectors like the GF6600's SLI, etc. Anyway, that pic is only showing one monitor (coming off the third card down). Where are you seeing the second display's cable?