I panned through the article. This is ridiculous. The state of PC gaming sickens me. I'm parting out my high end gaming rig right now as we speak.
The thought of 900watt power supplies...to play...a game...
When M$ has a 360 that I've been having just as much fun with...will anyone ever wake up put a stop to this madness? 2K+ for the gpu's alone? Seriously...
I think they just need to come out with a retail modle that has those bugs fixed. I am sure that a quade sli card can be overclocked with a little water cooling. I wonder witht he two cards being link like that do they do better performance then a set-up like SLi. What I mean is two card so close to each other better then to linked together from a PCB bar thats a little longer.
With the 7900GX2 so large why not make a 7900GTX with physX card built in. There is no way the a 7900GTX take up the full bandwidth of a PCI-X slot so why not put a physX core on the card.
Anther thing I want to say is that no many people have a 30". And even fewer game at 30". There is no point in having a card that can do well at 12X10. What are they thinking. Look at the last Valve survay most people game at 4:3 of 1024x700 or 1280x1024. Why create a card that sucks at the level.
I have all ways thought the reason for creating such high end card is for the CPL gamer that need the best. But now I see its just for the rich kid who has to have one. There is no real benfit at the res that gamer play at the moument.
Alot of comments ^^ that the cards are huge and should be getting smaller not bigger??
Theres a lot of VGA cards out there that are that size so theres nothing new there, just you not seen that many VGA cards :)
I would expect them to be huge at first, any later models will be smaller. :)
Theres those that say whats the point as not many people out there with 30" screens or can afford the set up. These cards are for the rich that have far too much money and splashing out for kit like this is like us slpashing out for a DVD. :)
bah, its getting ridiculous. Im still sitting on socket A with a 2500 @ 2500mhz and a 5900xt (9800 died :(). Graphics cards are becoming ridiculously expensive, a top end card cost you 150-200US a while back, now here you're looking at 400US... no WAY i can justify that for a video card... I wonder if sanity will ever return, the hardware requirements are killing game buying for many.
Well... I'm quite disappointed too. I used to believe that nVidia's SLI stuff worked well but they don't seem to get this beasts to work together correctly. As I can't see the problems being solved in the near future with newer drivers I don't think this might become anything near mainstream.
But anyways... I'll wait for AM2 and G80/R600 before I upgrade...S939+G7x/R5xx will still be enough I guess in like half a year. :)
Originally Posted by Mister_Tad So, running one of these on its own. Does this run like normal SLI (ie, properly) or are the bugs and performance issues still there
You can't buy them on their own, so we didn't attempt to test one on its own. However, TechPowerUP did do some single card testing. Because the Quad SLI numbers are all over the place, it's hard to determine whether the single card is running in SLI or not.
Performance - Very disapointing!
Size - Well lets say that you could probably use them as very expensive ski's
Cost - I could probably buy a large part of africa with that much money.
However give Nv a few months to work out the bugs etc and bring out some improved models.... it could actually be good.
firstly, those PSU's are plain stupid, bolting 2 PSU's together is not a decent solution, get your ass in gear and actually make a proper PSU
Second, Theres no need for this much pixel power
Game developers cant develop games that need this much umph, as you would chop off about all the market, only allowing people with very high spec machines being able to play your game - and thats not going to happen
And the benifits become less and less as you increase the settings, as you are limited by what the low settings are
Third, Those PCB's are crazy, 300+mm long, what case is that ment to fit in ? Deep blue ?? !! (thats the super computing project by IBM - if im correct)
Forth, Heat, id be interested how much quad SLI raises the case temp then normal SLI (if bit tech could do this ...)
On a side note though, are those cards 30cm long to allow enough room for the coolers ??
Couldnt nvidia impliment a watercooling solution for their quad SLI to make the cards smaller (if thats the determening factor)
Finally - why is "XLGlobetrotterXL" banned ? hes posted a few times in this topic, but hes banned now :?
Oh yeh, ill take some screenshots later, but how am i getting 100FPS on BF2, maximum settings i can choose ingame (1280x1024, as BF2 wont run at 1680x1050) on a x1900XT
I've been trying all day to sit down and write a post to this thread, and finally I'm managing it!
I'm witholding judgement on the quad SLI concept until we see if nVidia can work the bugs out of the drivers. In theory, there is no reason this couldn't work out very well. After all, the 7900 GTX is an excellent and powerful GPU, two are even better, so we know it scales, and therefore 4 should be even better yet. The issue at this point is drivers, and nVidia is hardly the first to have a great product held up in the beginning by driver issues. Didn't ATI recently have their new card widly declared a lemon (I think it was the 1800 or 1900 series, but I forget which) until new drivers were released and suddenly it started kicking ass? I'll agree that nVidia jumped the gun on releasing this before they had the software in place to support it, but from their perspective the success as a marketing tool far outweighs the headaches associated with it.
As for the future of video cards, I think multiple GPUs are here to stay. Lets face it, most people have one video card, having two is much cooler even if the performance delta isn't THAT big. We all agree that the heat and power consumption is getting out of hand, but that can be solved without a performance hit. Think Netburst to Conroe, smaller archetecture and more efficient design. I also think that dual core and multiple core GPUs are going to deliver de-facto quad SLI (or more) on two cards in the next few years.
I still say kudos to nVidia for raising the bar, even if only symbolically. I think in the grand scheme of things quad SLI will go down as a iffy idea that never caught on, but it will also have a good sized cult following, sort og like the old Voodoo cards do now. Keep your quad SLI's, someday they'll be worth a fortune on the collectors market!
Given that every six months to a year a new GPU comes out with roughly double the performance of its predecessor, but with less heat/energy expenditure and at the same cost (or less), I do not really see what is gained by quad SLI.
Six months from now two new nVidea 8000s (or whatever they are going to be called) will pwn these four 7900s. Two years from now you will be able to get a single card doing the same thing. And you won't need a 900 Watts PSU for it.
Thats pretty neat, but it comes pretty expensive to buy 30" TFT (which can run 25xx*xxxx resolution) and Quad 7900GT SLI :) I would be happy if i get even one 7900GT!
Do Nvidia not run any kind of UAT, or Q&A prior to launch?
The benchmark on TechPowerUp which shows a single card out performing the Quad cards is just embarassing.
After spending £1000+ on a these cards, you would think Nvidia could do the buyer justice in providing drivers that work, and a 25% performance increase!
Finally - why is "XLGlobetrotterXL" banned ? hes posted a few times in this topic, but hes banned now :?
That account was actually his second - it transpired that he was the same person who had been banned a few months ago for posting crap all over the place.
Originally Posted by bigz You can't buy them on their own, so we didn't attempt to test one on its own. However, TechPowerUP did do some single card testing. Because the Quad SLI numbers are all over the place, it's hard to determine whether the single card is running in SLI or not.
It would be possible to acquire one from somewhere, even if it meant buying the barebones from scan and flogging most of it, but from the looks of it theres not much of a point :(
reviewers seem to have them, but do end users have them
you dont really need SLI unless you have a massive screen, which only people with too much money have anyway
SLI is enough for a 30" screen, next gen games will need next gen cards anyway, so its not a big deal
you can run your current game on your 30" moniter with your current SLI setup, what do you gain from quad SLI ?
Enough heat to fry an egg and a PSU large enough to be classed as a class A amplifier
Originally Posted by yahooadam has this actually been released yet ?
reviewers seem to have them, but do end users have them
You can buy the barebones kit (or the full system) from Scan in the UK. However, I don't know how soon it will be before end users actually get their hands on the hardware because the drivers are clearly not ready (as we've said).
Quote:
you can run your current game on your 30" moniter with your current SLI setup, what do you gain from quad SLI ?
Enough heat to fry an egg and a PSU large enough to be classed as a class A amplifier
The heat isn't as bad as it sounds, in all honesty. Noise is a problem because the PSU is loud (the cards themselves are pretty quiet), but power consumption isn't as high as one would expect.
We wanted to include this in the review but ran out of time (I'd already worked ALL of my bank holiday weekend at this point): the FX-60 equipped Quad SLI system uses around 420W of power at peak graphics load and an FX-60 equipped 7900 GTX SLI system uses 385W by comparison. There were two hard drives and two optical drives in the Quad SLI system, compared to one hard drive and one optical drive in the SLI system. I was actually quite surprised at how low the power consumption was - you're only looking at about a 30W difference at full load as a result of adding two more GPUs.
At the moment, there isn't any reason to buy Quad because the concept is too unstable. That doesn't mean it won't take off in the future when drivers are better equipped to handle four GPUs and manage to make them work together as they should.
Originally Posted by yahooadam so you could just plonk in a nice enermax 600w jobbie or somthing
that quad SLI PSU is a complete waste, they just bolted 2 PSU's together, thats not good engineering
PCP&C makes a 1kw PSU and thats not made by bolting 2 together
Not necessarily, we said that the PSU was essentially two PSUs bolted together for simplicity's sake - it's more than just a standard PSU, due to the different loading requirements in a Quad GPU configuration. There are two transformers and you can see pictures of the internals here: http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2006/03/22/tagan_quad-sli_power/
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The thought of 900watt power supplies...to play...a game...
When M$ has a 360 that I've been having just as much fun with...will anyone ever wake up put a stop to this madness? 2K+ for the gpu's alone? Seriously...
With the 7900GX2 so large why not make a 7900GTX with physX card built in. There is no way the a 7900GTX take up the full bandwidth of a PCI-X slot so why not put a physX core on the card.
Anther thing I want to say is that no many people have a 30". And even fewer game at 30". There is no point in having a card that can do well at 12X10. What are they thinking. Look at the last Valve survay most people game at 4:3 of 1024x700 or 1280x1024. Why create a card that sucks at the level.
I have all ways thought the reason for creating such high end card is for the CPL gamer that need the best. But now I see its just for the rich kid who has to have one. There is no real benfit at the res that gamer play at the moument.
Theres a lot of VGA cards out there that are that size so theres nothing new there, just you not seen that many VGA cards :)
I would expect them to be huge at first, any later models will be smaller. :)
Theres those that say whats the point as not many people out there with 30" screens or can afford the set up. These cards are for the rich that have far too much money and splashing out for kit like this is like us slpashing out for a DVD. :)
Well said.
I agree with this guy^^
But anyways... I'll wait for AM2 and G80/R600 before I upgrade...S939+G7x/R5xx will still be enough I guess in like half a year. :)
Size - Well lets say that you could probably use them as very expensive ski's
Cost - I could probably buy a large part of africa with that much money.
However give Nv a few months to work out the bugs etc and bring out some improved models.... it could actually be good.
Would i buy? HAHA no way!
firstly, those PSU's are plain stupid, bolting 2 PSU's together is not a decent solution, get your ass in gear and actually make a proper PSU
Second, Theres no need for this much pixel power
Game developers cant develop games that need this much umph, as you would chop off about all the market, only allowing people with very high spec machines being able to play your game - and thats not going to happen
And the benifits become less and less as you increase the settings, as you are limited by what the low settings are
Third, Those PCB's are crazy, 300+mm long, what case is that ment to fit in ? Deep blue ?? !! (thats the super computing project by IBM - if im correct)
Forth, Heat, id be interested how much quad SLI raises the case temp then normal SLI (if bit tech could do this ...)
On a side note though, are those cards 30cm long to allow enough room for the coolers ??
Couldnt nvidia impliment a watercooling solution for their quad SLI to make the cards smaller (if thats the determening factor)
Finally - why is "XLGlobetrotterXL" banned ? hes posted a few times in this topic, but hes banned now :?
Oh yeh, ill take some screenshots later, but how am i getting 100FPS on BF2, maximum settings i can choose ingame (1280x1024, as BF2 wont run at 1680x1050) on a x1900XT
I'm witholding judgement on the quad SLI concept until we see if nVidia can work the bugs out of the drivers. In theory, there is no reason this couldn't work out very well. After all, the 7900 GTX is an excellent and powerful GPU, two are even better, so we know it scales, and therefore 4 should be even better yet. The issue at this point is drivers, and nVidia is hardly the first to have a great product held up in the beginning by driver issues. Didn't ATI recently have their new card widly declared a lemon (I think it was the 1800 or 1900 series, but I forget which) until new drivers were released and suddenly it started kicking ass? I'll agree that nVidia jumped the gun on releasing this before they had the software in place to support it, but from their perspective the success as a marketing tool far outweighs the headaches associated with it.
As for the future of video cards, I think multiple GPUs are here to stay. Lets face it, most people have one video card, having two is much cooler even if the performance delta isn't THAT big. We all agree that the heat and power consumption is getting out of hand, but that can be solved without a performance hit. Think Netburst to Conroe, smaller archetecture and more efficient design. I also think that dual core and multiple core GPUs are going to deliver de-facto quad SLI (or more) on two cards in the next few years.
I still say kudos to nVidia for raising the bar, even if only symbolically. I think in the grand scheme of things quad SLI will go down as a iffy idea that never caught on, but it will also have a good sized cult following, sort og like the old Voodoo cards do now. Keep your quad SLI's, someday they'll be worth a fortune on the collectors market!
"Lets face it, most people have one video card, having two is much cooler even if the performance delta isn't THAT big."
hmm well if it doesn't perform much better it's a waste of money which is oh SOOO cool.
Give it a couple of years and SLi will be dead. Again.
Six months from now two new nVidea 8000s (or whatever they are going to be called) will pwn these four 7900s. Two years from now you will be able to get a single card doing the same thing. And you won't need a 900 Watts PSU for it.
The benchmark on TechPowerUp which shows a single card out performing the Quad cards is just embarassing.
After spending £1000+ on a these cards, you would think Nvidia could do the buyer justice in providing drivers that work, and a 25% performance increase!
It would be possible to acquire one from somewhere, even if it meant buying the barebones from scan and flogging most of it, but from the looks of it theres not much of a point :(
reviewers seem to have them, but do end users have them
you dont really need SLI unless you have a massive screen, which only people with too much money have anyway
SLI is enough for a 30" screen, next gen games will need next gen cards anyway, so its not a big deal
you can run your current game on your 30" moniter with your current SLI setup, what do you gain from quad SLI ?
Enough heat to fry an egg and a PSU large enough to be classed as a class A amplifier
We wanted to include this in the review but ran out of time (I'd already worked ALL of my bank holiday weekend at this point): the FX-60 equipped Quad SLI system uses around 420W of power at peak graphics load and an FX-60 equipped 7900 GTX SLI system uses 385W by comparison. There were two hard drives and two optical drives in the Quad SLI system, compared to one hard drive and one optical drive in the SLI system. I was actually quite surprised at how low the power consumption was - you're only looking at about a 30W difference at full load as a result of adding two more GPUs.
At the moment, there isn't any reason to buy Quad because the concept is too unstable. That doesn't mean it won't take off in the future when drivers are better equipped to handle four GPUs and manage to make them work together as they should.
that quad SLI PSU is a complete waste, they just bolted 2 PSU's together, thats not good engineering
PCP&C makes a 1kw PSU and thats not made by bolting 2 together
Actually I'm thinking the people that designed the last 3Dfx cards got to them.