4 GPU SLI - No SLI bridge needed? (ASUS 2x16x PCIe slots)

[Lonyo]

Link to english story

Original (Chinese) source

Slightly odd picture?
Slightly confused by the load balancing, to me (untrained eye) I don't see all 4 of those portions of the scene being of equal complexity. I could be (and probably am) wrong, but seriously, all the GPU's doing equal work?

VR Zone link

It seems like ASUS has successfully enabled SLI on 4 GPUs using two EN7800GT-DUAL cards on ASUS A8N32-SLI board. It appears that no SLI bridge connector is needed but i would expect some slight degradation of performance in result of that. ASUS is still in the process of debugging and hopefully we can see it implemented soon.

 

[Matthias99]

Semi-repost. Good to hear this is still being worked on, although at $1500+, this is out of reach unless you have money to burn (not to mention that it may not be available for a *while*).

Slightly confused by the load balancing, to me (untrained eye) I don't see all 4 of those portions of the scene being of equal complexity. I could be (and probably am) wrong, but seriously, all the GPU's doing equal work?

Probably not exactly equal, but since the driver has to try to estimate what workload is coming, it's never perfect. It could also be that there are extra shaders being computed for the lighting around the cannon that is firing, so there is more work there than you can 'see' in the output.

 

[SketchMaster]

Oh mama! *dool*

I knew that sooner or later they would try this. Just not THIS soon.

I need to start saving.

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: Matthias99
Semi-repost. Good to hear this is still being worked on, although at $1500+, this is out of reach unless you have money to burn (not to mention that it may not be available for a *while*).

Slightly confused by the load balancing, to me (untrained eye) I don't see all 4 of those portions of the scene being of equal complexity. I could be (and probably am) wrong, but seriously, all the GPU's doing equal work?

Probably not exactly equal, but since the driver has to try to estimate what workload is coming, it's never perfect. It could also be that there are extra shaders being computed for the lighting around the cannon that is firing, so there is more work there than you can 'see' in the output.

This would only apply to SFR where each would render ~ 1/4 the frame. In AFR1 and AFR2, each GPU would render every 4th frame.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: Rollo

Originally posted by: Matthias99
Semi-repost. Good to hear this is still being worked on, although at $1500+, this is out of reach unless you have money to burn (not to mention that it may not be available for a *while*).

Slightly confused by the load balancing, to me (untrained eye) I don't see all 4 of those portions of the scene being of equal complexity. I could be (and probably am) wrong, but seriously, all the GPU's doing equal work?

Probably not exactly equal, but since the driver has to try to estimate what workload is coming, it's never perfect. It could also be that there are extra shaders being computed for the lighting around the cannon that is firing, so there is more work there than you can 'see' in the output.

This would only apply to SFR where each would render ~ 1/4 the frame. In AFR1 and AFR2, each GPU would render every 4th frame.

In the screenshot posted, they appear to be using SFR with the option enabled to show the per-card split (and I was responding to the OP's question wrt that). Could be photoshopped for all I know, though.

 

[pol II]

Might it be possible to combine AFR and SFR? One GPU is responsible for half the image-load on every other frame?

 

[Lonyo]

Originally posted by: pol II
Might it be possible to combine AFR and SFR? One GPU is responsible for half the image-load on every other frame?

That would be nice, and the actuality of it would be suited to the setup.
You have 2 cards, each with 2 GPU's. One card could render each frame, doing SFR with each GPU, then the next card would be rendering the next frame similarly.
In 4xsingle cards it might be different (maybe more difficult?) depending on how dual cores on one card are seen.

 

[Crescent13]

I'm waiting until you can SLI 4 7800 Ultras (that's what I'm calling them, because it takes too long to say 512mb 7800GTX)

 

[Creig]

Four 7800GT GPUs working at once... Just how CPU limited do you really want to be?

 

[UltraWide]

Holy !!!

That's 80 rendering pipelines. 1024MB RAM and lots of electricity. AWESOME.

 

[Cooler]

I see rollo geting them in 6 weeks.

 

[Chef Brian]

that>sex

 

[grimlykindo]

Originally posted by: Chef Brian
that>sex

You must be a virgin

 

[aatf510]

IMO, Load balancing has never been done correctly (or it's still half-baked).
I had a 7800GTX KO before, and now I am with a SLI 7800GT system.
I notice that the avg fps has increase significantly since the upgrade, however, if you pay more attention, the min fps has never been improved.
I had the load balancing shown on screen when I played F.E.A.R., and I notice in some instances, 95% of the screen would go to one videocard, but indeed that 95% of the screen is where all the effects are happening.
I suspected a lot of the special effects (e.g. smoke) cannot be divided and be shared by two video cards.
Therefore, when you run into especially laggy scenes in a single video card setup, you would see exactly the same lag with SLI.

My way of understanding is that SLI
increases fps when it's @ high fps (e.g. 60fps becomes 80fps)
and does a little when it's laggy (e.g. 15fps becomes 18fps)
and therefore result in a much higher score in avg fps, but in no way increase the smoothness of a game.

Honestly, I am quite unhappy with the GTX to GT SLI upgrade, because I seriously do not see any sort of improvement besides in timed demo and benchmarks.

 

[KristopherKubicki]

They are only making 2000 cards and you need a special modified driver. They aren't even going to be selling these, it's for reviewers only.

Kristopher

 

[gtx4u]

Originally posted by: Lonyo
Link to english story

Original (Chinese) source

Slightly odd picture?
Slightly confused by the load balancing, to me (untrained eye) I don't see all 4 of those portions of the scene being of equal complexity. I could be (and probably am) wrong, but seriously, all the GPU's doing equal work?

VR Zone link

It seems like ASUS has successfully enabled SLI on 4 GPUs using two EN7800GT-DUAL cards on ASUS A8N32-SLI board. It appears that no SLI bridge connector is needed but i would expect some slight degradation of performance in result of that. ASUS is still in the process of debugging and hopefully we can see it implemented soon.

this is pretty much says ATI is doomed again.. and nVidia will be the first to hit 30k in 3dmark 05.

 

[Chef Brian]

Originally posted by: grimlykindo

Originally posted by: Chef Brian
that>sex

You must be a virgin

Must...resist...your mom joke...

 

[tuteja1986]

if Nvidia release the drivers for 4 GPU SLI enable... then the current Gigabyte Quad SLI Motherboard should be able to handle something like that

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: Cooler
I see rollo geting them in 6 weeks.

LOL- your vision is faulty then. (unless you also see Rollo in divorce court in 7 weeks!)

 

[tuteja1986]

Originally posted by: Rollo

Originally posted by: Cooler
I see rollo geting them in 6 weeks.

LOL- your vision is faulty then. (unless you also see Rollo in divorce court in 7 weeks!)

wooo.. really :?
Who gets the kid and you better make sure you fight damn hard in court because my friend lost everything at court even his Computers... his wife was a mean ....

 

[grimlykindo]

Originally posted by: Chef Brian

Originally posted by: grimlykindo

Originally posted by: Chef Brian
that>sex

You must be a virgin

Must...resist...your mom joke...

LOL...

 

[nippyjun]

It's available now:

newegg has them at the moment...

 

[Ackmed]

It was $869 yesterday, they raised the price... Pretty good software package though.

 

[JackBurton]

Originally posted by: nippyjun
It's available now:

newegg has them at the moment...

CHRIST! :Q Alright, who's gonna test it out here?

 

[Wreckage]

Originally posted by: JackBurton

Originally posted by: nippyjun
It's available now:

newegg has them at the moment...

CHRIST! :Q Alright, who's gonna test it out here?

That has got to be the coolest video card on the planet