3 Way SLi, 780i and 680i

[Xion X2]

The only way I can see this working safely with the current cards is with a water cooled setup, which would also solve the blocked slot problem.



This 3rd card would introduce so much more heat into your loop that you would need a 2nd radiator to see decent temps. It's a totally stupid idea no matter what angle you look at it from, no offense.

These GPU companies need to focus more on adding cores, instead of cards. This solution here is like equipping yourself in a tank to run over an ant.

[walterman]

Well, 3 single slots water cooled cards, perhaps, but, that pic is crazy for cooling. No comments about the rest of cards that you may want to plug (dvb-s2, audio, physics, ...).

[Bman212121]

IMO this is where the enthusiast part needs more help. The only real problem is the ATX motherboard spec that has been around since the Pentium II days. (I.E probably 10 years now)

If someone could redesign a layout that is more practical then everyone would benefit. Most of our cases are large enough to handle a 10 slot board that is the size of an E-atx board. This would allow the usage of more cards and still leave plenty of room for all of the other goodies.

It's funny because I was just thinking about what ever happened to the promise of mixed card SLI. If I could take my current 8800GTX, throw in a 9800GTX later and let them load balance I would be happy. That would probably allow SLI to be adapted a lot quicker because instead of having two cards to keep upgrading, you could literally have slot A with even numbered cards, and slot B with odd numbered cards, and just upgrade 1 card every year. (I.E. Buy a GF8, then next year buy a GF9, then replace the GF8 with a GF10, then replace the GF9 with a GF11, etc)

I would agree that 3 cards would become a nusance because most people it simply won't be an option due to the large amounts of power needed and heat generated.

[einstein_314]

Holy crap! That's ridiculous!! I've given up on SLI. It's too much of a pain. I'm perfectly happy with a single GTX for now.

[SH64]

This is the end result of AMD falling down on the job... :thumbdwn: Forget more high end single chip cards,now the answer is sell us more of the same and call it improved SLI.

Good point. although SLI is doing good , i'd prefer if GPU vendors focus more on a next-gen GPU's & put their R&D money on it than doubling/tripling the number of graphic cards on PC's. we have heat & power consumption problems as it is , we dont need more!

[Viral]

Didn't anyone realise that they've promised to bring this to the market now because AMD have demoed tri crossfire?

It's not nVidia making a statement that this is the direction they want to go in and no it's not feasible for the vast majority of enthusiasts even. But the fact is they need to keep up in those benchmarks to maintain their image.

[Xion X2]

Didn't anyone realise that they've promised to bring this to the market now because AMD have demoed tri crossfire?

It's not nVidia making a statement that this is the direction they want to go in and no it's not feasible for the vast majority of enthusiasts even. But the fact is they need to keep up in those benchmarks to maintain their image.
Good point. But was it ATI that made the move on this first or Nvidia? Don't forget that Nvidia were the ones that thought up Quad-SLI.....

[Viral]

Good point. But was it ATI that made the move on this first or Nvidia? Don't forget that Nvidia were the ones that thought up Quad-SLI.....

That is true. Nvidia have been the ones pushing the whole multiple GPU movement from the beginning. Regarding the present situation and explaining NV's timing of this hardware release, ATI would certainly be the major reason behind it.

In my oppinion, triple, quad, oct etc setups will never gain any kind of real popularity even amongst enthusiasts. So in this way I don't see why everyone should be concerned about NV or ATI backing off when it comes to single GPU performance. Yes, dual may have had an impact on this, but I don't think triple or quad will have any further effect.

[slaWter]

There are more negative points about such an idea then positive...

No more SLI for me unless they'll support desktop Intel chipsets and deliver proper Vista support!

[Revs]

Me too. Although i'm happy with my current SLI set-up, i'm gonna go for one top-end card instead of 2 lesser cards in SLI next time. I just hope they've got SLI running properly for Crysis by the time the demo is out.

This 3rd card would introduce so much more heat into your loop that you would need a 2nd radiator to see decent temps. It's a totally stupid idea no matter what angle you look at it from, no offense.

I've no experience with water cooling at all so non taken. All I know is the heat from the back my second heats up the air going in to the first card so much it runs about 10 deg hotter, and that's about 3 inches away. With what looks like about a 1/4 inch gap between the cards on that pic there's no way it'll be able to cool sufficiently unless the air intake is on the back or side of the cards.

[GitDat]

I don't get why there has to be "support" for SLI by a game or the OS. Why isn't it all simply handled by the hardware?

[namuk]

DO YOU GET A Feeler Gauge .. with that set up middle card will be at 100c lol

[Redeemed]

This 3rd card would introduce so much more heat into your loop that you would need a 2nd radiator to see decent temps. It's a totally stupid idea no matter what angle you look at it from, no offense.

These GPU companies need to focus more on adding cores, instead of cards. This solution here is like equipping yourself in a tank to run over an ant.
Um... adding "more cores" to a GPU is heavily redundant as the GPU is already very parallel by design- it's practically already multi-core.

[Libertysyclone]

If you are looking a CPU vs GPU as far as processing power you are WAY off.

Look at NVIDIAs Cuda project, one 8400GS is faster than 2 QX6850s

now just imagine an 8800 or a FX4600/5600

Hence the Tesla project

CUDA uses C+ language so you cant say that the GPU has more development than the CPU


Hmmmm $45 GPU or 2 $1200 CPU's ;) thats an easy choice for me, RUMOR is that Adobe, Autodesk, ect are looking at implementing CUDA into their software. This would make my Photoshop much easier/faster.

[Redeemed]

If you are looking a CPU vs GPU as far as processing power you are WAY off.

Look at NVIDIAs Cuda project, one 8400GS is faster than 2 QX6850s

now just imagine an 8800 or a FX4600/5600

Hence the Tesla project

CUDA uses C+ language so you cant say that the GPU has more development than the CPU


Hmmmm $45 GPU or 2 $1200 CPU's ;) thats an easy choice for me, RUMOR is that Adobe, Autodesk, ect are looking at implementing CUDA into their software. This would make my Photoshop much easier/faster.

Not sure whom that comment was directed at... if me then my post was pretty much agreeing with everything you said here...:wtf:

[KasuCode]

Faster, but how much?

We've got our hands on a page of a presentation about three-way SLI and it looks like it won't have as much to bring to the table as normal SLI does in terms of performance increase.

As we don't know which benchmark or how it's represented in the graph below, it's hard to draw any real conclusions apart from the fact that it'll be faster, which is a good thing.

If our interpretation of the graph is correct, then three-way SLI should offer better performance per card than SLI using two cards. We're not sure how Nvidia has managed to pull this one off, nor if this is the case in all scenarios.

It doesn't seem to add a full cards performance, but if you compare the size of the graphs you'll notice that the third card adds a bigger bit to the graph than a second card seem to do.

Have a look at the picture and draw your own conclusion. What we'd like to know is what happend to the whole in-game physics thing, Nvidia? AMD?

http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3385&Itemid=1

[Bokishi]

What if they make a 8800 GX2, that means 6 cards SLI doesn't it??

[Revs]

What if they make a 8800 GX2, that means 6 cards SLI doesn't it??

Yup. MEGA HEAT!