Running Video Cards in Parallel 263
G.A. Wells writes "Ars Technica has the scoop on a new, Alienware-developed graphics subsystem called Video Array that will let users run two PCI-Express graphics cards in parallel on special motherboards. The motherboard component was apparently developed in cooperation with Intel. Now if I could only win the lottery."
Press Release (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Voodoo (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Man am I out of the loop. (Score:4, Informative)
this isn't new (Score:5, Informative)
the PCI and PCI Express have had this written into spec
AGP does too, but when was the last time you saw dual AGP slots on a mobo? (they do exist)
Re:Voodoo (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Man am I out of the loop. (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,94724,0
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Man am I out of the loop. (Score:5, Informative)
Nice, A complete Vapor-article. (Score:5, Informative)
From the article: "The answers may have to wait until Q3/Q4". There are no performance numbers, no real statements of how it works, nothing much at all. Just wow, gee whiz, dual graphics cards in parallel. What exactly does "in parallel" mean? That's not even addressed.
Some things I thought of immediately reading this, great - two displays each driven by a separate card, or, better yet, quad displays driven by two cards. Nope, not a word about either possibility. The implication of the PR/article is that 3D graphics will be processed faster. How? Do they have some nifty way of combining two standard off the shelf graphics card signals into a single monitor? (Hint, it's hard enough getting the monitor to properly synch up with a single high performance graphics card!)
Since when does ArsTechnica merely regurgitate PRs? This was 99.999% vacuum.
Intel's Chipset only supports One x16 PCIe (Score:2, Informative)
I doubt that Intel is going to make a 2 port one especially for Alienware.
So I expect it means that the second graphics card is plugged into a x4 or x1 PCIe connector.
Anyway, this is nothing special, it is all part of the specification. Hell, you could have two AGP v3 slots in a machine working at the same time - how do you think ATI's integrated graphics can work at the same time as an inserted AGP card's?
Everything old is new again? (Score:2, Informative)
The article seems to claim that the cards will be able to split processing duties, even if they're not from the same manufacturer. That particular claim seems very dubious to me for some reason. Other than integrating two PCI-Express slots on a motherboard, I'm not sure Alienware has achieved anything here. Of course, should Alienware want to send me one of these to try out, I'll be happy to post my review on Slashdot.
Re:Man am I out of the loop. (Score:5, Informative)
Metabyte PGC (Score:3, Informative)
Nothing wrong with it, though - PGC actually did work, and was previewed independently by several people (I think Sharky?).
-Erwos
Re:Next comes dual AGP graphics. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:this isn't new (Score:5, Informative)
3dfx has done it again ... (Score:0, Informative)
Actually, all the Voodoo Line, the best 3D Card ever, had this tech called SLI, that let you use 2 cards in parallel. All you need was 2 Voodoos of the same kind and a flat cable. You could buy the cable, but the pinout was just exactly the same as the one used for 3 1/2 Floppy Drivers, so if you cutted the part that went to the 2nd drive (The one with a few pins switched), you could make it really cheap, besides the cost of those cards.
All voodoos had 2 units, one for textures, the other to do all the math, this way, you could use 1 voodoo to do the math, and the other to process textures.
Nowdays, if you have 2 voodoos 2, and 500Mhz, you can easily take 70 FPS on Quake 3.
The Return of Voodoo 2 SLI (Score:3, Informative)
Re:How is this different than what I've been doing (Score:3, Informative)
You are running a bunch of video cards INDEPENDANT of each other. Clearly NOT THE SAME THING...
Re:Next comes dual AGP graphics. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Intel's Chipset only supports One x16 PCIe (Score:2, Informative)
Under Linux, run "lspci" as root, and see if the two cards are on different PCI buses.
You can do something similar under Windows XP:
Go to the device manager, and look at the Location field of your two video devices. The box I'm on only has one, but here's what an AGP card's location field looks like: "PCI bus 1, device 0, function 0"
Not really hard.... (Score:3, Informative)
Duplicate data stream (should be doable in hardware), have them render half each (every 2nd scanline?) and merge them with a trivial buffer (keep two bools, one "firsthalf=done/not done, secondhalf=done/not done"). You'd limit yourself to the minimum of the two, but since they each paint nearly the same (one scanline off) the performance should be near a 100% doubling.
Basicly, it's going to be an expensive design involving some already expensive cards. But it's definately doable.
Kjella
Re:Nice, A complete Vapor-article. (Score:2, Informative)
So, you have the press release to go on. And as you noted, I threw up a flag of caution. I didn't call "vapor" on it, however, because as I noted, they are saying Q3 and Q4 for VA and X2, which seems awfully soon to be pimping vapor. I also happen to know that this is in fact happening, so I didn't feel obliged to cast aspersions on it.
From the PR, it's rather clear to me that this is a single-monitor solution. It's also likely the case that this is not just a PCI-Express matter. Call me old fashioned, but Alienware says that they have patent-pending technology, and while I would usually take the language for marketing drivel, I have no reason not to trust Alienware on this matter. In fact, they have tried this before, but the underlying technology just wasn't doable.
Re:Quad-screen? (Score:3, Informative)
here [matrox.com]
Matrox, because all the other cards are merely toys for the kids at home.
ATI will be doing this it's Catalyst drivers soon (Score:3, Informative)
Ati's Terry Makedon says: "Something big is coming for CATALYST in the next 2-3 months. It will take graphic drivers to a brand new level, and of course will be another ATI first. It will be interesting to see how long before other companies will copy the concept after we launch it."
Hmmm... just in time for PCI Express and it's not something specifc to Ati's hardware.
Re:Hello? Matrox, anyone? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Light on Info (Score:2, Informative)
It splits the screen in half. Alienware claims a ~50% boost.
Re:Man am I out of the loop. (Score:4, Informative)
That's rather over-stating the case.
Roughly 10 years ago, PCI was finally just supplanting EISA/VESA and ISA boards were still common.
I build a few machines per year, and PCI-Express only just hit my radar screen in the past 12-18 months. Even today, I have yet to see mainstream motherboards or cards for it, so it's still rather ephemeral at this point.
It is an interesting design. Whether or not it will live up to it's promise remains to be seen.
Re:3dfx Still Alive! Drivers Still Being Written (Score:2, Informative)