R600 will support quad-GPU CrossFire

[zekrahminator]

AMD (ATI) has been working on the quad-GPU problem ever since NVIDIA released their 7900GX2. AMD has officially solved it, with their wonder-GPU, the R600. The R600, with it's high clocks and GDDR4, will support quad-GPU CrossFire. Of course, the requirements for this will be substantial to say the least. Getting a motherboard with four PCI Express ports, and a power supply that will run four high-performance graphics cards like the R600, will cost a lot of money.

Source: The Inquirer (http://www.theinq.com/default.aspx?article=37484)

[BXtreme]

ya, :cry: i'll just get 1 of these...

[EviLZeD]

wowa just imagine the cost it wont be so pretty :\

[Protius]

That'll be a heck alot of power and money, I think i'll just stick to 1

[W1zzard]

hehe all ati chips support quad crossfire... its a driver thing .. and right now the quad driver sucks

[BXtreme]

but, even if the driver goes gd (which will take a looong time), ppl ain't buyin 4 of these, atleast who are sane ;)

[C.Ash]

hehe all ati chips support quad crossfire... its a driver thing .. and right now the quad driver sucks

Yes, of course. Every piece of hardware has the potential to support anything. The drivers are always the issue.

[Fleekar]

Dayum Think of the Weight and Heat of those 4 monsters. Are they still marked for 12 inches long? :twitch:

[C.Ash]

A few points:

- You would need a motherboard with at least four PCIe x8 slots, wich dosent exsist.
- You can just buy an Addon PSU wich costs 50$ and can run a single R600. The Main PSU only has to have around 24A to run the rest of the PC without the card(s).
- The CPU is what is really the problem with this - hardware wise. Its not that there arent enough cores, but that while the R600 drivers will support Quad-Xfire for ALL games ( because they are specifically designed for every game), only one Core on the CPU will be used for gaming. Alan Wake May be an exception.
- Drivers. Quad-SLi for nVidia performs worse than Standard SLi, wheras anyone who bought two 7950 GX2 and thought they would recieve a performance boost from Quad-SLi was dead wrong because nVidia never remmembered to create drivers to support Quad-SLi. Very eratating. I wonder why no class action law suits havent been filed against nVidia for this one..

So, while it may be possible to link up four R600's in Quad-Xfire, it is likely the drivers will only be good enough for two. That means that there is not much reason to buy a Quad-PCIe x16 motherboard, unless u have faith that support for Quad GPU on 4 slots will be well supported some day.

[DaMulta]

ATi has been doing this for ever in Flight Sims/ where crossfire comes from.

I see this as more as a marketing thing AMD says "Look at me I have the highest 3dmark06 score"

[Lazzer408]

AMD (ATI) has been working on the quad-GPU problem ever since NVIDIA released their 7900GX2. AMD has officially solved it, with their wonder-GPU, the R600. The R600, with it's high clocks and GDDR4, will support quad-GPU CrossFire. Of course, the requirements for this will be substantial to say the least. Getting a motherboard with four PCI Express ports, and a power supply that will run four high-performance graphics cards like the R600, will cost a lot of money.

Source: The Inquirer (http://www.theinq.com/default.aspx?article=37484)

ATI is still ATI it is -NOT- "AMD Graphics" it is "ATI graphics" and will remain that way even though it is owned by AMD. It is the ATI r600 not the AMD r600. ATI is working on there graphics division and AMD works the CPUs. Someday there might be a joint effort in the development of something but please... Don't give AMD credit for anything from ATI... YET! :) I don't know why I'm just bothered by that. I guess AMD polluting the ATI name bothers me. lol :)

[WarEagleAU]

This is kind of cool. Looks like they are justifying the 2KW psus....man, I hate to have that electric bill. Honestly though, if I Could afford it, Id build one of these just to see.

[DRDNA]

This is kind of cool. Looks like they are justifying the 2KW psus....man, I hate to have that electric bill. Honestly though, if I Could afford it, Id build one of these just to see.

ME Too !!!! And I will even if I cant afford it:toast:

[tigger]

aye,buy 4 of them and in two months they release a better card:laugh:

[DRDNA]

aye,buy 4 of them and in two months they release a better card:laugh:

lol, same ole same ole

[i_am_mustang_man]

i would rather have a full tower case with 4 of those 250w front bay psus, one per gpu
that way if one psu blows, it only takes one component with it ;)
lots of wires, but i bet they could be routed on the non space side of the case (generally the right side)
lol, can you imagine having an outlet for your monitor, printer, main psu, psu1, psu2, psu3, psu4, speakers? that's eight, and i would really want separate circuits on the top and bottom plug so i could have one surge for just gpus, and aother surge for the usual

safest option imo

[newtekie1]

This is insane and pointless. The benefits of having two graphics cards are still being debated, 4 is just ridiculous.

[Lazzer408]

This is insane and pointless. The benefits of having two graphics cards are still being debated, 4 is just ridiculous.

Crossfire works great. Benifits? Hows 9500 (one card) to 17,200 (crossfire) in 3dmark05 ? :rockout: You WILL need an ubberfast qx6800 to benifit from "quadfire" (c)Lazzer408 :)

[Namslas90]

This is insane and pointless. The benefits of having two graphics cards are still being debated, 4 is just ridiculous.

No debate on two cards. Waste of money for 4 cards. SLI/Crossfire is the wave of the future for hi-def graphics and gaming.

[newtekie1]

Crossfire works great. Benifits? Hows 9500 (one card) to 17,200 (crossfire) in 3dmark05 ? :rockout: You WILL need an ubberfast qx6800 to benifit from "quadfire" (c)Lazzer408 :)

Raising the score in a benchmark is one thing, actually seeing benefits in gameplay is another.

[Lazzer408]

Raising the score in a benchmark is one thing, actually seeing benefits in gameplay is another.

:rolleyes: HL2 250fps increased to 400fps... FEAR 40fps increased to 69fps... Quake 3 (as a joke) went from 380fps to 729fps lol Dont dis the crossfire. :rockout:

[KennyT772]

well dont look at it in respect to the r600 itself. it is talking about the r600 series. meaning we very well could see dual graphics cores per pcb and run crossfire between them. quad-crossfire as you mention it is physically impossible as there are only 7 expansion slots in the atx spec and 4 r600 gpus would require at least 8 slots for the cards and coolers. ati seems to be going towards parallel processing just as amd is with cpus. dont expect quad r600's. expect crossfire on dual gpu r610s and r630's

[Lazzer408]

My point was crossfire works quite well and hell... we can dream cant we? :) Multiple GPUs was what 3dfx had figured out with the original voodoo processor. You could literally add a second chip and get 100% improvement. Add 2 more and it doubles again. I wonder why Nvidia didn't work that into there GPUs since they aquired 3dfx. I bet 3dfx would be PWN these days. Some of there older stuff to this day can run Doom3. Anyways what was this thread about? Oh yeh the r600 supporting quad gpu crossfire. Does that mean 2 cards, sporting 2 GPUs each, can be connected in crossfire? Is that what "quad crossfire" is? -cool- :rockout:

[anticlutch]

I really don't see the point. You can't see more than 60fps so why the hell would you want 400? TV's run on 24/25 fps. Its more than enough.

Probably for bragging rights....


I'd rather have them make dual core GPU's (much like how both AMD and Intel are making their processors). It would save everyone a lot of money and a lot of space... if not, people will have to start making use of external cases like Asus's just for graphics cards and their PSU(s).

[Wile E]

I really don't see the point. You can't see more than 60fps so why the hell would you want 400? TV's run on 24/25 fps. Its more than enough.I partially agree with the 60fps statement, but it all depends on the individual. Some people can see the difference up to 80fps, but they are a rare breed. I disagree with your statement about 24/25fps being enough, however. 24/25fps looks like garbage with pc games. The only reason it looks good with tv or movies is because they use motion blur effects to make it look much smoother than it really is. They essentially trick your brain into believing it's seeing a higher framerate.

[ex_reven]

I partially agree with the 60fps statement, but it all depends on the individual. Some people can see the difference up to 80fps, but they are a rare breed. I disagree with your statement about 24/25fps being enough, however. 24/25fps looks like garbage with pc games. The only reason it looks good with tv or movies is because they use motion blur effects to make it look much smoother than it really is. They essentially trick your brain into believing it's seeing a higher framerate.

What about the fact that you could use the extra processing power for rendering environments etc? When I used the SDK for Counter Strike Source my X800 was nowhere near up to it....lag to the max man...

And thats true about the motion blurring, you cant compare tv shows to computer games

[Lazzer408]

I really don't see the point. You can't see more than 60fps so why the hell would you want 400? TV's run on 24/25 fps. Its more than enough.

You can when it's moving! Go shake your led digital closk radio. That's 60 "fps" (in the us) and I bet you see it blinking. That's how it is when a player is running across the map. The higher the fps the sharper the'll look. Less motion blur (like in the 24fps movies your talking about). Sometimes a player has to turn fast rotating the entire map in a fraction of a second and get the crosshairs on the player behind them. That's when you'll notice the difference between 75 and 200 fps. I do. Well... I guess I know who that guy was just standing there looking around that I keep killing. I'm doing 300fps in Halflife2 and loving it. :rockout:

[Lazzer408]

I partially agree with the 60fps statement, but it all depends on the individual. Some people can see the difference up to 80fps, but they are a rare breed. I disagree with your statement about 24/25fps being enough, however. 24/25fps looks like garbage with pc games. The only reason it looks good with tv or movies is because they use motion blur effects to make it look much smoother than it really is. They essentially trick your brain into believing it's seeing a higher framerate.

Motion blur was naturally occuring in film. It has to be electronically added to digital videos these days.

[Munkul]

not. interested. in. multi-gpu's.

however, would love one of these. i would get one as well, only all my available cash is going into souping my car:)

[BXtreme]

w8'ing for r600 series.....no other gpu choiced.....getting this only.....
:roll:

[Wile E]

Motion blur was naturally occuring in film. It has to be electronically added to digital videos these days.Right, but most things are shot in digital nowadays. Even Star Wars Eps 1-3 were shot on digital cams. That's not takiing into account all the cg effects used today, either. Btw, I'm not arguing, just clarifying why I stated things the way I did.

[Lazzer408]

Right, but most things are shot in digital nowadays. Even Star Wars Eps 1-3 were shot on digital cams. That's not takiing into account all the cg effects used today, either. Btw, I'm not arguing, just clarifying why I stated things the way I did.

No problem. No arguments. Just discussion that's all. :toast:

I don't consider myself a hardcore gamer but when I went from an x700 at 100fps to the crossfire at 300+fps I just about shit at how much better my aim was. :D I went from the one getting pwnd to the one doing the pwnin'. :rockout:

[Easy Rhino]

eh, i dont see this going anywhere. i think its more of a development issue where they put money into this and see what actually comes out on the other end. i say stick 4 GPUs on one card.

[Lazzer408]

eh, i dont see this going anywhere. i think its more of a development issue where they put money into this and see what actually comes out on the other end. i say stick 4 GPUs on one card.

I agree but they could have done 2 GPUs with the 1000 series cards and didn't. I think Saphire made one though. Any technologies that can be accomplished now may or may not be released anyways because if they take too big a step it'll hurt there profits. Each new model might be, say, 20% faster then the one before. If the released a card that runs Crysis at 500fps what will they do in the mean time while there waiting for the game industry to catch up? Loose money.

[ex_reven]

Right, but most things are shot in digital nowadays. Even Star Wars Eps 1-3 were shot on digital cams. That's not takiing into account all the cg effects used today, either. Btw, I'm not arguing, just clarifying why I stated things the way I did.

i thought everything was still filmed using older cameras?
I thought george lucas was one of the only directors out there shooting in digital...the cameras he used cost like $120,000 somehow i doubt your average soap opera would be using those kind of cameras. I cant really see them using low end, consumer digital camcorders either

[AshenSugar]

acctualy as things are going gpus are going to be taking the load off the cpu for ppu and other uses, think of it this way 2 of the card running pure gfx, the other 2 running ppu and other game based prosessing, cpu only dealing with the most basic data.

quadcore would be pretty pointless since no games will take proper advantege of it yet because they barly have anything taking advantege of dual core.

what we need is very fast dual and even singel core chips for gaming, because THATS WHAT GAMES ARE CURRENTLY BEING MADE TO RUN ON.

crysis can offload some prosessing to the gpu IF the gpu has the extra power to do so.

this is where i would be intrested in a 2nd videocard in my system, anything to take some more load off the cpu, add an x1300xt for now as a ppu due to shader power, then later when the x1900gt or the like is uber cheap change to that or use ur current top end card as a PPU and a new card for main gfx :)

[Lazzer408]

quadcore would be pretty pointless since no games will take proper advantege of it yet because they barly have anything taking advantege of dual core.

Don't forget about Multiplexing. That helps all applications benifit from multiple cores.

[Wile E]

i thought everything was still filmed using older cameras?
I thought george lucas was one of the only directors out there shooting in digital...the cameras he used cost like $120,000 somehow i doubt your average soap opera would be using those kind of cameras. I cant really see them using low end, consumer digital camcorders eitherThe film cameras cost just as much, not to mention the price of the film. No, not all movies are shot on digital, but a lot of film makers are leaning that way, because it's just easier to deal with out in the field, and many times ends up being cheaper in the long run(depends strictly on the situation, of course). But even so, you have to consider all the cg used today, which still needs the blur effects.