SLI Question

[nooyawkah2]

As I understand it SLI is there to allow the use of 2 video cards. Why would someone want that? Is it merely for gamers? Any other uses? I'm ignorant on the subject.

[jlreich]

Yes it's for gamers. It could benefit others, but it's gamers that mainly use it. SLI allows two video cards to share rendering the game or whatever else is on the screen. They try to share about 50% of the load each. Giving you much more video rendering power. :cool: The job of rendering the screen is actually split between the two video cards. One gets the top and one gets the bottom. Not necessarily equally in terms of the physical space of the screen, but in terms of the video processing needs.

There is a little more to it than that but that's the idea. :)

Hmm... This does bring up an interesting question. Do they have SLI or similar for the CAD video cards?? I know they start at around $800 for one of those things. I can't imagine having to buy two. :eek:

[rond36]

Hmm... This does bring up an interesting question. Do they have SLI or similar for the CAD video cards?? I know they start at around $800 for one of those things. I can't imagine having to buy two.

Can you imagine more or less SLI on a single 16X PCI-E graphics card.

Dual VPUs plus one VSU (provides advanced geometry processing, VPU management and a PCI Express interface) for performance doubling

16x PCI Express for faster data transfer through the system bus

Dual-display,dual-link DVI to double the digital display bandwidth (for true 3840 x 2400 resolution capabilities)

512-bit GDDR3 memory interface for higher memory performance.
Hardware accelerated pixel readback up to 4 GB/sec.
SuperScene™ multisampling full-scene antialiasing support
Support for DirectBurst™ and unified memory for professional resource allocation and utilization
Texture sizes up to 4K x 4K
Dedicated isochronous channel

Independent dual 400 MHz 10-bit DACs

Supported APIs:

OpenGL ® 2.0 (Full support when ratified)
OpenGL 1.5 with OpenGL Shading Language
Microsoft DirectX ® 9.0 with High Level Shader Language (HLSL, VS 2.0, PS 3.0)

16-lane PCI Express, single-slot, full-length and full-height card. Occupies two slots for the cooling solution

Compliant to the PCI Express high-end graphics electromechanical and power specification

Memory

640MB GDDR3 total memory.
512MB GDDR3 unified memory with 512-bit-wide interface bus
128 MB GDDR3 DirectBurst memory with 128-bit-wide interface bus
64 KB of flashable EEPROM memory for VGA bios and product configuration storage.
Virtual memory support allowing:
Onboard memory to be used as an effcient L2 cache
Seamless handling of huge datasets
Automatic paging out of unused buffers
Very large individual texture sizes (for example, 4K x 4K)
Drivers

Microsoft Windows 2000 and Microsoft Windows XP (32-and 64-bit). Windows drivers include 3Dlabs Acuity Windows Manager.
Red Hat Linux Enterprise Edition (32-and 64-bit ver 3.0 or later)

can you imagine paying $2185.00 for 1 video card! (http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=324704)

[jlreich]

Wow that is pretty impressive! I guess you don't really need two of those. To bad it isn't meant for games. :p Particularly at $2200. :eek:

[saphalline]

My God, I love 3DLabs... :cool:

That is some serious hardware. I can see the marketing headline now: "Perfect for making Shrek 3 or Toy Story 3 right in your very own home!" :p Put that thing in a dual-core platform with 2GB+ of RAM and I think you could actually do it. Hmmm...

[odannyboy000]

heck ya. its pretty awesome. shrek 3 would be a fun project

[i an not a nerd]

Is it even possible to top Shrek or Shrek 2, I wonder.....

[DigitalJ]

Makes you wonder what the specs will look like in ten years eh?

[hockey man]

8Ghz cpu, 8 gigs ram, terabyte hds, 2gig videocards......

[saphalline]

8Ghz cpuI'd settle for a 5GHz quad-core. :p

[Quazzimodo]

LoL quadcore, and how about a nice 4 SLI graphics cards for each corner of your screen rendering.... aaahhh

[i an not a nerd]

In ten years i'm guessing that we will be in the terabyte range for RAM, multiple core cpus (quad, 10 core, dual cpus each with 4 or 10 cores.....), holographic screens that use up to 20 graphix cards in parallel, petrabye HDs (i think thats the next unit up) with RAID built into the hds (data can be written to multiple platters at once) or maby chemical storage (simiar to the human brain) so there can be a theroetical unlimited storage. For input we will use a 3d mouse (something along the likes of a glove) and for a keyboard we will have a touchscreen keyboard where one can arrange the letters to when one wishes (i don't think direct brain imput will work for any of these because its too easy to think about something else, and i don't think everyone wants everything that they think put onscreen!)

Finally, for movable storage, we will use small flash-style drives.

Theres my vision of the future for computer hardware...

[Quazzimodo]

Wow could you imagine playing FPS's woth holographic finger glove fun thingies, that would be cool!!! it's hard to imagine, what graphics will be like in next generation PC's speaking as a novice here, i feel we are quite advanced allready in computer generated graphics!!

[i an not a nerd]

O yes, we are certainly advance in computer graphix! (One look at some of PS3's games says it all!)

But......its 3d being shown on a 2d screen. With a 3d screen, we won't actually need more power, because we construct the models in 3d space anyways, then convert the 3d image to 2d!

[Paleo Pete]

or maby chemical storage (simiar to the human brain

Maybe, but that's way down the road I think. The next generation of data storage will most likely be something like RAM chips or USB drives. The technology is here already to create a totally electronic hard drive in the same general manner of a RAM chip, but miniturization hasn't caught up with it yet. Last I heard a 1-2GB drive would be about the size of your average microwave oven or 19" TV. Chemical storage may be the next step, but I think it will take a lot more time.

Chances are the CPU will have to evolve quite drastically before much more speed can be realized, with current technology the heat created is getting into the ridiculous. Anything over about 500MHz will destroy itself in less than 30 seconds without a heatsink and fan, and most over that speed will also fry eggs in 30 seconds, even with one but without a fan...

As for mainstream commercial machines, I see a continuation of current trends...everything built onto the motherboard and stuffed into a proprietary box with little or no choice of hardware or software, lowest quality for highest profit and smaller, smaller, smaller....[we're talking off-the-shelf here, not custom or home built...that means Dell, HP, eMachines etc] Spyware is already preinstalled by Dell and eMachines, I expect more companies to follow suit before it is stopped. (I cleaned Softomate Toolbar off a brand new eMachines a few days ago, took it out of the box and hooked it up, 5 minutes later ran AdAware, never put it online. We had a post a few weeks ago about Dell preinstalling MyWay (I think) spyware. I don't see this stopping until courts intervene, which isn't happening much yet.)

In general, I think a few years down the road we'll see some major changes in hardware, most of the current technology should be about at the end of its life expectancy. Consider audio media...8 track to cassette to CD in what...20 years? And how long have we seen the same basic hardware layout for computers? around 20 years? The IBM PC was released I think around 1982 or 83, it's getting pretty close to time for some drastic overall changes. I'm wondering what the next generation will be. Almost certainly more and more electronic and less mechanical - hard drives and CD ROM drives are already the slowest and least durable hardware components, although hard drives are a whole lot faster than just a few years ago.

Ironically, I think individual components might turn out to have a greater lifespan, even though the general trend is toward "disposable" units. Once miniturization makes an all electronic unit possible, its lifespan should be well over 10 years. After all, I still have partly mechanical XT through 486 and 1st generation Pentium computers that are still in running condition, some over 20 years old. One is an IBM XT Model 5160 (http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=286) that I've built up to about all it can ever be...Dual drives, dual floppies, mouse, color video, everything I could find to add to it. Still runs DOS 6.22 quite well...

So how long will an all electronic machine with no moving parts hold up? I have two guitar amps made in 1973 and 1974, both Fender tube amps, all I've had to do is replace dried up capacitors and both work perfect. ($30 in components for a vintage amp that was given to me as payment for computer repairs and is now worth nearly $1000 ain't bad at all... :D )Nothing sounds better either, even new tube amps won't match them...Unless something new is dreamed up, electrolytic capacitors drying out is about the only thing limiting the life span of any electronic item that's taken care of fairly well. Once computers are designed that are smaller (which I think is what consumers are wanting) and all electronic to eliminate mechanical wear, theoretically we should see computers good for a 30-50 year lifespan, assuming something is done to also eliminate the problem of electrolytic capacitors drying out over 30 years or so. Most other electronic components can already last that long or longer.

Speed is the other consideration. CPU speed really needs to be put on the back burner, it sits there waiting on everything else about 80% of the time already. Going back to electronic data storage, a RAM type hard drive would have access times that aren't even in the same ballpark with current SATA drives. That alone wouold make a huge difference in overall actual, realtime system performance. Visibly noticeable, not just benchmark milliseconds. Add in some of the speculation above concerning graphics, RAM that's getting faster almost daily, amounts of cache that seem insane right now, and you're looking at the possibility of a computer that can literally load an OS and open any program faster than you can get your finger off the mouse button...if you're still using a mouse at all, and not just talking to it by then...

Think outside the box...

[saphalline]

The technology is here already to create a totally electronic hard drive in the same general manner of a RAM chipCheck it. (http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=23425) And this (http://www.samsung.com/Products/HardDiskDrive/news/harddiskdrive_20050425_0000117556.htm). Cool stuff already. Laptops of the future will have several fun things: solid state hard drive, OLED screens, and fuel-cells for batteries. Can we say 60 hour battery life? :cool:

[Fruss Tray Ted]

As I understand it SLI is there to allow the use of 2 video cards
Just a wee bit off the beaten path boys?

Shame on you!!!

:D

[i an not a nerd]

Lol, 'tis true. But speculation of the future of computing is irresistable...

[saphalline]

Wait, what were we talking about?...

Uh oh, I think FTT's old age is contagious!! :eek: :D