ATI MVP: SLI in serious trouble?

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MartinX

One Hour Martinizing While You Wait
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More info on ATI multi-rendering, don't think there's much new here but so close to the predicted launch the likelyhood of accuracy gets that much stronger with each retelling.

If this works the way it sounds (obviously a big "if") then SLI is getting some serious competiton.

MVP (apparently the latest name for it) would seem to be both more flexible and more scalable than SLI with a cheaper upgrade path, you don't need matched cards, and ANY existing ATI pci-e card, apparently from x700 up anyways (including onboard), can do secondary/slave duty.

MVP primary card functionality may start at the x850, and not require a next gen card at all.

Nvidia is going to want to have a pretty good answer to this.
 
Jerunk said:
I think there has been some misinformation.
Click to expand...

In what respect?

The bit about the current top card being able to act as master was the only thing I hadn't heard before, which is why I stuck the "may" on.

The rest seems pretty consistent with what is known or strongly rumoured about AMR.

If the article is correct it may only be a couple of weeks til we know for sure.

Just for the record, my perspective is that of someone who wishes to upgrade soon and is waiting to see how both ATI and Nvidias next products shape up, and has absolutly no loyalty to either company, but right now I'm liking the sound of the ATI path better (admittedly the absence of any useful information, or even speculation on Nvidias next step colours that view, but the current SLI tech doesn't entice me at all, and in it's current form that won't change).
 
I don't care about SLI much.. I mean in the voodoo2 days, everybody could get SLI, it wasn't only for the I-have-extra-money-and-I-don't-know-what-to-do-with-it people.. now it is..
 
WanTeD said:
I don't care about SLI much.. I mean in the voodoo2 days, everybody could get SLI, it wasn't only for the I-have-extra-money-and-I-don't-know-what-to-do-with-it people.. now it is..
Click to expand...

Well that's sort of what sounds so promising about ATIs version, you can mix and match cards, intead of having to buy 2xR520, you can buy 1xR520 and keep using your x800xl ASWELL.

*edit*I mean as a cost benefit, obviously v2sli was as restrictive as current sli, but cheaper, like ATIs solution*edit*

AND the onboard graphics on your Mobo (maybe).

There's some bits I don't get, like to use SM3.0 would both cards have to support it, or are the instructions/drivers granular enough that non SM3.0 functions can still be shared while the master card handles those alone?

It may end up a total clusterfuck, but if it works it'll be pretty cool.

The "Where do I go from here" aspect of SLI is the main turn off for me, if Nvidia has any sense at all they'll have been beavering away for a while now on SLI2 which will allow (or unlock) greater flexibility with regards to unmatched cards.
 
WanTeD said:
I don't care about SLI much.. I mean in the voodoo2 days, everybody could get SLI, it wasn't only for the I-have-extra-money-and-I-don't-know-what-to-do-with-it people.. now it is..
Click to expand...

No, SLI was expensive then as well. Not everyone could get it.
 
MartinX said:
If this works the way it sounds (obviously a big "if") then SLI is getting it's ass handed to it and ATI becomes god (again).
Click to expand...

thanks for the little sentence that allowed me to disregard anything else you say on this topic as biased
 
i wonder about this approach.

first off it sounds like a programming nightmare for ati's driver team, and they are not exactly known for sound programming (yes.. you can arugue that ati fan boys but i have had bad experiences w/ them)

2nd i question how much ati can pull out of the hat w/ the lead that nvidia has on them time,experience, and tech wise on them.

but time will tell.

its a very interesting approach.

it would be kinda neat if you could put a next generation equilivant of a 6800GT w/ a equilivant 6200.

i wonder how much it would help you out.

maybe one card , if programmed proper , could only handle say AI or such.
 
I would think that the parallelism would be totally thrown out the window with a missmatched setup. What if you did a X850XT-PE, with an X300? What would that give you? My bet is that it wouldn't give you anything. With AFR being used as a rendering solution theres no way that X300 wouldn't drag down the performance of the X850XT. If ATi impliments a different rendering approach than something really close to AFR or SFR, then my guess is that the overhead would negate the lower end card advantage completely.

Meaning that say, the system was smart enough just to allow the X300 to take over some really mediocre tasks as its not powerfull enough to really help out the higher end card. It would be like a 5 year old kid helping dad push his car out of the mud. The effect wouldn't hardly be measureable, as the strenght just isn't there in the 5 year old to really help out.

Sounds like more trouble than it's worth. They should simply use identical cards, maybe reduce the compatibility problems of different brands and BIOS's if possible. But including a onboard video controller in your video array, would simply be a waste of time. I don't see how you can get any added performance from that.

Only time will really tell. Until the official press release we can only speculate.

As far as it handing SLi it's ass, again I am skeptical. The Geforce 6 series scales very well with a second card added on, I believe that the situations where you don't get a huge boost are either driver related or a limitation of current CPU's. We can see this as the 6600 series scales almost perfectly. A dual 6600GT solution is almost exactly double a single card. Putting it on par with 6800GT's. With dual 6800's the increase isn't as good, but in certain apps has shown as much as an 85% increase. Meaning the potential is there, but likely current CPU's hold that setup back.

If that's the case, then ATi's dual card solution would compare equally as well with nVidia's solution as their current card lineup does. Some better, some not. The only way for any kind of significant lead would be to reduce the processing overhead of the dual card solution. Even then I don't think it would be a huge gain over NVidia's solution.

Needless to say, if ATi's solution did compare that way and did work in a similar fashion, I'd expect that dual X850XT-PE's would be the fastest setup on the planet. Until of course something better comes out.
 
Brent_Justice said:
No, SLI was expensive then as well. Not everyone could get it.
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Yeah maybe a bit, but the "price/performance boost" ratio was muuuuch better..
 
geekcomputing said:
first off it sounds like a programming nightmare for ati's driver team, and they are not exactly known for sound programming (yes.. you can arugue that ati fan boys but i have had bad experiences w/ them)
Click to expand...

I second that sentiment...

exhibit a: lack of stable tuned linux drivers

exhibit b: current driver package for xp is in excess of 50MB

The prosecution rests.
 
WanTeD said:
Yeah maybe a bit, but the "price/performance boost" ratio was muuuuch better..
Click to expand...

Realize the best Voodoo2 SLI would allow you to do was to up the resolution to 1024x768 from either 800x600 or 640x480. (NoAA/NoAF of course)

With NVIDIA's SLI we've seen performance benefits well above that margin, around 80-90% better performance generally.
 
mastercheeze said:
I second that sentiment...

exhibit a: lack of stable tuned linux drivers

exhibit b: current driver package for xp is in excess of 50MB

The prosecution rests.
Click to expand...

I'll grant you the Linux drivers, but I could care less about that. However, I'm a bit confused about where you got 50MB for the driver? The XP driver with standard control panel is 24.6MB, and with the CCC is 32.6MB...nowhere near your proclaimed 50MB+ comment.
 
Un4given said:
I'll grant you the Linux drivers, but I could care less about that. However, I'm a bit confused about where you got 50MB for the driver? The XP driver with standard control panel is 24.6MB, and with the CCC is 32.6MB...nowhere near your proclaimed 50MB+ comment.
Click to expand...

That's still much larger than nVidia's drivers. Currently 19.4MB for the newest ones, version 71.89 and WHQL certified. ATi's on the other hand are 32.6MB for the full version with the Catalyst control panel, the stripped down version is 24.6MB. With the Catalyst control panel, you also must install the .NET BS.

With .NET and 32.6MB that's actually not to far off from 50MB.
 
i can just see that on CSI.


"I second that sentiment...

exhibit a: lack of stable tuned linux drivers

exhibit b: current driver package for xp is in excess of 50MB

The prosecution rests."
 
geekcomputing said:
first off it sounds like a programming nightmare for ati's driver team, and they are not exactly known for sound programming (yes.. you can arugue that ati fan boys but i have had bad experiences w/ them)
Click to expand...

All I know is that my x800XT-PE works fine in all 40 games I have bought since I got the card.

My 6800ultra meanwhile has had driver problems in half the games I have played on it.

Take from that what you will.
 
I can't believe nobody has mentioned the external dongle yet...that just doesn't sound good at all...

A lot of excellent points raised in this thread...

On the subject of mismatched cards and using motherboard integrated video to give you a boost...I think the idea here is that ATi wants multi-vpu as a top-to-bottom kind of thing...like not only can you get two r520s and put them in AMR...but you could upgrade your X300 by buying a new low-end card that can act as an AMR master and letting them run together...

This sounds really interesting and I'm guessing a lot of people will have fun with it...it also explains why some nvidia aib partners have announced SLI 6600s (non-GT) and I think I even heard about SLI 6200s...I think there is a push to bring it to the masses...

Now about that external dongle...WTF...are they just going to be recompositing the image like V2 SLI did? That seems just really hacked together IMHO...I certainly hope that doesn't turn out to be the case. Perhaps that will only be a way of supporting older boards...or supporting integrated video.

Either way, right now it seems to me that nVidia has the more graceful solution. The whole situation is starting to remind me of the current situation with AMD and intel with dual-core. The success of ATi AMR will be dependent upon performance more than compatibility. Nvidia is in a good position with the nForce4 chipset and I doubt the masses will go running to a new ATi based motherboard with relatively immature drivers and external dongles unless there is a tangible performance advantage...which there very well may be since ATi has arguably better single-card performance...(though those single cards haven't so much been available)...

To me it sounds like a potential "clusterfuck" as the poster above so eloquently put it...but ATi can still win out if the performance is there...
 
arentol said:
All I know is that my x800XT-PE works fine in all 40 games I have bought since I got the card.

My 6800ultra meanwhile has had driver problems in half the games I have played on it.

Take from that what you will.
Click to expand...

...funny...nobody else seems to be complaining so much...maybe you have a bad card...or a bad driver installation...what games were you having problems with?
 
So are we assuming NVIDIA is going to try to ride on the 6800s in SLI or what?

I mean you got to be stupid to compare the current SLI setup tp ATI new cards... NVIDIA will have a new card out with ATI.. as it allways has been and allways will be...
 
^^^ FYI Nvidia SLI also has a dongle, its called that PCB Connector ;)

And there SLI is about the same as Nvidia's (They even have AFR) the diffrence is, that with AMR< the image is broken down into little cubes. So the load of the image is shared equally, unlike Nvidias version, where one card could be rendering the floor (which has alot of effects and such) while the other card would just be rendering the skybox, not taking advantage of the second card.
 
woah............that Hexus article seems very interesting indeed. I really dont have a big loyality but the ATI products seem to be able to go very faaast. I would bet that the optimal solution would still be matching cards. The nvidia response should be interesting. The only thing I dont understand is the external dongle deal(please no jokes,I can "see" them coming already). This does give alot of fuel to the guys who have been pitching "you shoulda waited and not bought your SLI, hahaha. (I dont agree but now theyre gonna say I told you so.) have a nice day. :D
 
Sir-Fragalot said:
That's still much larger than nVidia's drivers. Currently 19.4MB for the newest ones, version 71.89 and WHQL certified. ATi's on the other hand are 32.6MB for the full version with the Catalyst control panel, the stripped down version is 24.6MB. With the Catalyst control panel, you also must install the .NET BS.

With .NET and 32.6MB that's actually not to far off from 50MB.
Click to expand...

Well, having both an ATi and NV card right now, I think the ATi drivers are far more intuitive, and feature rich, so I would expect them to be a little larger.

As for .NET, that is not a component of the ATi driver, it is a Windows component that is required to use the CCC, so you can't consider it part of the driver. Once .NET is installed, you can remove and install drivers all day long and not have .NET affected.
 
Steel Chicken said:
thanks for the little sentence that allowed me to disregard anything else you say on this topic as biased
Click to expand...

Interesting interpretation.

To be honest I mostly think think that it is hard to dispute that ATI has had superior products in the recent past and that If MVP lives up to the promise (and I did specifically draw attention to the word "IF") it would be a superior technology to SLI as it stands now, which would put ATI firmly in front (unless nvidia has an answer that we haven't heard about, a proviso I also implied).

I really have no bias one way or the other, and as I posted earlier, I am waiting to see which one does in fact come up with the better platform when the hype is gone and the shake out comes in the next round to determine which I buy.

But based on what I'm seeing right now, nvidia is offering nothing that interests me, in as much as they have been really quiet lately, for all I know they could have some mind-blowingly fabulous new stuff on the cusp of kicking off.

However, it fills me with a little forboding that Nvidias PR machine isn't doing anything to dampen the buzz that is building around ATIs upcoming stuff.

Hopefully they are just holding off for E3.
 
Wow. What a lot of misinformation in this thread.

"Voodoo2 SLI in reach of the masses"? Yeah right- if the masses could afford two times the cost of the most expensive card out at the time, and a 2D card as well. As good 2d cards were $50 even back then, SLI cost about the same as it does now.

"Voodoo 2 SLI offered higher performance gains"? I suggest you look up some benchmarks, it offered similar or lower gains. It did have the advantage of working on every game.

"The dongle is good"? The dongle introduced image degradation in V2 SLI.

"Not having to use matched cards is good"? Not really. The gains you realize will be limited by your slowest card, so you'll be wasting money on the faster card which will be held back as it's synched to the slowest card. Ever think things wouldn't look quite right if half the tiles on the screen are rendered at 50fps and half at a 100fps?

How will SM3 vs non SM3 work? It will have to default to non is how, so any SC:CT type games will have to be rendered SM2 and below.

All that being said, AMR is the way forward for ATI and I'm excited to see any new high end tech on the market. I hope that matched next gen SLI is as promising a solution as it looks like it will be. (and am curious to see how it fares against matched G70s)
 
Don't you just love this wording :D

'The gap in performance between 6800GT and X850 is already measurably significant so it seems reasonable to presume that ATi MVP solution will cream existing 6800GT SLi rigs by more than 25%....'

Before anyone who hasn't read the article spouts off about matching these cards, go read it ;)
 
MartinX said:
Interesting interpretation.
To be honest I mostly think think that it is hard to dispute that ATI has had superior products in the recent past
Click to expand...
How so? You mean those cards that you couldnot get for 6 months after their paper launch? That makes them GODS? The top of the line ATI cards are *similiar* in peformance to the top of the line Nvidia, hardly what I would call superior, assuming you can actually find one. Whatever differences there are, they are marginal. Turning a marginal a difference into "ATI=GODS OMG!" = fan boy-ism at its finest.

I really have no bias one way or the other, and as I posted earlier, I am waiting to see which one does in fact come up with the better platform when the hype is gone and the shake out comes in the next round to determine which I buy.
Click to expand...
your bias was apparent in your choice of words. perhaps youre not even aware of it?
which one comes out with the better platform? Nvidia already HAS a platform and you can actually buy it. yeah, when the ATI stuff is released, a year after Nvidias, then we can have a comparision. Dont count the chickens before they are hatched.

But based on what I'm seeing right now, nvidia is offering nothing that interests me, in as much as they have been really quiet lately, for all I know they could have some mind-blowingly fabulous new stuff on the cusp of kicking off.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I guess nvidia actually releasing their products on a timely basis makes it hard to keep a short attention span interested, as opposed to constant hype and no actual products. Personally, I prefer substance over hype.

However, it fills me with a little forboding that Nvidias PR machine isn't doing anything to dampen the buzz that is building around ATIs upcoming stuff.

Hopefully they are just holding off for E3.
Click to expand...
who cares about buzz and hype? only people who dont know anything and fan boys. Maybe ATI' technnology will be better...who knows. Maybe they will actually release it in a prompt manner....who knows. Maybe by the time they do get around to releasing it, and having it actually available for purchase...Nvidia will trump em.

But to say that ATi was a God and will be a God based upon hype vaporware is silly.
saying Nvidia is in trouble because they have an actual product on the streets as compared to some unknown hyped up "thing ATI might do in the future" is fan boy ism at its best.

Note, I have owned both ATI and NVidia in the past. I personally dont care much about SLI tech at this point. But what I cant stand is over hyped, paper launches, PR/FUD and fan boys arguing over imaginary products.
 
Though it is true that you can have an x700 working with an x850, the x850 will slow itself down so that it does not become 'out of sync' with the x700...
Don't ask me why, but it is true...
If the screen becomes a checkerboard, and they have to stay in sync, then the x700 can only do x many squares a second, so the x850 has to downgrade itself to do as few as the x700, which is kind of pointless....
f
 
Also does anyone know how the "tiles" in MVP are divided between the GPU's? If it dosent have to 50-50% between the Gpu's, then mixing and matching could work well i guess.
Well there's no point in getting excited untill i see some actual benchmarks, but that article was intersting, 3 GPU's at once? insane.
 
Instead of choosing either, Nvidia or ATI, how about we just embrace new technology at it's finest.

Being able to run two video cards with recent GPU's is awesome, being able to run 3 or more, is amazing, I can see alot of things to come with this, games will be more real than ever, seeing how if this all rolls out as planned, GPU's will not be the slowdown, programmers will.
 
Hate_Bot said:
^^^ FYI Nvidia SLI also has a dongle, its called that PCB Connector ;)

And there SLI is about the same as Nvidia's (They even have AFR) the diffrence is, that with AMR< the image is broken down into little cubes. So the load of the image is shared equally, unlike Nvidias version, where one card could be rendering the floor (which has alot of effects and such) while the other card would just be rendering the skybox, not taking advantage of the second card.
Click to expand...

ROFLMAO

You never cease to amaze me...

Think about it Hate_Bot...an external dongle...that means it's connected up by a VGA or DVI port...that's just a LITTLE BIT different than a PCB connector across the top of the cards...

And your precious tiled rendering doesn't scale geometry processing which is a big hit...not to mention there are dozens of lines across which textures are duplicated instead of just one...so they lose a lot of efficiency...basically they have AFR...the tiling architecture is old...

Nvidia's split screen implementation dynamically changes the location of the split to balance load across the two cards...

Seriously, you should read up on the subject before running your mouth...
 
freddiepm61 said:
Though it is true that you can have an x700 working with an x850, the x850 will slow itself down so that it does not become 'out of sync' with the x700...
Don't ask me why, but it is true...
If the screen becomes a checkerboard, and they have to stay in sync, then the x700 can only do x many squares a second, so the x850 has to downgrade itself to do as few as the x700, which is kind of pointless....
f
Click to expand...

That is what I figured would have to happen. Any kind of AFR or SFR or even the square thing would have to be done that way, or you'd end up with parts of the screen moving faster than others.
 
honestly from everything i have read about ATI's MVP sounds completely rediculous. Personally i do think that the R520 will be better than the G70 but i think SLI will still rank supreme for a good while. When i think of ATI's Tile way of doing things and how you can use a low end card with a high end card, I think "Ummm do they think video card technology will stop?". Every generation there is some kind of new technology. Be it HDR, 32 point precision, SM 3.0, etc. You name it. My point is, what is going to happen when you take a card that fully supports something like open HDR (which I'm sure the R520 will) and a x700? or hell an x850xt for that matter(yes i know they support HDR, but its not supported by anyone hardly, anyway its just an example). Some of the screen will render it right and some wont? Honestly, i think it is just marketing. Yes i think it is possible to have a x700 and R520 in MVP in some games fine. But for situations with things like HDR or any new technology they only have 2 choices. A. Lower the image quality so that the new technology cannot be used. or B. Disable the older card for when you play games with the new technology and just use the one Newer card.

I would like to bring up the topic of the Block idea. It could affect image quality greatly, but we havent seen it and I'm sure we won't see the actual "blocks" on the screen, unless ATI is completely stupid(which i do not believe to be so). What I do believe is that while i think this MVP is a good solution, this marketing of "you can use your old video card and new video card" is BS and it is going to cost ATI alot of trouble in the long run. They should just do the same thing Nvidia said and say "only use two matching cards". Or at least say cards from the same generation (x850 and x700 for example). Anything else is just plain stupid. So yes, i am calling ATI stupid for advertising this. Bring on the flames i really dont care. I have Stock in ATI because I know they are a good company, but I also call em how i see em.
 
Well... anyone ever thought that maybe the video card CAPABLE of the new techs will be the one rendering them... and the other card will just help out with what it can? It will be a pain in the ass to write drivers for, though.
 
steviep said:
Well... anyone ever thought that maybe the video card CAPABLE of the new techs will be the one rendering them... and the other card will just help out with what it can? It will be a pain in the ass to write drivers for, though.
Click to expand...

I would imagine that would almost be impossible to write drivers for...even if you could, the cpu overhead would have to be nuts...
 
Tygerwoody said:
honestly from everything i have read about ATI's MVP sounds completely rediculous. Personally i do think that the R520 will be better than the G70 but i think SLI will still rank supreme for a good while. When i think of ATI's Tile way of doing things and how you can use a low end card with a high end card, I think "Ummm do they think video card technology will stop?". Every generation there is some kind of new technology. Be it HDR, 32 point precision, SM 3.0, etc. You name it. My point is, what is going to happen when you take a card that fully supports something like open HDR (which I'm sure the R520 will) and a x700? or hell an x850xt for that matter(yes i know they support HDR, but its not supported by anyone hardly, anyway its just an example). Some of the screen will render it right and some wont? Honestly, i think it is just marketing. Yes i think it is possible to have a x700 and R520 in MVP in some games fine. But for situations with things like HDR or any new technology they only have 2 choices. A. Lower the image quality so that the new technology cannot be used. or B. Disable the older card for when you play games with the new technology and just use the one Newer card.

I would like to bring up the topic of the Block idea. It could affect image quality greatly, but we havent seen it and I'm sure we won't see the actual "blocks" on the screen, unless ATI is completely stupid(which i do not believe to be so). What I do believe is that while i think this MVP is a good solution, this marketing of "you can use your old video card and new video card" is BS and it is going to cost ATI alot of trouble in the long run. They should just do the same thing Nvidia said and say "only use two matching cards". Or at least say cards from the same generation (x850 and x700 for example). Anything else is just plain stupid. So yes, i am calling ATI stupid for advertising this. Bring on the flames i really dont care. I have Stock in ATI because I know they are a good company, but I also call em how i see em.
Click to expand...


It was already said, you cant mix and match cards. So ya.
 
^eMpTy^ said:
ROFLMAO

You never cease to amaze me...

Think about it Hate_Bot...an external dongle...that means it's connected up by a VGA or DVI port...that's just a LITTLE BIT different than a PCB connector across the top of the cards...

And your precious tiled rendering doesn't scale geometry processing which is a big hit...not to mention there are dozens of lines across which textures are duplicated instead of just one...so they lose a lot of efficiency...basically they have AFR...the tiling architecture is old...

Nvidia's split screen implementation dynamically changes the location of the split to balance load across the two cards...

Seriously, you should read up on the subject before running your mouth...
Click to expand...


Did you have fun at the Nvidia PR Camp? Did they give out little green cookies?
 
Hate_Bot said:
Did you have fun at the Nvidia PR Camp? Did they give out little green cookies?
Click to expand...

Thanks for proving my point...I take your baseless namecalling as proof that you do in fact not have a clue what you're talking about.
 
^eMpTy^ said:
Thanks for proving my point...I take your baseless namecalling as proof that you do in fact not have a clue what you're talking about.
Click to expand...

:rolleyes:

Goddamn fan boys... Always dodging around the arguments...
 
Hate_Bot said:
:rolleyes:

Goddamn fan boys... Always dodging around the arguments...
Click to expand...

I'm sorry...are you making fun of yourself here? otherwise I don't understand what you mean.

I gave you my argument...and you called me a !!!!!! and there was something about cookies.

If you disagree then say something instead of just pointing the !!!!!! finger...that doesn't help anything...
 
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