7900GTX VS QUAD SLI dilema, G80 etc...

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kleox64

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My original plan was to get SLI 7900GTX’s however my 7800GTX 512 has already been sold and I will be left without any decent video card until the 23rd of March when nvidia launches the new QUAD SLI. Now is there any point to go QUAD SLI assuming G80 hits sometime in June/July, I want maximum resale value of whatever I get now.

As for QUAD SLI setup will the cards be DUAL (2 GPU’s on a single card) or single (like the Dell Renegade 600)?

Will they be 7800 or 7900 based?

Assuming DUAL GPU’s will these be cheaper or more expensive than a pair of single cards.

Just to add my current monitor is a DELL 21" P1130 running at a resolution of at least 1600x1200. Currently searching for a FW900 so 1920x1200 in the future. Aircooled GPU's Iam not interested in period, so the one GPU per card for a QUAD SLI setup is definetly a no no unless its WC'ed.



Kleo
 
A quad is either dual dualcore cards or 4 singlecored cards.


Gigabyte has a quad board for sale already, called the Quad Royal, it uses 4 graphic cards... this is great and all but is starting to become a little obscene... i can't imagine the little bit of performance you'd gain using two additional cards when the second card in an sli setup only yields about 15% increase.
 
mashie said:
The yields do increase with resolution so the targeted gaming resolution for Quad SLI is most likely 2560x1600.
Click to expand...



How many people do you know trotting around with Dell 3007's? Then compare it to how many using 3007's who aren't going quad SLI?


Besides, dualcore cards are going to be sickly expensive (read up about the dual 7800gt's from asus, super expensive, not worth it).
 
The Quad Royal setup does not allow 4 card Quad SLI. It only allows 2 dual-GPU cards to achieve Quad SLI...
 
pibrahim said:
The Quad Royal setup does not allow 4 card Quad SLI. It only allows 2 dual-GPU cards to achieve Quad SLI...
Click to expand...


Incorrect, read the reviews. It can do both.
 
pibrahim said:
The Quad Royal setup does not allow 4 card Quad SLI. It only allows 2 dual-GPU cards to achieve Quad SLI...
Click to expand...

That's where things will eventually be going, but right now, even 7800GTX SLI or X1900 CF is CPU limited with something as powerful as a stock FX-60 in many games and GPU dependant tests like 3DMark05 and 06 at resolutions of 1280x1024 and under without heavy AA/AF applied. You have to REALLY crank the screen res and turn up the IQ as much as humanly possible if you really wanna see what these high end graphics setups can do...even today.

"Quad SLI" right now would be completely pointless, but as CPU's progress and games start demanding more and more it may later become a realistic option.
 
Tom's Hardware has a similar looking photo to that. It's not of four cards working in Quad SLI, however, even Toms admitted that in their review.

FiringSquad (http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/nvidia_quad_sli/page2.asp) says:

It’s important to note however that pseudo-Quad SLI can’t be rigged to run on motherboards with four PCI Express graphics slots by using four different graphics cards.

If you recall, late last year Gigabyte announced an nForce4 SLI X16 Intel Edition motherboard with four PCI Express graphics slots, the GA-8N-SLI Quad Royal. While the board uses NVIDIA’s nForce4 SLI X16 Intel Edition chipset, only two of the board’s four PCI Express graphics slots provide full 16-lane PCI Express capability. Gigabyte hasn’t been specific on how many lanes the secondary graphics slots are capable of supporting, but since the South Bridge that the PCI-E slots are tied to is capped to 20 lanes total, our guess is that you’re limited to just one lane per slot, with the remaining two lanes going to the secondary x1 PCI Express slots on the motherboard (16 lanes for one graphics slot + 2 lanes for the third and fourth graphics slot + 2 lanes for the x1 expansion slots for a total of twenty).

In other words, while two NVIDIA Quad SLI cards should work on the Gigabyte GA-8N-SLI Quad Royal (provided the two Quad SLI cards are running in the board’s two x16 PCI-E slots), running four GeForce 7800 GTX 512MB boards on the Quad Royal for pseudo-Quad-SLI won’t work.
 
Yes the board is available and yes it does support 4 video cards...most people that pay attention to the market already knew that...but the need for something like this is still completely non-existant. We're not even close to completely utilizing the power of an X1900XT CF setup with current dual core CPU's at stock speeds...and Gigabyte is trying to push THIS on people...please. :rolleyes:

It's enough that the 7900GTX is on the way...it'll be one more card that people are gonna throw in SLI and not even come close to realising what it can really do.

Ah well, kinda makes me glad in a way that I know I don't/won't have the money to drop on even two cards. I continue to look at video cards from a single card performance perspective, it really does simplify things...and I don't have to worry about having to have a 3.5GHz FX-60 to make my $1,500 video card setup worthwhile. ;) :p
 
The board supports four cards. It does not support four card Quad SLI, only two card Quad SLI, the same as every other SLIx16 mobo.
 
pibrahim said:
The board supports four cards. It does not support four card Quad SLI, only two card Quad SLI, the same as every other SLIx16 mobo.
Click to expand...

Even if the fact of the matter is that the board supports only two card SLI with two additional cards for extra displays, there have been one or another companies try to actually push a true quad SLI setup...and guess what...it flunked horribly.

I suppose if someone has absolutely no need for any PCI cards in their system and they want the extra displays then this board might be what they're looking for...but I still think that Gigabyte is relying on that "over the top" look and marketing angle the board has to sell the thing.
 
I don't understand how you can say Quad SLI 'flunked horribly' - it's not yet out, its being officially released by nVidia on March 22nd?

Gigabyte's Quad Royal is something of a curate's egg and the reality of Quad SLI, i.e. using two 7900GTX Duo cards on normal SLix16 motherboards will be very different to buying 4 different cards and trying to get them to work on Gigabye's mobo.
 
Umm that board has dual 16 channels which provides each slot with 8x speeds.


Also, another reviewer ran 4 standard 7800GTX'es on the board on sli using the provided quad sli bridges.


Yes it does do quad sli with 4 freakin cards. Go buy it yourself and find out. And no, it didn't flunk horribly, it's just that you can't justify the teeny bit of performance in dropping two additional cards.


nforcehq.com~

"What is the 8N-SLI QUAD? It’s based on nVidia’s brand new nForce4 SLI X16 chipset which allows for SLI to be operated with two PCI Express slots running at the full 16 lanes. ..Gigabyte took the chipset and had some real fun with it. Instead of just creating a motherboard with two full speed PCI Express graphics slots, they created a motherboard with four 8 lane PCI Express slots – hence the QUAD naming scheme.

You can hook up four GeForce 7800 GTX cards for instance and you’ve got yourself a platform which can support up to 8 monitors. "


Motherboard.com~ Ran 4 7800GT's.

"GIGABYTE's board is fairly unique in support for 4 video cards at the same time on the consumer side of things. Only Dell with their XPS computer offers anything similar to what this board offers at the moment. It's unlikely however, that NVIDIA would spend the time and money on R+D on quad SLI for one high-profile customer. It's likely that they will incorporate the design into their next generation of cards."

PCI Express Slot #1 PCI Express Slot #2 PCI Express Slot #3 PCI Express Slot #4
X1 X16 X16 X1
Inactive X16 X8 X8
X1 X16 3D1 card X1
Inactive 3D1 card 3D1 card X1
X8 X8 X8 X8


Another review using 7800GTX's.
http://www.hkepc.com/hwdb/nf4slix16-3.htm
 
Where is this review of someone using 4 GTXs *in QUAD SLI*? I don't care if they've got 4 GTXs in there together if they're only used for powering multiple displays, not Quad SLI. I've not seen any nVidia driver even supporting Quad SLI yet and I should know, I tried it myself using the Asus Dual EN7800GT.

Link please.

nVidia's Quad SLI solution is to use two x16 ports, each running at full x16 speed. Why would they choose to support one manufacturer's alternative attempt at doing it in a completely different manner (4 x8 ports)?

Without any proof, I'll listen to FiringSquad instead.
 
Exactly.

"You can hook up four GeForce 7800 GTX cards for instance and you’ve got yourself a platform which can support up to 8 monitors"

That is completely different to Quad SLI. That's just using four cards for multiple displays.
 
pibrahim said:
Exactly.

"You can hook up four GeForce 7800 GTX cards for instance and you’ve got yourself a platform which can support up to 8 monitors"

That is completely different to Quad SLI. That's just using four cards for multiple displays.
Click to expand...


Keep reading turd.
 
Hmm, saw a pic with four cards together using the bridges.

But that would be what FiringSquad termed pseudo Quad-SLI. It doesn't look to work properly, look at the scores. 11k in 3DMark05 for regular SLI, 9k for pseudo Quad SLI. It clearly isn't being achieved properly.

I'm sure only the 7900 Duo cards will support it properly.
 
dude you have a very good point, however the single GPU per card Iam refering to is the DELL configuration which consists on a main PCB with a daugher PCB each containing 512MB of RAM and a single lower clocked 7800GTX GPU. Note each pair of GPU's still use a single physical pci-e slot.
 
pibrahim said:
Hmm, saw a pic with four cards together using the bridges.

But that would be what FiringSquad termed pseudo Quad-SLI. It doesn't look to work properly, look at the scores. 11k in 3DMark05 for regular SLI, 9k for pseudo Quad SLI. It clearly isn't being achieved properly.

I'm sure only the 7900 Duo cards will support it properly.
Click to expand...


Exactly, not worth it ;)

Btw, I saw you changed your story ;)



pibrahim said:
See my last post.

All you've done is show that it had four GTXs running at the same time. Well done. Everyone knows that the motherboard allows four cards to power multiple displays. You seem to fail to grasp the concept that Quad SLI is different to running four cards at the same time. Those cards were not all powering one display.

The link you provided shows four cards running separately and two cards running in SLI mode. It does not show four cards running in Quad SLI.
Click to expand...
 
My assumption is that QUAD SLI is for the 2560 resolution only i.e. for those with 30" LCD's.
 
Ockie said:
Exactly, not worth it ;)

Btw, I saw you changed your story ;)
Click to expand...

Hehe, I must admit I'd never seen that photo before. Color me surprised.
It seems that the Chinese/Taiwanese guys are the ones to try the extreme tech. They've got the only screenshot I've ever seen of the Asus Dual 7800GT card showing up four GPUs in Device Manager (Tom's only got 3 to show up) -

http://www.pcpop.com/doc/App/ImageShow.aspx?category=article&sn=000170324
and
http://www.pcpop.com/doc/0/116/116276_1.shtml

Looking forward to tomorrow, when we'll hopefully find out exactly what is and isn't supported! And the prices of those cards too... :eek:
 
pibrahim said:
Hehe, I must admit I'd never seen that photo before. Color me surprised.
It seems that the Chinese/Taiwanese guys are the ones to try the extreme tech. They've got the only screenshot I've ever seen of the Asus Dual 7800GT card showing up four GPUs in Device Manager (Tom's only got 3 to show up) -

http://www.pcpop.com/doc/App/ImageShow.aspx?category=article&sn=000170324
and
http://www.pcpop.com/doc/0/116/116276_1.shtml

Looking forward to tomorrow, when we'll hopefully find out exactly what is and isn't supported! And the prices of those cards too... :eek:
Click to expand...


Companies and reviewers bullshit up so much stuff (not all of them) and it really becomes hard to see the clear objective in the end and what the product really is capabile of. I can't wait to see whats in the bag tomorrow.
 
Ockie, that Asus card is the one I owned.

There is a problem with it, when its in the primary PCie slot of any SLIx16 mobo, only 1 GPU is displayed. When in the secondary PCIe slot, both GPUs work. Asus wouldn't issue a driver/BIOS fix to correct the problem, tons of people on the Asus forum had it.

It is the inability of the card to work properly in the primary PCie slot which meant that Toms only had 3 GPUs show up, not 4. The Chinese site I posted above are the only ones who appear to have had drivers enabling all 4 GPUs.

As it stands, Tom's benchmark results only ever used 3 of the 4 processors, but they mistakenly attributed this to something about the master or slave card only reporting 1 GPU. That wasn't the reason, it was the primary PCIe problem instead.

My guess is that Asus had a driver available to rectify the problem (and used by that Chinese website) but chose not to release it - I can't imagine nVidia would have been happy if their official Quad SLI release of March 22nd was beaten like that.
 
Have you tried a 32x board? Just a theory I have here in my head.
 
An SLi x16 motherboard? Yeah, I used both the Asus A8N32-sli and the one I currently use now, an MSI K8N Diamond Plus.

Asus actually told me that it was an inability of the C51D chipset to handle two GPUs that was the cause but nVidia claim that Quad SLI will work on current Sli x16 motherboards so I'm not sure....
 
Ockie said:
Umm that board has dual 16 channels which provides each slot with 8x speeds.


Also, another reviewer ran 4 standard 7800GTX'es on the board on sli using the provided quad sli bridges.


Yes it does do quad sli with 4 freakin cards. Go buy it yourself and find out. And no, it didn't flunk horribly, it's just that you can't justify the teeny bit of performance in dropping two additional cards.


nforcehq.com~

"What is the 8N-SLI QUAD? It’s based on nVidia’s brand new nForce4 SLI X16 chipset which allows for SLI to be operated with two PCI Express slots running at the full 16 lanes. ..Gigabyte took the chipset and had some real fun with it. Instead of just creating a motherboard with two full speed PCI Express graphics slots, they created a motherboard with four 8 lane PCI Express slots – hence the QUAD naming scheme.

You can hook up four GeForce 7800 GTX cards for instance and you’ve got yourself a platform which can support up to 8 monitors. "


Motherboard.com~ Ran 4 7800GT's.

"GIGABYTE's board is fairly unique in support for 4 video cards at the same time on the consumer side of things. Only Dell with their XPS computer offers anything similar to what this board offers at the moment. It's unlikely however, that NVIDIA would spend the time and money on R+D on quad SLI for one high-profile customer. It's likely that they will incorporate the design into their next generation of cards."

PCI Express Slot #1 PCI Express Slot #2 PCI Express Slot #3 PCI Express Slot #4
X1 X16 X16 X1
Inactive X16 X8 X8
X1 X16 3D1 card X1
Inactive 3D1 card 3D1 card X1
X8 X8 X8 X8


Another review using 7800GTX's.
http://www.hkepc.com/hwdb/nf4slix16-3.htm
Click to expand...


Actually If I remember correctly do to the NB and SB that board sopprts 49-50 PCIe lanes. I think the two can do 16x16 and the other two 8x8.

The best configuration would be x8 x8 bridged x8 by x8 bridged with 16x for unbridged communication between the the two bridged SLI sets.
 
Hmmm... no idea... just the thought of trying to make it work sounds expensive as you weave in between diffrent boards and revisions :)

I'd check the nvidia site tonight and perhaps even later tonight for new drivers.
 
Unfortunately I gave up and returned it to Newegg.

When I had the Asus A8N32-SLI, I could run it in the secondary PCIe slot and at least get my $850 worth of performance. On the K8N Diamond Plus, you can't use the secondary PCIe slot if the primary isn't used first; therefore I had to run it in primary and the card was performing as a mere $300 GT.

Wasn't sure if there'd ever be a solution to the problem and Asus support were absolutely lousy (not a patch on eVGA), so I just gave up on it.

Have been using my laptop for a month and a half, my desktop PC is currently sans videocard. Hence I've been waiting for nVidia's new stuff very impatiently :)
 
For all the quad SLI nay sayers "useless etc..."

Take a look at the unreal 2007 preview @ gamespot., they have a gameplay video and The developers state that the demo was running on a Quad SLI setup.... Kinda makes u think huh?

My GTX won't be able to un it above 1024x768 with no AA at the most :(
 
Suflex said:
For all the quad SLI nay sayers "useless etc..."

Take a look at the unreal 2007 preview @ gamespot., they have a gameplay video and The developers state that the demo was running on a Quad SLI setup.... Kinda makes u think huh?

My GTX won't be able to un it above 1024x768 with no AA at the most :(
Click to expand...

Back to the good old days aren't we. Sorry but I love it when a new game brings a new card down to its knees (cept for tresspasser(it needs to be a good game with the actually ability to play it)). I am kind of tired about hearing Prima Donnas screamming "I paid $600 dollars for this card and I can't play *** at 1600x1200 at 16AA and 16AF"
 
Suflex said:
For all the quad SLI nay sayers "useless etc..."

Take a look at the unreal 2007 preview @ gamespot., they have a gameplay video and The developers state that the demo was running on a Quad SLI setup.... Kinda makes u think huh?

My GTX won't be able to un it above 1024x768 with no AA at the most :(
Click to expand...
True, but by then there will be 1 or 2 more generations of video cards out. Which means that by then you will likely have paid ~8x the amount of money that I will have paid when I buy a card that I need to play UT2007 at the time of the games' release.

But hey, if you have the money, by all means spend it on Quad-SLI now. It will make sure that nVidia has the necessary R&D funds for the next-gen cards.
 
kleox64 said:
My original plan was to get SLI 7900GTX’s however my 7800GTX 512 has already been sold and I will be left without any decent video card until the 23rd of March when nvidia launches the new QUAD SLI. Now is there any point to go QUAD SLI assuming G80 hits sometime in June/July, I want maximum resale value of whatever I get now.

As for QUAD SLI setup will the cards be DUAL (2 GPU’s on a single card) or single (like the Dell Renegade 600)?

Will they be 7800 or 7900 based?

Assuming DUAL GPU’s will these be cheaper or more expensive than a pair of single cards.

Just to add my current monitor is a DELL 21" P1130 running at a resolution of at least 1600x1200. Currently searching for a FW900 so 1920x1200 in the future. Aircooled GPU's Iam not interested in period, so the one GPU per card for a QUAD SLI setup is definetly a no no unless its WC'ed.



Kleo
Click to expand...

G80 won't come until Vista for sure. It's a DX10 card, and Vista is required for DX10 (both will be launched at the smae time iirc). And all that won't be until the holiday season.

That being said, quad sli is pointless. Get SLI 7900GTXs. Coming out much quicker, and wil have probably the same performance. Unless you have a 30" ACD or Dell 2007 or whatever it is, (or a huge CRT) don't bother with quad SLI.
 
Russ said:
G80 won't come until Vista for sure. It's a DX10 card, and Vista is required for DX10 (both will be launched at the smae time iirc). And all that won't be until the holiday season.

That being said, quad sli is pointless. Get SLI 7900GTXs. Coming out much quicker, and wil have probably the same performance. Unless you have a 30" ACD or Dell 2007 or whatever it is, (or a huge CRT) don't bother with quad SLI.
Click to expand...

I agree with you.
 
Surely those with 24" monitors could also benefit too?

Even SLI 7900GTXs could struggle running UT2007 at 19x12 with all the eye candy cranked up to a max, no...?
 
Your e-penis would really benifit from it too :) Thats pretty much what all this latest cutting edge stuff has become... you dont need 30inches of screen love or quad, dual cores/sli.... its all now about who can sling the most.
 
pibrahim said:
Surely those with 24" monitors could also benefit too?

Even SLI 7900GTXs could struggle running UT2007 at 19x12 with all the eye candy cranked up to a max, no...?
Click to expand...

maybe so but QUAD SLI is really ment for the 2560 resolution, also take note that UT2007 hasnt been released and by that time theres going to be G8x based card anyway.
 
Here's what I think the reason for NVIDIA releasing this so early is:

Reason #1 Looks cool
Reason #2 Will give NVIDIA the performance crown (probably)
Reason #3 Marketing
Reason #4 Marketing
...
...
Reason #99 Marketing
Reason #100 There may actually be a few 2560x1600 users who will buy the thing :p
 
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