Alienware Introduces Video Array Technology

ViRGE

Elite Member, Moderator Emeritus
Oct 9, 1999
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While I'm surprised no one has picked up on this yet, Alienware has unveiled the designs for a new line of systems they are going to start shipping this year, dubbed ALX, which will feature a new SLI-like technology they're calling Video Array technology. While the implementation is technically different from SLI, the concept is the same: more video cards = more performance. There's an interview up at the HomeLAN Federation discussing the new systems, along with the planned specs(2 PCI-E 16x slots, among other things) and availability. The systems are going to be expensive, but it's hard to argue with 2 video cards.;)

PS Mods, I have slight conflict of interest here, since I write for the site I linked to. Please remove if against the rules
 

MemberSince97

Senior member
Jun 20, 2003
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That was an interesting read. Fifty percent performance increase, they may licence tech to 3rd parties.
 

KpocAlypse

Golden Member
Jan 10, 2001
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Heh, 2 Diamond x800 plats....Would bring back memories of my first gaming PC. (2 Voodoo2 12 Meg Diamonds)
 

jrphoenix

Golden Member
Feb 29, 2004
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OMG.... that looks awesome! I know that these systems will most likely be out of my price range? :(

I wonder how they will work with dual lesser CPU's & Video cards. I can only imagine that these systems will start at $5,000 and go up to who knows???
 
Mar 11, 2004
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This is cool and all, but don't you think they should just design a motherboard that has a socket for a video processor or something? Give it a slot or two for its own RAM too. I think this would be a better solution than cards. It shouldn't cost much more once they got it implemented. Also, this should actually make getting better video performance cheaper. Consider that if you get a 3.2GHz P4 or Athlon 64 3200 that would cost roughly $300 and then get 512MB of super high speed memory for say $200. Hmm...looks to me to better than a $500 card. Doubt they'll do this at any time, but I think it would be cool.
 

Pariah

Elite Member
Apr 16, 2000
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It's interesting from a technology angle, but as a product, it's going to flop. The systems are going to be so expensive that no one is going to buy them. The cost of dual highend video cards and dual CPU's are $2000 alone even without the OEM markup. The fact that you are forced to shell out for an entire top of the line system at once will eliminate practically their entire market.
 

Dug

Diamond Member
Jun 6, 2000
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Originally posted by: Pariah
It's interesting from a technology angle, but as a product, it's going to flop. The systems are going to be so expensive that no one is going to buy them. The cost of dual highend video cards and dual CPU's are $2000 alone even without the OEM markup. The fact that you are forced to shell out for an entire top of the line system at once will eliminate practically their entire market.

I don't think it will flop. There will be a lot of press on this, and people with money spend it.
Maybe a majority of us on this forum wouldn't, because it is generally accustomed to bang for the buck configurations, but there are plenty out there that must have the best.
 

jm0ris0n

Golden Member
Sep 15, 2000
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It'll definitely be a niche market, but I think its cool.

Kudos if it ends up working out. Also, if this does indeed succeed I would expect other companies besides alienware to follow suit. Thus lowering the price, and give it more mass market appeal.

Haha, a geforce 13600 or Radeon X1600X :laugh:
 

Adul

Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
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Originally posted by: jm0ris0n
It'll definitely be a niche market, but I think its cool.

Kudos if it ends up working out. Also, if this does indeed succeed I would expect other companies besides alienware to follow suit. Thus lowering the price, and give it more mass market appeal.

Haha, a geforce 13600 or Radeon X1600X :laugh:

LOL :D
 

Pariah

Elite Member
Apr 16, 2000
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Originally posted by: Dug
Originally posted by: Pariah
It's interesting from a technology angle, but as a product, it's going to flop. The systems are going to be so expensive that no one is going to buy them. The cost of dual highend video cards and dual CPU's are $2000 alone even without the OEM markup. The fact that you are forced to shell out for an entire top of the line system at once will eliminate practically their entire market.

I don't think it will flop. There will be a lot of press on this, and people with money spend it.
Maybe a majority of us on this forum wouldn't, because it is generally accustomed to bang for the buck configurations, but there are plenty out there that must have the best.

This looks to be in a completely different price realm than even your typical enthusiast, more money than brains purchase. There is a small but distinct group of people who will spend $500 on a video card, or $500 on a CPU, but how many people do you know who own a P4 EE, or dual Xeon or Opteron systems for home use? Alienware says these system are smp, so they have to be either Xeon or Opteron, then you add the cost of 2 top of the line video cards, plus the proprietary motherboard, plus the cost of the video array technology, specially needed case and power supply and then the cost of every other necessary component plus the markup of OEMs for build cost and warrant, and we are looking at a very expensive system that will make the highend G5 systems look like emachines. There is absolutely no way Alienware is going to be able to sell enough of these to recoup any development costs that this system incurred unless they widely license it to other companies.
 

everman

Lifer
Nov 5, 2002
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Wouldn't it just be some specialized software or driver that has one card render ever odd line, and the other render every even. And have them do that in sync? I do recall something just like that quite a while ago (that's what SLI on voodoo was also I believe). So with systems comming with multiple PCI-E slots in the future, I can see this catching on.
 

Acanthus

Lifer
Aug 28, 2001
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I could see this applying more to professional 3d than gaming. Although gaming would work as well.

Woudlnt you need special drivers to make the cards function that way?
 

ViRGE

Elite Member, Moderator Emeritus
Oct 9, 1999
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Originally posted by: Acanthus
I could see this applying more to professional 3d than gaming. Although gaming would work as well.

Woudlnt you need special drivers to make the cards function that way?
There's a special "software layer" required, but the actual video card drivers are independant, so that won't be a problem.
 

sharkeeper

Lifer
Jan 13, 2001
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I agree with Pariah on this one. Display adapters get obsolete far too soon to consider such expense! This would last through one chipset generation at best. After that, single slot solutions would perform better and cost 1/5 of the price!

For people that like to brag about the length of their weiner and have more dollars than cents, it will work for the time being. :)

Also, this is Alienware for chrissakes!

Cheers!
 

Xernex

Senior member
Jul 15, 2002
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Interesting stuff. Hopefully more competent/experienced hardware developers will take this on board if the feature gets some attention. And they may find a way to make it cheaper and more accessible to the average man. One thing is for sure these alienware systems are going to cost a damn CRAPLOAD. The premium for this new feature alone would be enough money to upgrade to the latest and greatest graphics card that comes out for the next 3-4 generations.

And anyone with at least a little common sense will realise this. No way will alienware recoup the costs for the RD on this thing.
 

bluemax

Diamond Member
Apr 28, 2000
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Hasn't this been in development for more than two years?? I remember Alienware planning this for a long, long time.

Nice to see it come to fruition, but it's prohibitively expensive. If they can cut down the expense, they may still get market from rich enthusiasts.

But it's cheaper to simply buy the best card on the market for ~$500 and possibly a crazy $100 cooling solution to overclock it, and the difference between this option and Alienware's "SLI" will be marginal.... 25%?

And some would argue that a mega-cooling system is more impressive than a dual-video card "SLI" rig that cost $thousands.
 

remagavon

Platinum Member
Jun 16, 2003
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Originally posted by: bluemax
Hasn't this been in development for more than two years?? I remember Alienware planning this for a long, long time.

Nice to see it come to fruition, but it's prohibitively expensive. If they can cut down the expense, they may still get market from rich enthusiasts.

But it's cheaper to simply buy the best card on the market for ~$500 and possibly a crazy $100 cooling solution to overclock it, and the difference between this option and Alienware's "SLI" will be marginal.... 25%?

And some would argue that a mega-cooling system is more impressive than a dual-video card "SLI" rig that cost $thousands.

Yeah, IIRC they were going to release a custom setup with dual voodoo 3 cards, then the geforce 256 came out and it was a moot point.
 

SmokeRngs

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Apr 30, 2004
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The main problem I see with the SLI right now is that for the most part, games are CPU limited at this time. Running dual vid cards is not going to help much in the majority of games except maybe being able to run a bit higher resolution or with a little more eye candy.

It's in a case like this that it would be nice if a lot of games were SMP aware and could properly use multiple CPUs. Running a dual CPU system with SLI vid cards is not going to increase performance dramatically.

Also, I think it would be a bad idea to use top of the line vid cards for something like this. A couple of midrange cards would probably work much better in the price performance area. A couple of $300 cards would probably perform a lot better than a single $500 card with the cost difference not being all that much.
 

bluemax

Diamond Member
Apr 28, 2000
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Originally posted by: SmokeRngs
Also, I think it would be a bad idea to use top of the line vid cards for something like this. A couple of midrange cards would probably work much better in the price performance area. A couple of $300 cards would probably perform a lot better than a single $500 card with the cost difference not being all that much.

That's the rub.... two $300 cards with a 50% performance gain would NOT outperform the $500 part! (in most cases!) Even include $100 for insane cooling and while the price may be the same, the $600 spent on top-of-the-line + awesome cooling is still faster than two $300 cards.



And the other point about most games being CPU limited is an excellent one. The only real benefit would be in goodies like high resolution + high FSAA which is kind of silly.
 

Pariah

Elite Member
Apr 16, 2000
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One interesting application I could see for this that hasn't been mentioned, and who knows if Alienware has even thought of it, but to use such a setup for multimonitor gaming. Dedicating a video card to each monitor would significantly improve multimonitor gaming performance provided you weren't originally CPU limited. Running a flight sim or first person shooter at 3200x1200 with all eye candy turned on would be quite an experience. Or even a step further running 2 monitors off of each card for a 4608x864 setup or something like that which could achieve the surround gaming Matrox tried to develop, but didn't have the horsepower to truly realize. Still not worth the price of admission but a whole lot more interesting than a 50% performance gain.
 

Alkaline5

Senior member
Jun 21, 2001
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So the technology works completely independently of the other hardware. I assume the cards would have to be identical, but I didn't notice that mentioned in the article. Pairing a 5950U with a 5200 Personal Cinema would be an interesting (if pointless) combination, or maybe even an X800 w/a 6800...

But like others have said, I don't see this being very important to any of us until Alienware starts licensing it.
 

Lonyo

Lifer
Aug 10, 2002
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What would it do for workstations?
Might allow cheap workstation setups (rather than 32xR300 core cards!)
 

bluemax

Diamond Member
Apr 28, 2000
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did they develop a motherboard with 2 AGP slots?? Technically, it's now possible... but it's the only way! ATI didn't develop PCI versions of their new stuff!!