Any SLI reviews of CAD type cards to see its increase??

[Duvie]

As topic states...

I think it would be an interesting thing to look at./ It also could drive 4 monitors theoretically, right???


I know the talk is this is to be released shiortly at guru3d.com so it would open the door for 600's series cards to be soft modded so to speak to quadro FX cards. I definitley will be picking up one when that littl;e tidbit is released but if there is even the slightest chance this could be great on an SLI setup I may look at that route...

Ofcourse I would wait 4-6 months to see if the SLI boards are flaky and give them a chance to mature...

 

[Matthias99]

The monitors attached to the second card are disabled in SLI mode, as detailed in AT's review of NVIDIA SLI. You can get four monitors with the two PCIe cards, but not while using SLI.

I don't know if the Quadro BIOSes currently available support SLI. I'm sure they will at some point.

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: Matthias99
The monitors attached to the second card are disabled in SLI mode, as detailed in AT's review of NVIDIA SLI. You can get four monitors with the two PCIe cards, but not while using SLI.

I don't know if the Quadro BIOSes currently available support SLI. I'm sure they will at some point.

I would imagine that two PCIe cards could drive two AutoCAD viewports in realtime, but I could be mistaken. SLI is to use 2 cards to render 1 image. Multiple viewports may somewhat dodge the limitation.

Honestly though, the return on investment on SLI is terrible. $50 extra on the motherboard, and then you might only gain 40% in performance depending on the application. If it can drive multiple viewports or accelerate CAD and 3D Max simulataneously I'll be much more interested.

 

[Dubb]

I believe Nvidia had test setups on xeon rigs some time ago...I recall dual 4400s breaking 100 in specviewperf 7.1.1 ugs test....that said, in an ideal world, I'd still rather have dual realizm 800s driving two 9MP lcds...but that's just me.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: SickBeast

Originally posted by: Matthias99
The monitors attached to the second card are disabled in SLI mode, as detailed in AT's review of NVIDIA SLI. You can get four monitors with the two PCIe cards, but not while using SLI.

I don't know if the Quadro BIOSes currently available support SLI. I'm sure they will at some point.

I would imagine that two PCIe cards could drive two AutoCAD viewports in realtime, but I could be mistaken. SLI is to use 2 cards to render 1 image. Multiple viewports may somewhat dodge the limitation.

Multiple viewports in your application is separate from multiple monitors. You can only use the video outputs attached to the first card when running in SLI mode (at least with the current drivers; I don't know if this is a software or hardware limitation). So no matter how many AutoCAD viewports you have, you won't have four displays.

Honestly though, the return on investment on SLI is terrible. $50 extra on the motherboard, and then you might only gain 40% in performance depending on the application. If it can drive multiple viewports or accelerate CAD and 3D Max simulataneously I'll be much more interested.

How is a nearly-linear improvement in 3D performance for your dollar (double the price of the video subsystem and get 40-80% more performance) "terrible"? If you need more horsepower than the fastest single card you can get, there's really not much choice. And the workstation market is less price-sensitive than the general consumer market; if you're paying $5K for a machine already, $6K or $7K for a machine that's 40% faster in the apps you use is a pretty good deal!

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: Matthias99

Originally posted by: SickBeast

Originally posted by: Matthias99
The monitors attached to the second card are disabled in SLI mode, as detailed in AT's review of NVIDIA SLI. You can get four monitors with the two PCIe cards, but not while using SLI.

I don't know if the Quadro BIOSes currently available support SLI. I'm sure they will at some point.

I would imagine that two PCIe cards could drive two AutoCAD viewports in realtime, but I could be mistaken. SLI is to use 2 cards to render 1 image. Multiple viewports may somewhat dodge the limitation.

Multiple viewports in your application is separate from multiple monitors. You can only use the video outputs attached to the first card when running in SLI mode (at least with the current drivers; I don't know if this is a software or hardware limitation). So no matter how many AutoCAD viewports you have, you won't have four displays.

Honestly though, the return on investment on SLI is terrible. $50 extra on the motherboard, and then you might only gain 40% in performance depending on the application. If it can drive multiple viewports or accelerate CAD and 3D Max simulataneously I'll be much more interested.

How is a nearly-linear improvement in 3D performance for your dollar (double the price of the video subsystem and get 40-80% more performance) "terrible"? If you need more horsepower than the fastest single card you can get, there's really not much choice. And the workstation market is less price-sensitive than the general consumer market; if you're paying $5K for a machine already, $6K or $7K for a machine that's 40% faster in the apps you use is a pretty good deal!

Yeah that's a very good point. I was more referring to the people who are looking to SLI as an "upgrade path".