CF on a card OR SLi on a card- poll inside

[taltamir]

never been a fan of multi GPU. In the future, IF all the problems, are solved, I might jump on it. Until then I will stick to one card solutions.

And give nRollo a break already. Sometimes he says something biased (most people do), and we call on him it. that is not a reason to abuse him at every turn with impunity. This is a valid poll, the reason it is "oddly worded" is because he asserts that there is a difference between AFR multi GPU, and SFR multi GPU, and that AMD and nVidia started using AFR at different times.
Besides, I have rarely seen someone make a poll and NOT vote for it himself. As long as the poll allows you to vote against him it is valid.

Anyways, I voted for "Don't care about either, don't like multi GPU."

 

[DaveSimmons]

"Didn't support either before, support both now."

Multi-GPU performance has improved faster than single-GPU, just look at how the 9800 GX2 dominates the GTX 280 in the AnandTech 48xx review, though that was average not minimum framerates, and on popular games with good SLI driver support.

I'd still much rather have a fast single GPU. After 6 generations of nvidia cards I just replaced my nv 7900 with a 4870 instead of either 4850 CF or SLI / x2 or the wildly overpriced GTX 280.

 

[FalseChristian]

I also believe AFR is a bid dud! Why doesn't ATi and nVidia try each card doing 1 line like SLI back in the Voodoo2 days? It can't hurt to try it and at least make it an option in game profiles.

 

[tylerw13]

Originally posted by: seemingly random
Very odd poll. Makes me wonder what the ultimate agenda is. Seems almost as if this is a poll created by a marketer for an individual company.

why is it that everyone thinks that there is an "agenda" for everything that gets state or brought up or something on this place....honestly ppl just stop if you dont like what ppl are saying or doing you DONT have to read it or comment on it!!! simple as that.

about the question i dont really like dual card setups i had trouble with cross fire back in the day with the x1900 setup but i might be willing to give it a go again sometime...maybe when the x2 comes out

 

[Mango1970]

How about "I support both SLI and CF"?? I have one 680i with dual 8800 GTX and a P35 with 2 X1950XT CF. Love them both -- each has drawbacks and benefits but overall I wanted to give it a try and don't regret.

 

[extra]

Originally posted by: FalseChristian
I also believe AFR is a bid dud! Why doesn't ATi and nVidia try each card doing 1 line like SLI back in the Voodoo2 days? It can't hurt to try it and at least make it an option in game profiles.

I think there is a technological reason that this isn't used today, something with shaders and post processing and aa and all that jazz although i am not sure. someone please (seriously) explain this to us i am curious about this as well. sorry in advance for the poor typing i'm on a friends computer some of his keys don't work rofl.

Now, there is no reason you hafta go multi gpu (i have no multi gpu computers, and the next one i build may or may not go that way...and i have zero brand preference, i hope they both do great so consumers benefit)...

That said, multi gpu is nice for three reasons:

1. Gives ultra high end people with spare cash an extra option to enjoy
2. Hits price points that otherwise would not have good options occupying them
3. Gives people who can pick up a great deal on a second older card a great easy cheap upgrade option (ie 8800 stuff now for people with an sli board and one of 'em already!)

Because of option number 2 people should work to encourage multi gpu products. Not because you necessarily want them, but because it brings prices down. This is a good thing.

Also, with physics and such possibly being offloaded to the gpu in the future, multi gpu solutions would offer some inherent advantages there as well I would think. only logical.

Nice to see rollo making a great thread.

Lets discuss possible options and alternatives for how multiple gpu setups could render frames.

My thought is this: remember the tile based powervr stuff? Would that not be ideally suited for multi gpu? if not someone explain to me why as i'm not the most knowledgeable at some things. Also I wonder if drivers and such could be set up in a way that one gpu does most of the scene building and rendering work and then the next card does all the post processing and aa. hmmmms.

 

[pmv]

@extra

It does seem as though traditional SLI would not go well with AA, on the face of it, as with AA neighbouring pixels on neighbouring scan lines would not be independent. But, on the other hand, didn't the final 3dfx cards support AA with an SLI architecture? So perhaps I have that wrong.

 

[seemingly random]

Originally posted by: tylerw13

Originally posted by: seemingly random
Very odd poll. Makes me wonder what the ultimate agenda is. Seems almost as if this is a poll created by a marketer for an individual company.

why is it that everyone thinks that there is an "agenda" for everything that gets state or brought up or something on this place....honestly ppl just stop if you dont like what ppl are saying or doing you DONT have to read it or comment on it!!! simple as that.

about the question i dont really like dual card setups i had trouble with cross fire back in the day with the x1900 setup but i might be willing to give it a go again sometime...maybe when the x2 comes out

Oh, the ironing...

 

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: pmv
@extra

It does seem as though traditional SLI would not go well with AA, on the face of it, as with AA neighbouring pixels on neighbouring scan lines would not be independent. But, on the other hand, didn't the final 3dfx cards support AA with an SLI architecture? So perhaps I have that wrong.

IIRC they did it in a manner similar to CrossFire-AA, each GPU rendered the scene slightly offset, and when the renders were combined you got a properly antialiased image. Of course the big problem with this method is that it just kills your performance, it's actually worse than supersampling because you're rendering each frame 4 whole times and can't take advantage of things like color compression among the frames.

 

[Magusigne]

Well heres my take on this whole multiGPU idea.

Firstly, being not quite as an enthusiast as I'd like to be (money wise) I don't like building my rig around a particular brand of graphic card (I wish SLI/CF could work on the same board) so thats my first complaint, we already do this when we choose AMD/intel anyways

Secondly, if CF/SLI scaled 100% that is to say adding another card would give me twice the performance as one then I'd love to have that option.

 

[BFG10K]

VirtualLarry:

Instead of SFR or AFR, I would much rather see some work done on supertiling. I think that would be a superior solution to both. It would have the speed benefits of AFR, and the image integrity benefits of SFR.

Super-tiling won?t scale like AFR because it, like SFR, doesn?t combine vertex processing from the cards. Since both vendors only care about having the longest graphs (i.e. AFR) ATi has abandoned it.

But yeah, I agree it?s better than AFR or SFR from a robustness point of view. Load balancing is pretty much done implicitly at the hardware level plus micro-stutter and input lag is gone.

VirtualLarry:

If you've seen the YouTube video on real-time raytracing with the PS3, then you would see how it can be done. They divide up the screen, and each cell sub-processor gets to render one chunk. Essentially that is SFR, but why is it with three PS3 consoles and a gigabit ethernet network, that some hobbiest can get SFR rendering to work better than ATI and NVidia can.

Like I said ATi had super-tiling but they abandoned it, likely because of performance reasons compared to AFR.

 

[BFG10K]

Extra:

I think AFR is great there is nothing wrong with the idea or technology? I don't get why people don't like it because it seems clunky to them or something. It's worked fine since the voodoo days.

The Voodoo never had AFR; they always used a variant of SFR.

The first consumer board to do AFR was the Rage MAXX.

FalseChristian:

Why doesn't ATi and nVidia try each card doing 1 line like SLI back in the Voodoo2 days?

I don?t think nVidia hardware has the ability to do that; that?s a variant of super-tiling.

 

[BFG10K]

pmv:

It does seem as though traditional SLI would not go well with AA, on the face of it, as with AA neighbouring pixels on neighbouring scan lines would not be independent.

This is a solved problem with SFR and super-tiling (i.e. they had regular AA working with those methods).

I don?t think nVidia can do scan-lines and ATi?s version used tiles instead of lines.

 

[BenSkywalker]

If you did SLI at the scan line level(seems redundant to say that for an old schooler ) now you may be able to get another 10% over what a single GPU could offer you. You would have a staggering amont of data that would need to be processed twice per frame. The way shaders work it just isn't terribly viable anymore- a ray traced environment, howerver, would love this.

I think the purpose of this poll is pretty clear actually. For a while now the camps have divided up how they felt about a particular implementation based on what their favorite respective company was doing at that point(this doesn't inlcude everyone, Rollo and BFG are both exceptions who have supported their positions based on their position, not their company of choicie). Now we are entering an interesting juncture. nV's SLI solutions are still more robust then ATi's atm and they also eliminate the value debate of the current ATi solutions. However, they do have their drawbacks compared to single GPUs that aren't going to go away anytime soon.

So from an SLI enthusiast perspective you will have nV taking both the low end and mid range($/perf) with ATi coming out on top(when 4870x2 hits) on the high end(280s in SLI would be in the 'are you f'in nuts' category ) while the single GPU crowd would have nV taking low, ATi taking mid and nV taking the high end of the market.

This is how things are playing out right now, it is an interesting time. We have some people on the forums that may lean one way or the other but have a relatively open mind, but there are a whole lot of them that are going to pick a particular stance, then try and backpedal and dance to defend their favored company in the segment/viewpoint that they don't win.

 

[chizow]

Picked don't care for either, but I think ATI is making greater strides in the multi-GPU arena than NV. Makes sense as this has become their solution for the high-end. We'll see how much of the shared memory/reduced micro-stutter is smoke and mirrors, but they've already shown the potential for incredible scaling with the RV770 parts in games that aren't CPU bottlenecked like COD4 (100% scaling).

 

[SilentRunning]

Originally posted by: BenSkywalker
...

I think the purpose of this poll is pretty clear actually. For a while now the camps have divided up how they felt about a particular implementation based on what their favorite respective company was doing at that point(this doesn't inlcude everyone, Rollo and BFG are both exceptions who have supported their positions based on their position, not their company of choicie). Now we are entering an interesting juncture. nV's SLI solutions are still more robust then ATi's atm and they also eliminate the value debate of the current ATi solutions. However, they do have their drawbacks compared to single GPUs that aren't going to go away anytime soon.

...

 

[taltamir]

Originally posted by: Powernick50
Well heres my take on this whole multiGPU idea.

Firstly, being not quite as an enthusiast as I'd like to be (money wise) I don't like building my rig around a particular brand of graphic card (I wish SLI/CF could work on the same board) so thats my first complaint, we already do this when we choose AMD/intel anyways

Secondly, if CF/SLI scaled 100% that is to say adding another card would give me twice the performance as one then I'd love to have that option.

that is a very good point. I would have had a 2 slot PCIe mobo if it worked with both companies, if only they would cross license that... And I would have probably ended up getting a second card too at some point just becuase I couldn't resist the temptation. As it stands, I have always been buying a single slot board. No such "brand commitment" from me, sorry.

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: BenSkywalker
(280s in SLI would be in the 'are you f'in nuts' category )

Hey wait a minute...I'm not nuts......errr...am I??

LOL

It seemed to me like we're in a transitional time in computer gaming, that a lot of people who scoffed at the old SLi cards and/or 7950GX2 are now considering the R700 with great interest.

So, it's a period of attitudinal shift, I thought it would be interesting to see what people thought.

I've always liked multi obviously, but also see the "single gpu" only reasoning. I'm willing to make tradeoffs for higher performance, I wonder if some of the people now espousing multi card have even tried it. (which is not to say their opinions would change, as mine didn't, but some like n7 and BFG take issue)

In any case, the number of multi card supporters in the poll is probably higher than the percent of multicard users.

Re: Scan Line Interleave. IIRC that had issues of image quality "graininess" besides not offering the gains of AFR.

 

[rgallant]

I do not have the knowledge you members have , but what I do know is that after I received my second 8800GTS512 in Mar, I have been able to play Crysis with 45- 50 fps average @ 1680x1050 all High , how many single gpu's can do that today ?
-CoD 4 I had to turn down some Max settings with one card , I don't have to now,

-so I voted for multi gpu's

-should allow me to bypass the whole t200 -48xx series ,
-The issue seems to be with the drivers.
-Nvidia can build this up and coming cuda [ the holy grail of computing ] but had to pull it's last set of geforce & nforce drivers , what gives with that ?
-it seems they have plenty of time and money for toys but not their core products,
-I'm running modded drivers, {177.41] released only for their new cards. but anyone running these say there a best drivers they ever used ,only had to include card profiles in the inf.
-So if the multi gpu's form Nvidia are not as good as the single gpu's I wonder how much of that is hardware vs driver support

 

[BFG10K]

nRollo:

Re: Scan Line Interleave. IIRC that had issues of image quality "graininess" besides not offering the gains of AFR.

That issue wasn't caused by scan-lines but by the pass-through cable and the SLI cable, both of which were analog and caused data degradation as a result. A digital signal (e.g. a Voodoo 5 or today?s solutions from ATi/nVidia) wouldn?t have that issue

 

[TC91]

im curious, never used SLI / CF, but is there a way to force SFR in either control panel for specific games?

 

[BFG10K]

Originally posted by: TC91
im curious, never used SLI / CF, but is there a way to force SFR in either control panel for specific games?

nVidia: yes; ATi: no.

On ATi at best you can try renaming executables but that might not even work as it?s looking like SFR has been removed from the driver.

 

[RamIt]

Originally posted by: BFG10K
I don't care about either, I don't like multi-GPU.

Ditto. untill the cards can transparently work in paralel i will never use 2 gpu solutions.
*EDIT* Though the old multi gpu 3dfx cards back in the day worked flawlessly on the games i played.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: BFG10K
On ATi at best you can try renaming executables but that might not even work as it?s looking like SFR has been removed from the driver.

Sorry to hear that.

 

[LittleNemoNES]

I'm not trying to be mean but the first thing I thought was: nRollo must be getting lazy -- having us do his nVidia marketing research for him. It can't all be just cards and glory, buddy. You gotta work for your pimp