External GPUs.. Here they come!

[lopri]

http://www.nvidia.co.uk/page/quadroplex.html
http://www.nvidia.co.uk/page/quadroplex_comparison_chart.html

Well, not any more I guess. Although not many people will be able to afford one.

Edit: Of course this is not meant for us, yeah I'm aware of it.

 

[RallyMaster]

OH WTF!? Damn those engineers are smoking something awful! But whatever they're smoking, I wanna try!

 

[lopri]

Well but I think eventually this will be the first and easiest way to realtime CGI. (dunno.. maybe in 10 years?)

 

[BassBomb]

this is for workstations lol

 

[Powermoloch]

????????? that's okay... I think. Great for workstations with deep pockets lol

 

[schneiderguy]

"64X SLI FSAA"

sweet :Q

 

[josh6079]

I want different video cards, not video cases. That's just sad. 360 on reiods.

 

[Pugnate]

It also costs more than an arm and a leg.

 

[Dainas]

G80, where art thee? Its been over a year and were still stuck with the same technology. Ohwell, I guess this could work for the fringe its aimed for.

 

[LOUISSSSS]

another nvidia marketing scheme???
guess they're real good at marketing

 

[lopri]

Well it's not really a marketing but a real thing. It's Quadro (not GeForce) hence targetinng a very different market (think about automobile companys' presentations, or air-craft companys' real-time simulation, etc.) But who knows if this will eventually a desktop option.

 

[Ulfhednar]

You guys do realise this would be quite crap for anything other than professional CAD and animation, right?

 

[Genx87]

Originally posted by: lopri
Well it's not really a marketing but a real thing. It's Quadro (not GeForce) hence targetinng a very different market (think about automobile companys' presentations, or air-craft companys' real-time simulation, etc.) But who knows if this will eventually a desktop option.

I could see it happeneing eventually. One of the biggest problems with scaling GPUs up is power consumption and heat. Putting 8 GPUs into a case with a quad core CPU will == lots of power reqs + heat.

Doesnt PCIE has an external standard? in the future it is possible we end up buying rendering cases for the exteme highend.

 

[Lord Banshee]

Originally posted by: Ulfhednar
You guys do realise this would be quite crap for anything other than professional CAD and animation, right?

Sir,
You have no IDEA what your are talking about!!!

I have used many gamer cards and Professional Cards (FireGL and Quadros) and they are about 1-5% from each other in games. Of coarse this is with the same GPU. Cost wise, getting a 7900GT will blow away anything quadro fro that price in games... but that isn't what you said.

You should really do your research before posting such non-sense.

And if this setup is able to render CAD programs (Mostly OpenGL and some DirectX) There is no reason it could not render games... But who has this kind of money for games

 

[Ulfhednar]

Actually, I have used both FireGL and Quadro in work environments, and I found gaming on them to be rather turd when I had an afternoon free, so... Uh... Yes I do know what I am talking about. :roll:

These things are optimised for CAD and animation, not gaming. They perform quite turd when thrown out of their element like that.

So, you should really shush.

Thank you.

 

[Ika]

Originally posted by: Ulfhednar
Actually, I have used both FireGL and Quadro in work environments, and I found gaming on them to be rather turd when I had an afternoon free, so... Uh... Yes I do know what I am talking about. :roll:

These things are optimised for CAD and animation, not gaming. They perform quite turd when thrown out of their element like that.

So, you should really shush.

Thank you.

I've heard that in the day of 6800s, the Quadros were simply slightly modified versions of the retail cards. Never verified that, though.

 

[Ulfhednar]

Originally posted by: Aflac
I've heard that in the day of 6800s, the Quadros were simply slightly modified versions of the retail cards. Never verified that, though.

Nah they're not, they're very optimised for professional work. When I tried playing FEAR on a Quadro FX3400 I got half the FPS I did at home on a 6800GT, it dropped all the way down to like 23fps, it was terrible.

 

[Ika]

Originally posted by: Ulfhednar

Originally posted by: Aflac
I've heard that in the day of 6800s, the Quadros were simply slightly modified versions of the retail cards. Never verified that, though.

Nah they're not, they're very optimised for professional work.

Any reason why you can enable professional capabilities through RivaTuner, then? I'm assuming it's a software thing and not hardware. Doesn't make too much sense to me...

 

[Ulfhednar]

Originally posted by: Aflac

Originally posted by: Ulfhednar

Originally posted by: Aflac
I've heard that in the day of 6800s, the Quadros were simply slightly modified versions of the retail cards. Never verified that, though.

Nah they're not, they're very optimised for professional work.

Any reason why you can enable professional capabilities through RivaTuner, then? I'm assuming it's a software thing and not hardware. Doesn't make too much sense to me...

Can't say, never tried it. If you're talking about enabling Quadro functions on Geforce cards, I can understand they'd be capable of it, but the hardware itself would limit how well it could do it.

PS. Edited my previous post with an example of the difference.

 

[Ulfhednar]

Nice article from Leadtek about how hacking a Geforce to perform like a Quadro is dangerous, and the main differences between Quadro FX and Geforce here.

http://www.leadtek.com.tw/eng/support/faq.asp?faqlineid=44

 

[lopri]

Folks.. the point is not whether a Quadro can play games as well as GeForce. Besides, the logic behind (SLI) is same so if there were a market, they could certainly build something like that with GeForce cards. My meat is mostly with the "External" setup via PCI-E interconnect card, and Octa-SLI is indeed a reality.

 

[lopri]

Originally posted by: Genx87

Originally posted by: lopri
Well it's not really a marketing but a real thing. It's Quadro (not GeForce) hence targetinng a very different market (think about automobile companys' presentations, or air-craft companys' real-time simulation, etc.) But who knows if this will eventually a desktop option.

I could see it happeneing eventually. One of the biggest problems with scaling GPUs up is power consumption and heat. Putting 8 GPUs into a case with a quad core CPU will == lots of power reqs + heat.

Doesnt PCIE has an external standard? in the future it is possible we end up buying rendering cases for the exteme highend.

Yah of course if NV sees a market they will definitely not lose a single chance. It's just not the time and we don't know what their next and following GPUs are like. While it's mighty tempting to even think about playing Pixar-quality games in real-time, the cost would be just too insane for consumer market.

 

[Ulfhednar]

Article from Anandtech here benching Quadros vs. consumer level cards. Naturally they Quadro doesn't perform anywhere near as well, gets stomped by an X800 XT.

http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2307&p=1

But I guess I don't know what I am talking about and need to do more research. :roll:

 

[Ulfhednar]

Originally posted by: lopri
Folks.. the point is not whether a Quadro can play games as well as GeForce.

I just felt like pointing out that they don't, but some people took offense to this because I crushed their dreams or something I don't know. Sorry for derailing.

 

[otispunkmeyer]

having to do complex FEA/CAD on a machine with intel crap-attack graphics and 512mb system ram is painful, therefore i see these puppies being usefull