Nvidia building Hybrid SLI to work with Intel IGPs

[cbn]

http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/17577/1/

It will be interesting to see how much additive effect occurs with this technology.

 

[aka1nas]

http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/17577/1/

It will be interesting to see how much additive effect occurs with this technology.

Will this even do any sort of load balancing between the IGP and discrete GPU? I thought this was more about power management(i.e. switching to the IGP when not running fullscreen 3d apps).

 

[edplayer]

My guess is that the power management aspect will be marketed the most. I would expect no improvement from the addition of Intel's IGP + a high end Nvidia discrete card. The previous version was only capable of working with low end cards.

Even the power management benefits seem like they would not be as impressive as with HybridPower because current cards like the Radeon 58X0 series are fairly efficient at 2D. Don't know how the new Nvidia cards are but I assume they would be more efficient than the previous high end cards. I guess any savings is better than no savings though...

 

[blanketyblank]

Yes, but what are the chances you'll be using an IGP in addition to a high end card?
In terms of performance and overclocking it's been better so far to avoid IGP mobos or CPUs.

 

[lopri]

Something had to be done for the mighty Apple.

 

[Keysplayr]

As I understand it, Hybrid technology does not "Augment" the power of the integrated graphics, but takes over for it when GPU power requirements come into play. 3D gaming, 1080p video/H264 playback, CUDA/OpenCL/Direct Compute. And when at a regular 2D desktop (web browsing, email, whatever), the Nvidia GPU's simply turn off. Use no power. This was the intended functionality of the original Hybrid power tech that NV introduced when the 9800GTX was released along with the AMD 780 or 790a (I think) chipsets. At that time, Hybrid tech did work, but it had some roadblocks and did not work like it was intended to.
Good to see that they didn't give it up and were just working to improve it.
Should be excellent for Notebooks and those folks concerned with power consumption for desktops. Nice feature. I can see why Intel would be happy about such a cooperation.

 

[Nemesis 1]

I not sure Keys that 1080p video/H264 playback. Will be taken over by the nv card as intels is quit good as most are aware . I think it will depend on which is more power efficient. Than you have intel audio bitstreaming so I wouldn't bet on it occuring the way your laying it out.

 

[Keysplayr]

I not sure Keys that 1080p video/H264 playback. Will be taken over by the nv card as intels is quit good as most are aware . I think it will depend on which is more power efficient. Than you have intel audio bitstreaming so I wouldn't bet on it occuring the way your laying it out.

I would. I mean, it would be great if it was manually selectable also. You could choose whether to run videos on either the Intel IGP (only reason I could think to do this is on notebooks to conserve battery), or NV GPU. I mean, besides battery life or power consumption, why would you rather watch 1080p/H264 videos on an Intel IGP when it has been known to struggle (even the very best IGP Intel has to offer), over an NV GPU? By the way, can you show me a link showing Intels IGP being "quit good" in 1080p/H264 video playback? And show us how "most are aware" of this? Because I'm not. Please enlighten me, I'm always willing to learn a thing or two.

 

[Qbah]

Doesn't for example the ASUS UL80Vt use that? You have a G210 nVidia card and an Intel IGP and can switch between them on the fly - want to browse, watch moves? Work on the IGP (more battery). Want to game a little? G210 it is. There's a review here on AnandTech. It's just one click and a few seconds of waiting for the switch.

 

[Nemesis 1]

Check out the cpu forum. Their is a topic on it. Read Anands review . Ckarksdale IGP is very good at what were discussing here . Most anyone who reads is aware . If not its because they choose to remain in the dark for various reasons.

 

[Keysplayr]

Well, my son can read, but he doesn't know about it. He must be choosing to remain in the dark. Or, maybe it just hasn't been brought to his attention yet. Something akin to what I just asked you to do for me. I'll read the AT article. But I'm fairly certain the general consensus of this, and countless other forums is that Intel cannot hold a candle to even the weakest GPUs from ATI or Nvidia. In ALL areas.

 

[Nemesis 1]

Strawman red harring . We weren't talking about ALL areas and you know it. You hype for NV it should be part of your responsiability to be aware of what the competion is offerring so as not to spread fud.

 

[exar333]

Well, my son can read, but he doesn't know about it. He must be choosing to remain in the dark. Or, maybe it just hasn't been brought to his attention yet. Something akin to what I just asked you to do for me. I'll read the AT article. But I'm fairly certain the general consensus of this, and countless other forums is that Intel cannot hold a candle to even the weakest GPUs from ATI or Nvidia. In ALL areas.

Clarksdale might not be the fastest, but it is competitive in speed and one of the most full-featured IGPs around. Its pretty good.

 

[Keysplayr]

Pretty good? Not great? Not excellent?
I'll read about it when I get home tonight.

Nemesis, I do not have any "responsibility" like you're suggesting. You are not one to throw stones in the glass house bud. You hype Intel even when the threads aren't even about them. This thread is the exception of course.
So, get your accusations in order. Start with yourself before flinging them at others.

 

[Nemesis 1]

Ok. Its just your responsiability to hype for NV whether its true or not . Is that better. Why are you attacking? The subject is interesting . Yet you try to turn it into something other than what it is . Its a great way for NV to sell GPUs on intel platform . Nothing more nothing less . I like it . But your stumbling around like a Blindman in unchartered territory. Whats your point.

 

[Lonyo]

Basically the technology seems to work like SoftTH (Software Triplehead), only in an almost reverse fashion.
I'm almost surprised it's taken this long to get done, since the basic premise is so obvious that it's already been done before of a fashion, just not applied to this area.

SoftTH renders a scene on one card, and then splits it up and sends part of the frame to a second card for displaying on extra monitors above and beyond what the rendering card can output to. In this case you are just sending all the data to the "other" card and have it do the displaying while the power card just renders.
Sure, they have added in a copy buffer, but the basic premise of sending the frame buffer to the system RAM to be displayed by a different card to that rendering it has been done previously.

The obvious advantage of doing it with IGP/in mobile systems is the fact that the IGP is using the system RAM as a framebuffer, while in SoftTH, the frame buffer gets sent from card A to the system RAM to card B and then gets displayed, resulting in issues due to bandwidth use etc.

(Plus they obviously added dealing with powering up the card for specific applications so it doesn't have to work all the time).
The fact that it's an already proven rendering solution though means that hopefully AMD will also adopt a similar elegant solution which will mean that you can buy any discrete laptop and be able to use it with any IGP.
It's a bit of a shame NV has decided to only allow their solution to work with Intel and NV IGPs for now, and time for "platform" company AMD to up their mobile game.

 

[Acanthus]

LOL it'll add the 2fps youd be getting with the IGP to your 80FPS from your mid-range graphics card.

Weak.

 

[Sahakiel]

As I recall, hybrid SLI did have the ability to render off both cards. That was the original intent: sell systems with IGP, then the user can upgrade to a discrete later on and use both, either for gGPU assistance (like physx or photoshop) or straight SLI rendering. The problem was the improvement was so low it wasn't worth the effort to fix the buggy code. So they moved on and pushed the power management, which was easier to implement.

As for hybrid SLI with Intel IGP, I'm not surprised they're working on it. Intel can't be bothered to put a decent effort into making a midrange graphics card and it's making sure nVidia doesn't have time to put out a decent Intel chipset. If nVidia is going to make any progress selling discrete cards for Intel systems, they need a hook that ATI/AMD doesn't have. Hybrid SLI is one possibility: The power profile of an IGP with on-demand performance of a discrete card when you need it.

 

[sandorski]

As I recall, hybrid SLI did have the ability to render off both cards. That was the original intent: sell systems with IGP, then the user can upgrade to a discrete later on and use both, either for gGPU assistance (like physx or photoshop) or straight SLI rendering. The problem was the improvement was so low it wasn't worth the effort to fix the buggy code. So they moved on and pushed the power management, which was easier to implement.

As for hybrid SLI with Intel IGP, I'm not surprised they're working on it. Intel can't be bothered to put a decent effort into making a midrange graphics card and it's making sure nVidia doesn't have time to put out a decent Intel chipset. If nVidia is going to make any progress selling discrete cards for Intel systems, they need a hook that ATI/AMD doesn't have. Hybrid SLI is one possibility: The power profile of an IGP with on-demand performance of a discrete card when you need it.

AMD/ATI has Hybrid CrossfireX, which is essentially the same thing. Major difference being that not all ATI Vidcards can take advantage of it. That said, I'm not sure if CrossfireX has all the functionality being talked about here, it certainly doesn't have it for the Vidcards most of us would be interested in using. I'm sure they'll expand the functionality at some point, provided there's some benefit to it.

 

[Qbah]

AMD/ATI has Hybrid CrossfireX, which is essentially the same thing. Major difference being that not all ATI Vidcards can take advantage of it. That said, I'm not sure if CrossfireX has all the functionality being talked about here, it certainly doesn't have it for the Vidcards most of us would be interested in using. I'm sure they'll expand the functionality at some point, provided there's some benefit to it.

If by not all you mean only the HD3470 can use it, then yeah Useless feature on AMD card(s). And they've been talking about expanding since the feature hit like 2 years ago. The only incentive would be nVidia doing it properly (and by the sounds of it they will). I for one would love to be able to power down a main GPU completely and run stuff off the IGP (HD3200 etc) - you of course need a mobo with an AMD IGP, but those aren't that rare if you shop wisely. Would very much influence my next upgrade decision.

 

[Voo]

Finally switchable graphics done right, I really hope that Ati comes up with something similar.

Having to reboot or wait 10-15seconds for the switch always put me off, but getting the power of a descrete GPU with the efficiency of a IGP is great.

 

[sandorski]

If by not all you mean only the HD3470 can use it, then yeah Useless feature on AMD card(s). And they've been talking about expanding since the feature hit like 2 years ago. The only incentive would be nVidia doing it properly (and by the sounds of it they will). I for one would love to be able to power down a main GPU completely and run stuff off the IGP (HD3200 etc) - you of course need a mobo with an AMD IGP, but those aren't that rare if you shop wisely. Would very much influence my next upgrade decision.

On the AMD Processor side of things, it's kinda hard to find a Mobo without it.