Vista - Now That's What I call Graphics Power

A couple of things:



Notice the video - it is not utilizing the GPU as a GPU but as an alternate CPU, using the CUDA software from nVidia. The idea here is that it is not being used for 3D *visualization* but 3D *development* - the CPU rarely gets used a lot in gaming because most of the games are rendering things already made - this is making from scratch a 3D image, and that requires a lot more CPU power than CPU power for displaying.

Hence, whoever said this was a non SLI technique is correct.

Also, the other one posted about the 16 GPU using the MSI boards - same thing - another poster in our forums pointed out that there was no SLI bridge - and rightly so.

However, if you could harness the power of CUDA and make it use, say, 3 of those GPUs to do all the normal CPU work in a game, and use the 4th as a true GPU, then I have a feeling that the game would bench better overall than using a CPU / GPU combination.

John I think the big issue there would be with trying to do this, is that a game is a realtime anarchic environment and it whilst it might prove very difficult to allocate out subsets of the whole computational task to the 3 cards which are effectively 6 cards if they are X2s and then to the hundreds of sub-processors, I can't see any practical reason why it could not be done, the more crucial problem is that the computational tasks farmed out in this manner are likely to be interdependent and there I think lies the major-obstacle, in that if they are interdependent unless there was a sophiscated manager moving the whole process forward there would be the problem that many of the sub processors had completed their tasks but the results of their work could not be effectively used until the other of the sub-processors had done theirs. All that said, the economic advantages for commerce of being able to tackle a dynamic anarchic computational problem with the likes of an Intel Conroe quad core with four commercial high-end graphics cards attached which had potentially the power of a 100 plus computer cluster might be so attractive that it would force the development of such techniques. Just to think of one real World application, trying to intercept an incoming Missile is a hugely difficult task, if the sort of computing resource of putting the power of a 100 plus computers into a single computer were available, that might mean that interception tasks which may well currently have to be controlled from the ground station could be off-loaded to the interception missile, which would if I have understood such things correctly re this application mean that not only could the interceptor missile respond more quickly since it would be less dependent on the relatively slow wireless uplink from the ground station but an attacker would have less ability to saturate the defences with a multiple missile attack since individual missiles would have significant intelligence through their high capability on board computers.

Patriot Missile Air Defence System Army Technology

Best and Warm Regards
Adrian Wainer

Nvidia CUDA : practical uses
by Damien Triolet
Published on August 17, 2007

Nvidia CUDA : practical uses (page 1: Introduction, reminder) - BeHardware

Best and Warm Regards
Adrian Wainer

Why do you need more than one GPU (e.g. 4850) to run COD4?

There just aren't enough options in video settings to warrant more GPU power. For instance, running a single 4850 doesn't hesitate for a millisecond running that game...

You misread that Oskari - not COD4 - nVidia's CUDA software for using the power of the GPUs to bolster the CPU.

See the video and read about it at the links in the previous posts.

Honest mistake?

I know it was - and I realized how it could happen - that's why I mentioned it.

COD4 is made on the Q3 Engine, which runs at its best at 125FPS and upwards. Doesn't make a difference on single player, but it's best playing at that in multiplayer. The die hard cod4 players will all play at 125FPS+, and getting that constantly with max graphics does need a decent card or SLI with decent cards.

Everlong, he misread our CUDA references as COD4 and was trying to figure out how this setup (from the OP) would help COD4.

I know, I was just following on from what he said