Vista - Now That's What I call Graphics Power

FASTRA GPU Supercomputer

Wow, four 9800GX2's linked in a 'super computer' set-up for tomography work. To heck with that, I want this for COD4. <smile>

Kotuku

Does COD4 actually run faster with 4 9800GX2s than it would with 1 or 2 of them?

Best and Warm Regards
Adrian Wainer

Who knows! It was just that the Doctor at the start of the video appeared to be playing an FPS game on their supercomputer!

I just made the post out of interest as to what could be done with these GPU's

Kotuku

You won't be able to run 4 9800GX2's in SLI. The drivers for SLI only support up to quad SLI, which is two 9800GX's, so unfortunatley the other 2 would be sitting idle when playing COD4

So why are they touting in the video how they have 4 cross linked? Maybe it is a bit of a spoof?

I am happy with my single 9800GX2 <smile>

that's a baby....lol

here's the daddy.------> 8x9800GX2 !!!!!!!!

Umm, I can't access your URL and get the following

>>
Kotuku, you do not have permission to access this page. This could be due to one of several reasons:

1. Your user account may not have sufficient privileges to access this page. Are you trying to edit someone else's post, access administrative features or some other privileged system?
2. If you are trying to post, the administrator may have disabled your account, or it may be awaiting activation.

>>

However, I can see from the URL name that it has eight of the suckers!

You should be able to toast some bread on the power supply!

Where do they say they're linked? I watched the video and he's on about how he has 8 GPUs, but didn't hear anything about them being linked unless I missed it.

Unless it's a CUDA thing that can use all 4 gfx cards. Afaik with forceware drivers, only quad SLI is supported. I didn't see an SLI bridge on them either

Here's a link for that ...

Translated version of http://www.expreview.com/news/hard/2008-07-29/1217297190d9600.html


Later Ted

Hi Kotuko, thanx for putting the posting about the supercomputer it is fascinating, they are saying it is giving the processing power of more than a 500 PC cluster, I only mentioned the aspect of how it would work when playing COD4 in that with Flight Simulator FSX I know plenty of people who have paid money for a second or more cards to run under SLI, and FSX does not support SLI so it does not run any faster..........

Best and Warm Regards
Adrian Wainer

Thanx for that Everlong, SLI for the amount of time it has been around has sure got problems in that even if a Game supports SLI and many do not, unless one has seen a test by a reputable organization of a particular card combination with a particular game, one never knows what the result will be of using a particular SLI card / Game combination.

Best and Warm Regards
Adrian Wainer

99. % sure it is not a spoof, a university would have access to code writers perhaps even people who could code in low level machine languages and no doubt they have written a special software that might even by pass the whole commercial gaming SLI thing entirely for their activity. In theory, using Graphics processors as they have done, might have huge advantages to gamers, in that it would make computers hugely more flexible if the Graphics processors could be used for non Graphics general purpose computing. The problem is that they are using the Graphics processor to translate data in to images, so they are still using a Graphics processor in a traditional way and if one tried to use this technique in gaming for the general purpose aspect of the game, one would run in to the problem of how to go about allocating individual aspects of the overall computational task to each of the many sub-processors within each of the eight 9800 multiprocessor units within the four 9800GX2s and the problem that many of the individually allocated tasks would be interdependent on one another, yet running on different sub-processors. E.G. most software today can not effectively use 2 cores in the likes of AMD Athlon 64 and Intell Conroe, so there is little chance of being able to use hundreds of sub-processors in a multi-graphicards rig for that purpose. Since what they appear to be doing, is rendering images in a non-real time environment and this is one of the relatively few tasks that lend itself easily to multiprocessor use, I can not think it will provide any advantage to gamers in respect of the general computing tasks associated with games, though major organizations using these cards as a replacement for PC clusters might well bring about a massive increase in the capability of these cards, not in SLI but as single cards for gaming.

Best and Warm Regards
Adrian Wainer