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4890s, OCable near or to a GHz, near $200 after rebate. "I'll be in my bunk, wrestling a rising... um... urge to buy" (/NC)()

i can see it now. Quad quads!

sturner wrote:

i can see it now. Quad quads!

I'm pretty sure 8 and 16 core units are on the roadmaps. How far out I don't know/remember, but that's just one socket.

Mr. T, I think you need this, esp. as a Green Team kinda guy...

Asus shows off mammoth dual GTX 285 graphics card
4GB of RAM and Quad SLI compatible

PROVING THAT it has never been a company to stick to toeing the tedious line of conformity with reference designs, Asus has just shown us a new monster graphics card that it calls the Mars. It features two GeForce GTX 285 GPUs in SLI configuration, and it also looks like it could double-up as a blunt weapon in Cluedo.

In terms of design, it’s not dissimilar to a GeForce GTX 295. There are two PCBs sandwiched together inside one package, although each of these features 16 memory chips making for a total of 4GB of 1.2GHz (2.4GHz effective) GDDR3 memory. In short, this isn’t a card for anyone running a 32-bit operating system. Asus has also designed its own dual-slot cooler for the card, although it works in a similar way to the reference Nvidia GTX 295 cooler, with a single fan cooling both PCBs.

Interestingly, Asus has decided to spurn Nvidia’s own nForce 200 bridge chip to enable the two PCBs to talk to each other in SLI mode, and has instead used an anonymous third-party chip. One of the interesting innovations here is that, despite the new design, the card will still work with standard Nvidia drivers. The card will be recognised as a GeForce GTX 295, but will still be able to access the features of the GTX 285 GPUs.

Check the pix. Be sure and buy 2!

Mr. T wrote:

TWO??   I have THREE slots!!!!!

Ignoring the 1,000w PSU issue, I don't think 6-way SLI is supported...

Despite these differences, though, the compatibility with standard Nvidia drivers means that the card can be set up in Quad SLI configuration with a second Mars card. In fact, to demonstrate the point, Asus sent us this photo of two cards running in Quad SLI mode on a pretty extreme looking test rig in their lab.

And you'd need a boatload of system RAM with 12 GBs of VRAM to address.

Last edited by Bat (2009-05-30 12:25 am)

dv wrote:

You need MOAR CPU CORES.

(Man, the minute one of those hits the $200 mark... )

Will this do in the meantime? You might be able to afford one within your lifetime.

If you’ve got a multi-socket system (e.g. dual processor Xeon workstation, or Skulltrail successor) or if you’ve got a lot of high bandwidth PCIe devices (e.g. multi-GPU or lots of Larrabees) then QPI makes a whole lot of sense. However, if you’ve got a single socket system and aren’t running a lot of high bandwidth PCIe devices then QPI is overkill.

Intel’s DMI is the link used between the X58 chipset and the ICH10 I/O controller, it’s a much more conservative bus capable of delivering 2 - 4GB/s of bandwidth. That’s enough bandwidth for things like SATA and USB but a single PCIe x16 slot can deliver 16GB/s of bandwidth, far too much for Intel’s DMI.

Instead of crippling graphics on its mainstream platform, Intel did the next best thing and integrated 16 PCIe 2.0 lanes onto the die of its mainstream Nehalem part.
..

The price of Intel’s P55 PCH is also much lower than the X58 chipset, in fact P55 is expected to be price competitive with P45 + ICH10. In other words, we should eventually see P55 boards priced at $100 or less.

Getting rid of QPI and one of the three DDR3 channels knocked down the pin-count of LGA-1366, but adding in 16 PCIe 2.0 lanes brought it back up to 1156 which you can count in the socket below:
..

Why, with a good vidcard, you might have an Orion-beater yet this year.

Bat wrote:

Also, those are very thick cards. How far apart are yours spread?

Slots, that is.

40mm, I think.  But, I played it safe and got a 120mm flexible bridge (for the 8800GT, not the Mars ).