so many lols in this line of thinking
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GTX560 is a pretty silk GPU, it's cool and power efficient, so why not having 3 (or even 4 :D, LOL) on a single PCB?.
Maybe we are not there yet, but with evolving shrink-proses, where we get cooler and smaller chips, more GPU on a single PCB is a natural course. This is the way i see it anyways, others can stick to the double-GPU idea forever, LOL.
If chips get cooler and smaller then we can always make bigger and hotter ones that have higher performance without any need in SLI and CFX.
That way the PCB is a lot less complicated (=cheaper) and we do not have to duplicate VRAM and deal with scaling issues.
Whit this logic, you are dismissing the idea of double-GPU too.
Big and powerful single-GPUs is great, and the best option for most gamers, not everybody tho. But Double/multi-GPU has many advantages for HPC/GPGPU setup, where you can have many more, due to limitation of the number of PCIe-lanes.
I personalty believe we are going to see 3 (or even 4 :D) multi-GPU soon, maybe not exactly in this round, but in near future.
No, I am not.
There is a reasonable limit of GPU sizes. Staying within that limit gives decent yields, thus allowing to keep price reasonable.
If the chip is too big and yields are bad, then making such chip is becoming too expensive, and it makes more sense to make a card with 2 smaller and cheaper GPUs with decent yields. You can't, however, put 3 or 4 on one card due to thermal and size restrictions.
There are clear limitations of dual GPU boards that I mentioned above. Scaling issues (performance), size ($$$ and compatibility), PCB complexity ($$$), mirroring VRAM ($$$). This is a solution that is only worth it under certain conditions.
If you need more performance, you can always buy 2-3-4 cards. Here's your idea of multi-GPU in use.
In this case 595 is more of an image product for Nvidia to fight for the single card performance crown...
I've ale ready said in first post: "Maybe we are not there yet, but with evolving shrink-proses, where we get cooler and smaller chips, more GPU on a single PCB is a natural course". So yes, we need cooler and more power efficient GPUs for a multi-GPU card.
I don't know much about the complexity of PCB, but somebody will find a way around it, for sure. You seams to be focusing on gamers only. While I've been clear that I'm talking about the advantages for HPC/GPGPU-setup, where you can't buy 2-3-4 more cards, because you have already filled all PCI-e slots. For this kind of usage, you won't need to worry XFX or SLI- scaling either.
The opposite has happened with nVidia :(
I am a fairly happy GTX 295 Single PCB user (yes I know it is getting long in it's teeth, but it plays well for what I need @ 1920*1200 with amounts of eye candy).
Sadly Crysis is in a state of crises in any Forceware driver released after 190. The game is a flickery and artifacted mess. There is a 5 page discussion on the issue here on the nVidia forums
I am currently playing Crysis (for nostalgia's sake) and to actually play it I had to roll back to Forceware 186.18 otherwise the game would be flickering all of the time and hitching/stuttering.
Now it is silky smooth @ 1920*1200 Very High.
My only fear is that the GTX 595 (a likely replacement for the 295) may suffer the same fate where a year and a bit onwards drivers will start to significantly cripple the card in order to try and force the users hand to upgrade.
Lets all remember that the GTX 295 was fairly close in performance to the 480 and those like me saw little need if any to sidegrade (perhaps even almost downgrade due to the thermal issues of the 480).
If nVidia CAN pull of a gem of a card on a Single PCB AND back it up with decent drivers I would perhaps retire the 295 for it as I do have 2 DX11 titles which I cannot use any DX11 effects on.
Another GTX 295 user has uploaded a video of just how poor recent nVidia drivers are with Crysis
John
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=266112
may be of some help?
lol, it seems multi gpu is getting worse? wtf?
Reminds me of the good old days....
http://www.3dchip.de/Grafikkartenmod...tummercury.jpg
I had a pair of Monster Voodoo II's in SLI back then.
From my own experience CrossFire is getting better and I'm sure the same applies to SLI. You just need to read some of the reviews instead of shooting right from the hip.
The HD 6970 was not getting the best reviews mainly based on over-hyped exceptions, but the HD 6970 in CrossFire has all great reviews, same goes for the HD 68** cards.
If multi GPU is so bad how come the about 14 months old HD 5970 is still the fastest card?
Thanks STEvil
I tried fiddling with pre-rendered frames, sadly it made no difference :confused:
I've done some extensive testing since then, my results are here
It appears that the last Forceware driver which worked correctly on the GTX 295 Single PCB in Crysis was 191.07WHQL
The first one which had the serious game breaking bug was 195.62WHQL, not meaning to sound cynical or jaded, but isn't that odd how that was the last but one WHQL driver before the GTX 480 was released?!
As in Fermi is ready, lets break the 295?!
I noticed a few other odd things too.
Stalker CoP averages @ 77FPS in the 191.07 driver it averages at around 65FPS in new drivers.
3dmark Vantage and 06 scores remain roughly the same, but gaming scores have suffered somewhat.
HOWEVER GTA IV is much better Forceware 258+ (due to them fixing the SLi after I helped nVidia troubleshoot the bug).
I have provided a lot of data re: Crysis and they are looking into it, perhaps SLi will be fixed in time for the 595?
Seems odd how things have gone similarly wrong in the ATi camp too, I wonder if they are trying to force 4870X2 owners to upgrade too?
John
GeForce GTX 590 and GTX 550 Ti Surfaced in Beta Drivers
Quote:
NVIDIA_DEV.1244.01 = "NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti"
NVIDIA_DEV.1083.01 = "NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590"
We spotted two very interesting entries in the latest 266.7x beta drivers which imply the launch of the GeForce GTX 590 and GeForce GTX 550 Ti cards are nearing. GeForce GTX 590 is a dual GF110 GPU solution with 3GB GDDR5 memory while GTX 550 Ti is based on GF116-400, comes with 1GB GDDR5 memory. Sporting a dual slot solution, the GTX 550 Ti reference design looks very much like its GTX 560 Ti counterpart with Dual DL DVI-I and a mHDMI port
lol @ chart, max consumption : a lot
i am thinking of picking up a EVGA 580 and step up to this ...
I wonder why they are using the prefix "GTX" on GF116...
Are they going to surprises with a much improved GF116?
Was there something badly wrong about GF106 that we dont know of? It sucked pretty bad...