Dell and NVidia Unveil Quad SLI PC [Archive]

bapenguin

01-06-2006, 04:30 AM

Looks like Dell (http://www.dell.com) is getting serious about gaming. Partnered with NVidia (http://www.nvidia.com) they have developed a PC that has not 1, not 2, not 3, but 4 video cards in it (http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=195) running in SLI mode.

What you are looking at is a picture of a slide of the new flagship video card. I was able to get some quick technical information on the new card and the technology behind it from NVIDIA just a couple hours ago. First, you'll notice there are two physical PCBs on this one, dual slot video card. Each PCB sports a single 7800 GTX 512 GPU and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. The cards are longer to support the added logic involved in these cards and to allow the cooling device to be bigger as well.
Wow. Each pair of cards have 1 gig of video memory. So you have 2 total gigabytes of video memory and 4 GPUs. That is...just....insane!

defiant

01-06-2006, 04:33 AM

yay! finally a machine that will run bf2 well

Vandenh

01-06-2006, 04:36 AM

Ouch... pretty impressive. Price is impressive as well....

This thing will probably outperform PS3 and 360.

Morratut

01-06-2006, 04:40 AM

What a waste of money just for the irrelevant extra amount of fps :D

Actually this might be the min requirement for Vista :eek:

Borys

01-06-2006, 04:47 AM

This thing will probably outperform PS3 and 360.

Probably?

This... thing is "probably" twice as fast.

32x antialiasing
2560x1600 Resolution

Let's see a console, any console do that ^^

Of course anybody who buys this is a retard. End of story. Next year (Autumn) we will get one card solution that comes close to 50% of this... thing's performance, for half the price.

I hope this is just an experiment and not a obtainable piece of equipment.

EDIT: Just what is the fucking point of this... thing? I can't see a single jaggy in 1600x1200 res with 4x AA. Why the hell do we need 32xAA?

Morratut

01-06-2006, 04:57 AM

Probably?

This... thing is "probably" twice as fast.

Let's see a console, any console do that ^^

Of course anybody who buys this is a retard. End of story. Next year (Autumn) we will get one card solution that comes close to 50% of this... thing's performance, for half the price.

I hope this is just an experiment and not a obtainable piece of equipment.

EDIT: Just what is the fucking point of this... thing? I can't see a single jaggy in 1600x1200 res with 4x AA. Why the hell do we need 32xAA?

I'm sure some PC die hard would answer that. In fact I bet Dell are getting queries as we speak :D

Vandenh

01-06-2006, 05:03 AM

Hehe.. at 2560x1600 Resolution you don't need no AA anyway ;)

Kinda funny that AA was invented to solve problems with low res displays and now companies are using it as a sales argument. AA is the next "bits" ;) or "flops".

Well I guess it is a glimpse of the future of PC gaming. Like Borys said, next year this might become standard (and affordable) for gaming PCs. Sweet. I am planning to upgrade when Vista hits anyway.

bapenguin

01-06-2006, 05:09 AM

Subbacultcha

01-06-2006, 05:38 AM

Impressive. However, the electricity bill from running this box might be a concern (1000 kW power supply? Probably more). In addition to raising the room temperature by 5 degrees, I imagine it sounds like a Concorde taking off. Or four.

TRiLoGY

01-06-2006, 05:49 AM

32xAA?? lol.. The screen would be a massive blur.. surely the higher the resolution the less AA you need lol

Knite

01-06-2006, 06:00 AM

<- senses bap is going to have a case of the SEBS (http://www.happyapplefarm.net/showguide.php?id=4)soon.

normyk

01-06-2006, 06:06 AM

4 video cards?! Damn. That's what I want to play Oblivion on.
:D

Somehow I think a second power supply would be necessary for something like that.

And if you can get it on a motherboard and not involve Dell, that would be cool. I don't hate Dell (I love my Dell laptop) but I do hate having to reload a system out of the box to clean off all of the pre-installed junk. Also, if I'm going to need a second power supply (and with all the drives I have in my system I almost need one already) I would want to get a case with room for it (Stacker).

Cool technology though. I want to see performance numbers.

Nite_Moogle

01-06-2006, 06:09 AM

Can you say diminishing returns?

Borys

01-06-2006, 06:23 AM

Can you say diminishing returns?

What?

Look, watch any movie, say The Godfather (VHS version even) on your standard 1980's TV.

Games *still* doesn't look like that because we don't have enough computing and rendering power.

bapenguin

01-06-2006, 06:33 AM

<- senses bap is going to have a case of the SEBS (http://www.happyapplefarm.net/showguide.php?id=4)soon.

God...I hope not.

Varsity

01-06-2006, 06:42 AM

Nite_Moogle

01-06-2006, 06:55 AM

There's a point in programming architecture where having too many forks is a bad thing. a 4-card SLI setup is going to start losing efficiency simply by virtue of having to decide which cards are tasked with which jobs. I'm no pro on how the SLI architecture works but I would bet that there is a lot of idle time with 4 cards. That's why I say diminishing returns.

drakkarim

01-06-2006, 06:56 AM

well, seeing how they just released their 30" lcd ~2500x1600, they'd need about that many current gen cards to get any game to really play well on that (without that scaling crap).

i'm hoping i can get one of the 30's for work here in the next year or so :)

but yeah, "next-gen" consoles just became old school again.

Javi

01-06-2006, 07:35 AM

but yeah, "next-gen" consoles just became old school again.

How can you say that? There are no performance numbers as of yet. Of course, as SLI proved it, 2 video cards doesn't exactly mean 2x the power. Same should apply to this rig.

Frogleg Special

01-06-2006, 07:47 AM

So, what's up with ATI? Is it going the way of Matrox or really becoming console makers' gigolo?

netcraazzy

01-06-2006, 08:10 AM

So, what's up with ATI? Is it going the way of Matrox or really becoming console makers' gigolo?

ATI has their own dual video card setup that has it's pros and cons when compaired to NVIDIA's, I'm pretty sure if enough people actually buy this thing they will start doing it too. As for myself I think SLI with 2 cards is already too much money for what you get so 4 cards is just silly.

51|RandoM

01-06-2006, 08:54 AM

Wow. Each pair of cards have 1 gig of video memory. So you have 2 total gigabytes of video memory and 4 GPUs. That is...just....insane!

SLI cards can't use each other's texture ram, which is what most of the onboard memory is for. Since these are the two GPU cards we've seen before, each GPU has 512meg----so this is still just a 512meg texture solution, no better than the other top end cards, in that example.

The funny thing is that dell is doing this. Anybody who'd waste a video setup like this on a crappy intel-based system will be laughed at by exactly the same audience he's trying to impress with his e-peen.

IT IS NOT 4 CARDS, PEOPLE, read the original story. It is two dual-gpu boards, the boards have two PCBs, physically take up 2 slots of space, but use only ONE slot each. The dual-gpu boards aren't new news, Dell trying to build a system with them is.

TheKeck

01-06-2006, 08:56 AM

Overkill??

ArkMan

01-06-2006, 08:57 AM

Why buy this thing you ask?

Because it makes your penis huge.

51|RandoM

01-06-2006, 08:58 AM

Overkill??

For everybody except somebody who has to drive at 3???x????, yeah.

Normal SLI is the same way. If you're not shooting for max eyecandy at at least 1600x1200, you're buying more than you need.

TheKeck

01-06-2006, 09:03 AM

For everybody except somebody who has to drive at 3???x????, yeah.

Normal SLI is the same way. If you're not shooting for max eyecandy at at least 1600x1200, you're buying more than you need.

What I really meant was: OVERKILL!!!! ;)

Heretic Machine

01-06-2006, 09:12 AM

Can I attatch this PC directly to my penis?

absolut taco

01-06-2006, 09:52 AM

This rig will be minimum spec for UT2007, if those screens released 2 weeks ago are for real.

Librum

01-06-2006, 10:19 AM

Hell, I've always thought that two video cards were overkill. I get all the performance I need out of my single x800 and it looks fantastic on my 1600x1200 LCD.

This would be a great system for, oh, designing the special effects for the next Peter Jackson movie, I suppose.

Steele Johnson

01-06-2006, 10:42 AM

Ouch... pretty impressive. Price is impressive as well....

This thing will probably outperform PS3 and 360.

Yeah, but you might not be able to get the same games. Remember, it's all about the software in the end. :D

Mr.Green

01-06-2006, 11:44 AM

Ouch... pretty impressive. Price is impressive as well....

This thing will probably outperform PS3 and 360.
At $3-4,000 I fucking hope it does. I guess it's cool if you have more money than brain cells.

DrHogie

01-06-2006, 12:39 PM

All those specs, and it will STILL experience slowdown running the Sims 2!

*rimshot*

/I'll be here all week
//try the veal

UnderHero5

01-06-2006, 01:14 PM

At $3-4,000 I fucking hope it does. I guess it's cool if you have more money than brain cells.

Actually... you read that wrong...
"Consider the standard Dell SLI system costs around $3-4,000 you can expect this custom designed PC to cost at least double that."

That's $6-8,000.

The Iron Weasel

01-06-2006, 05:58 PM

Can I attatch this PC directly to my penis?

I believe so, Dell has made a unique attachment that allows this giant computer to hand from your penis with little to no pain! Man if your not getting chicks now wait until they see that!

CptTripps

01-06-2006, 06:29 PM

Dell 2xSLI costing 3-4k is for maroons. I used the coupons that are almost always provided and got the XPS600 for around 2k shipped (was 38% off with premier account). That was including 2x7800GTX's, WD Raptor 74GB + 160 Seagate for TV recording, Audigy 2 Plat Pro, 2 TV Tuner, DVD dual layer, 650W PS, yada yada, I basically got the works with 0% interest until 2007.

On SLI, you know where it kicks ass for me, having it hooked to a HDTV @ 1360x768, the SLIAA @ 16 is a god send.

There are many different scenarios for these setups, I agree this one seems like more trouble than it's worth and I would rather wait until they have a single card solution that is similar in power, but SLI in general is pretty cool, people shouldn't bash it just cause they can't afford it :D

P.S. On Intel vs. AMD for SLI setups, if this thing were a 100% gamer I agree go AMD, but for my Media Center setup (Wife loves the simplicity) where I also do Video and Audio editing aside from playing games, this system is perfect. I think folks need to realize that something that seems stupid and unecessary for you, may be the ideal solution for another.

51|RandoM

01-06-2006, 11:07 PM

CptTripps, intel lost the media benchmarks to AMD too, not too long ago, fyi.

CptTripps

01-07-2006, 10:47 AM

I love AMD, but I was unable to get 0% interest for 2 year loan from another vendor and really have no problems with intel. I have a 2Ghz Pentium M with the 6800U mobile also and that thing screams for my mobile gaming requirements, intel makes good stuff.

Edit... looks like the 3800X2 for a lil over $300 makes for a nice gamer\media editor. The Pentium D830 is around the same price and is similar in most media content and tad slower in games. I would be happy with either.