Insanity...3 GPU's on one card!

[moto211]

Check this out:

http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/25/asus-eah3850-trinity-crams-three-radeon-gpus-onto-one-card/

[deathman20]

Thats sweet.

ONly down side would be just seeing the huge price tag on it I'd bet.

[Sony190]

If it had flash memory it would be better. I still like it

[EmAn]

umm..... who wants to buy me two of these?

Seriously... they are taking the same route as cpu's... if you cant make them faster then put more on!

it is getting rediculous!!!

[Knacko]

If it had flash memory it would be better. I still like it

Why would a company ever use flash memory on a graphics card? It's slow, not to mention a limited life cycle.

[deathman20]

If it had flash memory it would be better. I still like it

Huh?

[webdevour]

Thats sweet.

ONly down side would be just seeing the huge price tag on it I'd bet.
I have a feeling the price tag wont be too much more than the Gx2's ridiculous debut tag (if it's even that much), and this card has one more core.

[downer]

When are we going to see dual core gpu's?

[sajberTim]

Ha ha, this is getting wild... but sweet :)

[Firestrider]

Yeah, I saw this card this morning :)

Here's more pics: http://www.nordichardware.com/news,7543.html

I'm guessing the price tag will be around $650-700 because it comes with a water cooler.

What's amazing is ASUS put it on one PCB.

[cabose1227]

That card looks ugly but its a cool concept.

[deathman20]

When are we going to see dual core gpu's?

In the current system actually GPU's at least ATI's are multi cored.

For what your saying, an acutal dual core GPU, would be far too costly to the manufacture. The dies are so big that if one core crapped out it would cost an arm and a leg per chip that did this.

[Hardin]

Yeah gpus are already parallel and have "blocks" of shaders. In a way you could say they are already multi core although this wouldn't be entirely correct.

[Nebulous]

Dam that thing looks evil :cool:

[webdevour]

Yeah, I saw this card this morning :)

Here's more pics: http://www.nordichardware.com/news,7543.html

I'm guessing the price tag will be around $650-700 because it comes with a water cooler.

What's amazing is ASUS put it on one PCB.
I'd buy one at that price

[CGR]

That thing must get hot, even with watercooling...

[Goonda]

Sadly, driver and software support is lagging far far behind.

[Sam__]

That beast is insane! ... me wants one :D

[chrome-187]

That card looks ugly but its a cool concept.

I think it looks bad ass....comes with watercooling unit that fits into the 5.25 bays...freakin awesome imo http://www.nordichardware.com/news,7543.html

[Shiggity]

Sadly, driver and software support is lagging far far behind.

Agreed, there should be some sort of 3rd party organization that doesn't even let you release a GPU unless the drivers are perfect for it's launch.

[cabose1227]

Agreed, there should be some sort of 3rd party organization that doesn't even let you release a GPU unless the drivers are perfect for it's launch.

Then we would not have any video cards.

[Kuroimaho]

Hopefully they can launch it before ATI's next gen.

[WonderingSoul]

I want to see what kind of numbers it pulls. That WCing looks REALLY inneficient too.

[BossBorot]

why stop at three such a strange number show me four on one board or forget about it :)

[meionm]

So, how does it perform?

[cabose1227]

Its not actualy 3 one one board theres 2 on one little tab and one on the other.

[Firestrider]

So, how does it perform?

My guess is a little behind (2-5 FPS) a 3870x2 + 3870 in CF in benchmarks.

[chrome-187]

stop hatin...dont be mad at ATi cuz they gonna do somethin nvidia can't..hell nvidia can't even get 2 gpus on one board..its badass thats all there is to it

[cabose1227]

chrome if your talking to me I don't hate it, I would like to have it actualy.

[JamesXP]

Is ATI the new voodoo?

[Firestrider]

Does it have 768MB or 1.5GB of VRAM?

[chrome-187]

chrome if your talking to me I don't hate it, I would like to have it actualy.

nah bro...im not talkin bout you...im just talkin bout the ppl hatin in general...not singling anyone out =) :beer:

[OC101]

Didn't Voodoo 5 6000 have 4 GPUs on one card back in 2000? It was never launched because 3dfx died. Correct me if I was wrong.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/5e/Voodoo_5_6000.jpg

[vt420]

and external power... heh

Jeff

[Boosted98gsx]

I actually bought one of the Voodoo 5 5500's back in the day. Then in the next month, Nvidia bought them out, and stopped driver support. I have not purchased an Nvidia product since.

[JamesXP]

If you still have the 4 GPU'd beast, they fetch high dollar, working or not, just hit up eBay.

[David]

Didn't Voodoo 5 6000 have 4 GPUs on one card back in 2000? It was never launched because 3dfx died. Correct me if I was wrong.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/5e/Voodoo_5_6000.jpg

Beat me to it - was going to post about the Voodoo 5 with its 4 GPUs. Probably not even as fast as a budget card nowadays though.. heh.

[Sam__]

Didn't Voodoo 5 6000 have 4 GPUs on one card back in 2000? It was never launched because 3dfx died. Correct me if I was wrong.

That think looks amazin. Doesnt it get a tad warm?lol. and loving the external PSU.

[Pinky]

What Voodoo was back in the day is nothing like the ATi 3 gpu cards of today. They were about the ONLY option for a while if you were serious about framerates. I still remember the voodoo3 I owned and loved for a while. Serious card at the time, played UT like it was born to do it. Still can't say that I feel as excited about today's graphic enhancements as the first time I loaded UT with a real 3d card. I think I played for hours straight and was late to work the next day.

[/old fart]

[Firestrider]

Trinity benched: http://www.nordichardware.com/news,7559.html

[chrome-187]

NICE!!

[masakabassist]

I want one! ATI are really taking it to nVidia now, maybe we'll see some serious price drops from both vendors :)

[WonderingSoul]

I want to know the temps on that thing. I really doubt that cooling is effecient.

[Firestrider]

Can CF support 6 GPUs?

[G3F0RC3<>R4D30N]

:drool: 24K in 3DMark06, WOW! I want one...

[Firestrider]

I wonder if this is able to be LN2 cooled

[Pinky]

The '06 score was on a highly overclocked machine. I'd like to see some results with something more reasonable for the everyday gamer.

[netmask]

Who said that's ugly? That's one of the sexiest things ever seen! Great work with links ppl.

[GreenJelly]

Get ready guys... ATI and NVIDIA are going down the multi GPU on one card route... Why?

Focus your money on a medium priced GPU... then mass produce them... and put multiples on one card!

How about the abundantly clear heat issue that one GPU is producing... it has became a major problem as you can see in articles... split that heat on two different chips and you dont have the same issues.

Hoe about the ability to maybe cut down on power requirements per processor (and cut down on heat), allowing you not to buy that 1000W PSU that wont fit in 80% of the Cases out their.

Expect even more to start popping up... 4 on one card... 8... 16....

Hopefully they wont be individually chips, but chips built to work together, with fast pipelines to each other, memory management etc... Maybe you will see a single chip on your card that is 4 chips but that is the size of half a dollar bill.

ATI was right... producing high price tag items, that few buy, with little profits prevented them from focussing on their mainstream processors. By doing what they did, they forced Nvidia's prices down, causing a gap in graphics cards from 260-400 range. I think Nvidia is leaking money trying to keep up with ATI's low prices, because guess what, the 9800 is out and its only available in the x2 version!

[Sndm3mny]

Who said that's ugly? That's one of the sexiest things ever seen! Great work with links ppl.

the nVidia fan boy said its ugly...but yeah that looks good and it should be benched on a more reasonable cpu not a 1500$ one.... these people man the 3870x2 will prob get the same score with that cpu that thing was 4.6 or something around that area

nice card though i wouldn't mind having it =)

[cabose1227]

I am not an nvidia fan boy, I would buy ati if ati had a card for the same price as the 8800gts 512 thats better. Its my oppinion that the card looks ugly, that does not make me a fan boy. The only reason you call me a fan boy is because you have an ati card and don't like it when people say they dislike ati.

[Firestrider]

Too bad two of these can't be crossfired

[>HyperlogiK<]

Beat me to it - was going to post about the Voodoo 5 with its 4 GPUs. Probably not even as fast as a budget card nowadays though.. heh.

Some of the quantum pro cards based on the VSA100 had 16 or 32 GPUs.

[chrome-187]

who cares..most those old cards would have trouble playing Mario...

[DUSNOETOS]

I want one.......If only for the circus freak show factor...

the real question I have is: how much power does that monster need???
It also makes me think of high end workstation cards...

It is nice to see people thinking out side the box, even if this thing never makes it to market...

[ratbuddy]

stop hatin...dont be mad at ATi cuz they gonna do somethin nvidia can't..hell nvidia can't even get 2 gpus on one board..its badass thats all there is to it

Uhm, what? ATI's dual GPU solution can't compare to the GX2. Add on an extra 3870 for good measure/trifire and it still doesn't beat a GX2. Even a pair of 3870X2 in crossfire has a hard time keeping up.

I don't come to the ATI board trolling in favor of Nvidia, but when I see nonsense like that, I just can't keep quiet.

So 'stop hatin' don't be mad at Nvidia 'cuz' they gonna do somethin ATI can't - make a decent core ;)

[cabose1227]

Uhm, what? ATI's dual GPU solution can't compare to the GX2. Add on an extra 3870 for good measure/trifire and it still doesn't beat a GX2. Even a pair of 3870X2 in crossfire has a hard time keeping up.

I don't come to the ATI board trolling in favor of Nvidia, but when I see nonsense like that, I just can't keep quiet.

So 'stop hatin' don't be mad at Nvidia 'cuz' they gonna do somethin ATI can't - make a decent core ;)

Pure poetry.

[Mr.Guvernment]

as long as it works together and not like Xfire as GreenJelly said, as in ANYthing will use all the cores, i would get one.

[funnyperson1]

Beat me to it - was going to post about the Voodoo 5 with its 4 GPUs. Probably not even as fast as a budget card nowadays though.. heh.

I remember someone benched it and it was about as fast as a Geforce 3 in Quake III.

[monstert]

In the current system actually GPU's at least ATI's are multi cored.

For what your saying, an acutal dual core GPU, would be far too costly to the manufacture. The dies are so big that if one core crapped out it would cost an arm and a leg per chip that did this.

So if an actual dual core GPU was made + the bigger die, would we see mental GPU clock speeds? Like almost close to CPU speeds? Would they run cooler as well with the larger surface?

[Kuroimaho]

The larger surface would also come with more working parts so the surface are wouldn't compensate the heat and clockspeeds would most likely suffer to avoid hotspots and weaker spots.
As was mentioned before faulty chips would be costly. I wouldn't be surprised if soon multidie cards appear similar to intels C2Q, more smaller dice in one package make up the chip on the card.
Probably would result in better yields and smaller cards than the 3870X2.

[monstert]

The larger surface would also come with more working parts so the surface are wouldn't compensate the heat and clockspeeds would most likely suffer to avoid hotspots and weaker spots.
As was mentioned before faulty chips would be costly. I wouldn't be surprised if soon multidie cards appear similar to intels C2Q, more smaller dice in one package make up the chip on the card.
Probably would result in better yields and smaller cards than the 3870X2.

And maybe then, breaking the 1ghz GPU clock would be the norm:eek: I always wonder what goes on deep inside the R&D labs. They seem to blame the CPU for the bottleneck on these late cards. Maybe it's the GPU clock thats far to slow. If proper C2D/Q style GPU chips are far too expensive to manufacture then they should at least make a couple for R&D then tease us with the benches they get! I could imagine 1.8Ghz + GPU clocks with GDDR4/5 being pretty sick:attn:

[jstutman]

Is ATI the new voodoo?

You sir should be ashamed of yourself. ATI will never be what 3dfx was or could have been

[funnyperson1]

And maybe then, breaking the 1ghz GPU clock would be the norm:eek: I always wonder what goes on deep inside the R&D labs. They seem to blame the CPU for the bottleneck on these late cards. Maybe it's the GPU clock thats far to slow. If proper C2D/Q style GPU chips are far too expensive to manufacture then they should at least make a couple for R&D then tease us with the benches they get! I could imagine 1.8Ghz + GPU clocks with GDDR4/5 being pretty sick:attn:

Who blames the CPU for bottlenecking newer GPUS? From the benchmarks I've seen playing at a nice resolution in newer games the GPU is always holding back (assuming you're running a 3ghz+ chip).

Theres no magic wand for GPU performance, the people in thos R&D labs know more than any of us. Theres 2-ways to increase performance, increase parallelism, and increase clock speed. The more complex a chip is the harder is it to get it to clock high. However, parallelism requires more complexity either in the form of more cores, or more complex cores. To have high clocked GPUs of the type you mention ati/nvidia would have to either simplify their GPU cores or wait for better manufacturing technology. They can't just magically make a 2Ghz GPU core.

[monstert]

Theres no magic wand for GPU performance .....They can't just magically make a 2Ghz GPU core.

I never mentioned anything about magic wands, magic or an instant time frame now did I. Did you read that post upside down? lol 2Ghz as well? Pushing it arent we, i only metioned 1.8Ghz for the imaginative future :drool: j/k:p

..the people in thos R&D labs know more than any of us....

^^Obviously. But what's your point? I know my end point was purely stating a futuristic, yet comical idea, hence the futuristic clock speeds and tech teasing idea haha

The other half of the reply was great though, hands down. I learned something from that. Cheers:beer: When you mentioned increase in parallelism, would that increase the amount of instances swallowed up by synthesis tools?

[White_Pawn]

kinda ridiculous. i wonder what you would need to power 4dimm slots x 3GPUS per PCB = 12 3850???

[funnyperson1]

I never mentioned anything about magic wands, magic or an instant time frame now did I. Did you read that post upside down? lol 2Ghz as well? Pushing it arent we, i only metioned 1.8Ghz for the imaginative future :drool: j/k:p



^^Obviously. But what's your point? I know my end point was purely stating a futuristic, yet comical idea, hence the futuristic clock speeds and tech teasing idea haha

The other half of the reply was great though, hands down. I learned something from that. Cheers:beer: When you mentioned increase in parallelism, would that increase the amount of instances swallowed up by synthesis tools?

I'm sorry I interpreted your posts as questioning why don't GPU makers make highly clocked chips as if they simply didn't want to. I apologize for coming across harsh.

I'm not sure what you mean about having instances swallowed up by Synthesis tools. Most tools will optimize out redundant parts, but they are fairly smart when it comes to identifying parts that are truly unnecessary compared to ones that are there to increase parallelism. This is especially true when a skilled engineer is at the helm.

When you talk about increasing parallelism that doesn't involve adding more cores, we are talking about instruction level parallellism (ILP). Strategies used to add ILP include pipelining, out of order execution, and enhanced instruction sets like SSE and MMX.

[monstert]

I'm sorry I interpreted your posts as questioning why don't GPU makers make highly clocked chips as if they simply didn't want to. I apologize for coming across harsh.

I'm not sure what you mean about having instances swallowed up by Synthesis tools. Most tools will optimize out redundant parts, but they are fairly smart when it comes to identifying parts that are truly unnecessary compared to ones that are there to increase parallelism. This is especially true when a skilled engineer is at the helm.

When you talk about increasing parallelism that doesn't involve adding more cores, we are talking about instruction level parallellism (ILP). Strategies used to add ILP include pipelining, out of order execution, and enhanced instruction sets like SSE and MMX.

Oh no problem i meant no harm done either way, i was just having a laugh 'n' giggle:bday:. Anyhow the way you explained that makes me realise why the GPU is a bit of a complicated piece of tech. To me it's mind boggling how they would simplify the design or how much more performance can be obtained by using the cell library manufacturing process. Then again I'm abit too doubtfull sometimes becuase after all ATI seem to be getting quite close'ish to a standard Ghz GPU clock speed with each new card they release. I need to get myself a book about graphics card design i'd love to learn more, interesting subject!

[OC101]

ATI will never be what 3dfx was or could have been

Yeah, ATI will never be absorbed by Nvidia.

[Shiggity]

What's interesting is that Intel will be pushing for much more CPU oriented graphics power (Larabee will be just the beginning). It would be very weird to hear Nvidia going out of business or being bought if that trend really takes off.

Intel + Nvidia, game over ATI / AMD

Speculation is fun :)

[GreenJelly]

The fact is that GPU's are not beign used for their computational power... When they are, you will see the CPU becoming all but a nice bit of extra's. Lets face it, the 8800GTS can run over 1,000 threads at the same time...