Sunday, July 13th 2008

R700 Supports 4-way Crossfire X?

Yes, you read that right. You can use upto four HD4870 X2 accelerators in tandem for an 8-GPU, 9.6 TFLOP, 8 GB graphics crunching monster. You need a 4-slot motherboard though. There are 4-slot solutions available on the AMD 790FX platform, for Intel though X48 did support 4 slots and images of prototype X48 boards with 4 slots did surface months back, there isn't such a board out yet. You do have the Skulltrail platform and upcoming X58 Bloomfield-supportive boards do promise to come in 4 slot flavours.

In a press-conference, Raja Koduri, worldwide CTO (Products Group), AMD talked to Indian website TechTree, among minor revelations such as "Fusion in 2009", here's a shocker:

"AMD has already built a computer that has four 4870X2s in it. So it has eight GPUs; drivers will not be supporting eight GPUs at this point of time."

-Implies that AMD is fully geared up to go head on against GT200b whenever it comes up. It's all a matter of them releasing a supportive driver. Again, unreliable sources point towards the possibility that also in the pipeline could be a R700+ which could be based on 'Super-RV770XT' processors. If you thought you're witnessing the peak of the GPU battle for supremacy, hold on, you're only getting appetised.
Source: TechTree
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89 Comments on R700 Supports 4-way Crossfire X?

#26
candle_86
lol right now not all my ram shows up in dxdiag anyway 1gb for the crossfire, 2gb in system, and another chunck pulled by my lan card and another by my recently accurited xfi. System ram shows up at 2034mb lol
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#27
Hayder_Master
:eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:
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#28
X-TeNDeR
hayder.master:eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:
Exactly. :)
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#29
FreedomEclipse
~Technological Technocrat~
4way crossfire???

well obviously for those who wish to invest in such hardware will have to run a 64bit O/S unless M$ & ATi have found a way to use the gpu ram as bog standard system ram.


which wouldnt be such a bad idea - being able to convert your 'idle' gpu ram into ram which is use by your pc
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#30
roberto888
What they want with 8GB of VRAM? Anybody will use to prey on those monsters? I don't think so. Maybe the game developers. But they will be pleased with 4GB of VRAM too. Don't need 8GB. This is my mind. Sorry for bad English.
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#31
btarunr
Editor & Senior Moderator
roberto888What they want with 8GB of VRAM? Anybody will use to prey on those monsters? I don't think so. Maybe the game developers. But they will be pleased with 4GB of VRAM too. Don't need 8GB. This is my mind. Sorry for bad English.
It's not about what 8 GB can do, it's about what 8 GPUs can.
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#32
lemonadesoda
Architecture

Would that be 4x 2GB, or 8x 1GB memory?

It ISNT 8GB of independent memory, because the "same assets" are being stored multiple times in each memory bank. The GPU doesnt actually have 8GB to play with, only 1GB (or is it 2GB?). The rest of the memory are just COPIES of the same memory space on each GPU's local address bus.

P.S. I'd love to see a FPS or flightsim using all 8 DVI ports independently! WOW.
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#33
btarunr
Editor & Senior Moderator
lemonadesodaWould that be 4x 2GB, or 8x 1GB memory?

It ISNT 8GB of independent memory, because the "same assets" are being stored multiple times in each memory bank. The GPU doesnt actually have 8GB to play with, only 1GB (or is it 2GB?). The rest of the memory are just COPIES of the same memory space on each GPU's local address bus.

P.S. I'd love to see a FPS or flightsim using all 8 DVI ports independently! WOW.
Technically it's 8 x 1GB GDDR5 256bit when the rig made to render a scene in AFR (Alternate frame rendering), where each GPU takes turns...I needn't explain, you have the know-how.

So the application has to load the same stuff (= textures, mesh, shader data, wireframe data) into all eight memory arrays. Same applies when the GPUs are made to render a scene in tiling. All 'stuff' should be available to all GPUs.

Since we still don't have motherboards with four full x16 2.0 slots, with four slots populated it means x8 2.0 bandwidth / card.
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#34
Jansku07
ot/ That guy from mahabharata; what's he drinking (milk)? /ot Wasn't there a project which used four 9800GX2s to crunch numbers? Was it a 4x 16x PCI-E mobo which they were using? :confused: I faintly remember this, so I might be wrong too..
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#35
btarunr
Editor & Senior Moderator
Jansku07ot/ That guy from mahabharata; what's he drinking (milk)? /ot Wasn't there a project which used four 9800GX2s to crunch numbers? Was it a 4x 16x PCI-E mobo which they were using? :confused: I faintly remember this, so I might be wrong too..
For GPGPU it isn't essential that multiple cards be arranged in an SLI / Crossfire array of some sort. Parallelism is brought about by the driver. Remember, there's no video to play with, no SLI bridge to transport frames to a 'primary' card.

In reality, you can't arrange four 9800 GX2s in SLI. I wonder how they did it with four R700s though, since PCB has only one CFX finger.
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#36
CDdude55
Crazy 4 TPU!!!
OMFG... You will need a beast of a PC to handle that. And the cooling will be hell(literally).
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#37
TheMailMan78
Big Member
:rockout::rockout::rockout::rockout: I just heard "QUAD DAMAGE" in a quakish voice from the AMD camp.
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#38
btarunr
Editor & Senior Moderator
Haha. I miss Q3A.

The cons are many....8 GPUs and say hello to heat, power, mobo, micro-stutters, etc. But end of the day the fastest available consumer graphics would be made by ATI. That adds brand-value all the way down to Radeon HD4450. "Hey these guys make the fastest graphics configurations in the industry".
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#39
Jansku07
For GPGPU it isn't essential that multiple cards be arranged in an SLI / Crossfire array of some sort. Parallelism is brought about by the driver. Remember, there's no video to play with, no SLI bridge to transport frames to a 'primary' card.
I know that. I wasn't asking about 9800GX2 octaSLI support but the following
1) Wasn't there a project which used four 9800GX2s to crunch numbers? (crunch numbers NOT to do video)
2) Was it a 4x 16x PCI-E mobo which they were using?
3) /ot what's the guy drinking in your picture?
Posted on Reply
#40
Disparia
Jansku07I know that. I wasn't asking about 9800GX2 octaSLI support but the following
1) Wasn't there a project which used four 9800GX2s to crunch numbers? (crunch numbers NOT to do video)
2) Was it a 4x 16x PCI-E mobo which they were using?
3) /ot what's the guy drinking in your picture?
Yup: fastra.ua.ac.be/en/

An MSI K9A2 Platinum was used, x16(x8) x 4.
Posted on Reply
#41
Jansku07
Thanks for the heads up. =) So there aren't any 4x 16x PCIE (2.0) boards available anywhere?
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#42
btarunr
Editor & Senior Moderator
Jansku07I know that. I wasn't asking about 9800GX2 octaSLI support but the following
1) Wasn't there a project which used four 9800GX2s to crunch numbers? (crunch numbers NOT to do video)
2) Was it a 4x 16x PCI-E mobo which they were using?
3) /ot what's the guy drinking in your picture?
1. I didn't say they did 'video' either. I said GPGPU use (general-purporse graphics processing unit) i.e. 'crunching numbers'. You can add as many cards as there are slots and PCI-E switches available, just that you can't call that a 'multi-GPU' except each 9800GX2 has its local SLI array.

2. Maybe, I don't know. It's impossibile that they used Skulltrail since the last two PCI-E slots are adjescent and 9800GX2 is a dual-PCB card. They must've used some NForce Professional based WS board which had 4 slots spaced out.

3. not drinking, blowing air into a conch. (Ancient-Indian for war-cry).
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#43
Jansku07
I misunderstood that you misunderstood me. Sorry
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#44
Weer
In THEORY this would be like having Quad-Sli GTX 280's.

BUT, let's see how the drivers hold the 8 cores together.
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#45
Megasty
btarunr1. I didn't say they did 'video' either. I said GPGPU use (general-purporse graphics processing unit) i.e. 'crunching numbers'. You can add as many cards as there are slots and PCI-E switches available, just that you can't call that a 'multi-GPU' except each 9800GX2 has its local SLI array.

2. Maybe, I don't know. It's impossibile that they used Skulltrail since the last two PCI-E slots are adjescent and 9800GX2 is a dual-PCB card. They must've used some NForce Professional based WS board which had 4 slots spaced out.

3. not drinking, blowing air into a conch. (Ancient-Indian for war-cry).
The Foxconn Transformer F1 would work:
Posted on Reply
#46
Disparia
If we were to split hairs, there are flexible x16 to x16 adapters which would allow the use of double slot cards if the slots are single-spaced.
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#47
mandelore
WeerIn THEORY this would be like having Quad-Sli GTX 280's.

BUT, let's see how the drivers hold the 8 cores together.
wouldnt it be more like having 6 way sli with 280's? since the 4870x2 beats the crap out of a single 280?
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#48
Cybrnook2002
PrudentPrincess
IM HUNGRY
You should edit to "DEEEEEEAAAAAAAMNNN"
Posted on Reply
#49
Polarman
Wow! this is pretty insane. Now you can hook up your PC to your central heating and heat up the whole house for winter! :D
Posted on Reply
#50
btarunr
Editor & Senior Moderator
MegastyThe Foxconn Transformer F1 would work:
Yeah, this is the X48 board (that didn't make it) that I was talking about in the OP. Nice find.
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