Quad SLI hits the mainstream?

It looks like Quad SLI systems such as Dell's XPS 600 aren't long for their current niche status. Units like this $5000 "Prime A Galleria64 Quad-SLI," for example, are starting to hit the market, complete with an Athlon 64 FX-57 processor, 2GB of RAM, and of course the space heater combo of two linked GeForce 7900 SLI setups, with two parent cards in PCI Express slots and two daughter cards bridged by the magic of SLI. They'll soon be accompanied by desktops from nearly every major manufacturer, which means you'll before long you'll have plenty more options for quad graphics card setups, and plenty fewer dollars in your wallet at the end of the day.

Read: Prime A Galleria64
Read: Other manufacturers get in on the action

[Mike S @ Mar 10th 2006 4:27PM]

Why would anyone want four video cards?
Its not like four video cards will quadruple your graphics power. Realisticly, You'll probably get maybe 2, 2.5 times the power of one individual card.

The cons?
You have to buy four identical cards
It probably gets hot as hell
Costs a ton of money.
nVidia Sucks :-)

With the amazing technology we have today, why don't they stop grouping cards together and just make one amazing Video Card?

[AWack @ Mar 10th 2006 4:40PM]

"1. Why would anyone want four video cards?"

Because it's cool. It's a nerd hot rod. Nobody needs a car with a 500hp motor, nor can they justify the expense but they're in people's garages across the country nevertheless...

And you're sure to be worshiped by everybody in the club!!
http://www.slizone.com/content/slizone/clubsli.html

[TeleCustom @ Mar 10th 2006 4:44PM]

Dell cramming 4 video cards into one of their systems is worth a pretty good laugh. They can't get base models to work right, what makes them think these will?

[Jay @ Mar 10th 2006 4:51PM]

The problem with having 4 graphics cards is that there's not a game that can really USE them all.

The game can only look so pretty, the only thing you'll be increasing is the framerate.

I don't think that even the best of us can see the difference between 250fps and 500fps.

[kenny @ Mar 10th 2006 4:55PM]

The Cons are more likelly to me:

Power drain, my god look at the electric bill those things probablly will cause, I mean look almost 700 Watt PSU...
4 cards
heat/cooling
internal connections/outside the box cords?
are computers now going to cost over 2,000 bucks like back when?

as per the "one amazing video card", the problem is here: everything is about multi-cores/ect now apparentlly, they have hit a limit basically of what a single core/card can do without extreme cooling solutions (pelter/water/nitro) for consumer buyers, let alone massive design, and size of die, If Videocard GPU makers could hit 90, 65, 45mm right now for the die, they would be able to pull off more per single card.

Also the matter is that PC game programers never seem to ever want to max the ability of current gen hardware, and always try to up the ante a bit forcing buying new Hardware. Look at how the developers basically forced change with Doom 3 and more recentlly one most would not expect: Battlefeild 2. Basically requirements for these games changed over time, due to the developers trying to one up each other in their areas (Doom 3 trying to take crown over HL2, BF2 trying to take crown over...previous versions?), but with the driving force of the GPU companies saying "include this, because its in our next card's ability", which in doubt possiblly leads to less optimizations in the cards before the newer card, but still not perfect because not pushing older card's to their limits (Doom 3 pushed limits though).---does any of this make sense?

[Camperton @ Mar 10th 2006 5:43PM]

does this thing have a dedicated physics card> or are those things not even out yet? http://www.ageia.com/

[Moogle @ Mar 10th 2006 6:01PM]

It's not so you can get 500 fps on your 1600x1200 monitor, it's so you can get 60 fps on your 30" 2560x1600 Dell or Apple monitor, with every setting set to 11. Seriously, anyone that pays $5k for a computer definitely needs a $2k display.

And yes, actually, you get close to 4x the power. The dual card SLI rigs were getting about a 95% boost on tests, if I recall correctly. It was the Voodoo SLI a few generations ago that were only getting so moddest an increase for doubling up cards.

Now, I say this with the admission that this is, in fact, a rediculous waste of money and electricity. That doesn't make me want one any less however.

[Tim @ Mar 10th 2006 6:29PM]

While this is preatty awesome, it is hardly hitting anywhere near "mainstream". Dual GPU setups are not even mainstream, and probably never will be, unless there is a large shift towards putting two chips on one board.

Putting two chips on the same board, or even two cards on the same motherboard is still a cheap hack, kinda like how intel made its first "dual core" processors which was really just two dies next to eachother on one board, not truly dual core; it is also , unfortunately, how they are planning on doing their initial quad core chips..

#5, Both ATI an nVidia have shifted to 90nm, and technically graphics cards have been multicore for a while. Currently the basic pixel processing units, pipelines, have increased to 48 or 24 on the high end cards.

[oldschool @ Mar 10th 2006 6:48PM]

3DFX made a Quad card many years ago. It was so far ahead of its time that it was stopped by its competitors from ever making it to the market.

[oldschool @ Mar 10th 2006 6:58PM]

For those who donot believe here is one of the couple that were made. One was actually sold on ebay and was installed into a computer.

[JL @ Mar 10th 2006 7:42PM]

Oldschool - I'm guessing you know where the 3DFX heads ended up right - LOL

3DFX really did have some stuff that was ahead of it's time..
good to see that expertise didn't fade away

[apt34 @ Mar 10th 2006 9:08PM]

I've always disliked this whole "quad SLI" thing since I first saw an article on Tom's Hardware. I mean, its cool as a proof-of-concept sort of thing, but really, it is ridiculous. Who the heck spends 5k-8k on a rig? Ok, bad question.

But really, the electricity waste would be massive, as is the waste of good silicon. Why not use that silicon towards a supercomputer for folding protein simulations?

Business will be business, I suppose.

[Thomas @ Mar 10th 2006 9:23PM]

WoW.. Something just dawn'd on me, isnt Nvidia working on or have out a Dual GPU card.. If so, things are gunna get outa hand.. 4 Cards (8 GPUs total)

Im still impressed with my 256m 7800GT in 16x slot..

[Chris McDowell @ Mar 10th 2006 11:31PM]

I think the tech demos far outpace the games. Optimizations are way behind and games are just using the brute force of these cards. Look at the xbox for example. it has a geforce 2.5 and a 700mhz celeron with 64mb of ram and look at games like halo 2 and splinter cell chaos theory. Not as good as some of the latest pc games of course running quad sli cards on your $8,000 computer but from a $150 box it pumps out the goods all because of optimizations.

[Xell @ Mar 11th 2006 6:31AM]

Well, I'm halfway there. That's my keyboard they've got there :D

[Kenny @ Mar 13th 2006 1:40AM]

Quad SLI? It's not a question of need I suppose. Since some of you used hot rods as an analogy, they might probably design pc with graphic cards sticking out of the casing not unlike the engines of a hot rod.
This would of course spur competition on who has the biggest and 'bestest'. A pipe dream for some I'm sure.

Cheers!

[Merkidemis @ Mar 13th 2006 12:02PM]

Here is more info on the cards going into these things. While there are 4 GPUs, and four pieces of PCB, there are only going to be 2 "cards" in each machine. Each main video card has another peice of PCB bolted onto it to hold the other GPU. So, you only need to buy two cards, not four. Sure, they'll be expensive as hell, but you only need to sell two organs.

I don't think this is really going to go "mainstream," as the vast, vast majority of people don't even need/use a two card SLI system. Still, its nice to keep performance moving forward and all the framerate freaks will have a new toy to lust after.

[Ryan @ Mar 27th 2006 4:19PM]

Can you guys help me out? I have been looking for one of these Nvidia cards that compose quad sli. The only thing i can find regarding the card is this web site http://www.slizone.com/object/slizone_quadsli.html . I can�t seem to find a board or a dual card with one pcix connector (where two compses quad sli). Is quad sli open form factor? Can i buy a mobo and these nvidia cards for quad sli? I have checked pc part store after store to no avail. But seriously, if nvidia thinks for one moment that only major manufacturers can build these rigs, (alienware, dell, voodo, etc) they have another thing coming. Basically, if it is only major manufacturers that carry this quad sli setup, that�s sad and should not be supported by the buyer.

[leick @ Apr 3rd 2006 12:04PM]

I find it hard to compare a quad sli setup to a hot rod. It really reminds me more of what Gilette, 4 blade SLI setup for that close, close, close, CLOSE shave.

[rich @ Jul 14th 2006 3:05AM]

> And yes, actually, you get close to 4x the power.
> The dual card SLI rigs were getting about a 95%
> boost on tests, if I recall correctly. It was the
> Voodoo SLI a few generations ago that were only
> getting so moddest an increase for doubling up cards.

i LOL @ you.

+95% != +4x

[DMcBeing @ Jul 29th 2006 8:47AM]

rich leick said 95% on DUAL sli so in total it goes 195%
Which is almost 2x so if in quad we have the same increase the it would be 195 + 195 = 390% That comes Close to 4x ;-)