Researchers create supercomputer with four GeForce 9800 GX2 cards
By Donald Melanson 
posted May 29th 2008 4:48PM
posted May 29th 2008 4:48PM
It's far from the first supercomputer created with the help of some gaming hardware, but this rig built by a group of researchers from the University of Antwerp is certainly impressive enough in its own right, with it employing four of NVIDIA's high-end GeForce 9800 GX2 graphics cards (which combined pack eight GPUs) to help develop new computational methods for tomography. Dubbed the FASTRA, the system also packs an AMD Phenom 9850 processor, 8GB of RAM, and 750GB hard drive, all of which is powered by a 1,500W power supply (and tastefully lit up with some blue LEDs). That apparently lets 'em do calculations that previously took an hour in just a few seconds, not to mention finally get a decent frame rate in Crysis. Be sure to check out the video after the break for a thorough (and more entertaining than it should be) overview of the system.
"...an AMD Phenom 9850 processor..."
lol
Muppet. Did you stop to think that the mainboard might not just support an Intel CPU?
Besides with that power, what does it matter anyway?
someone obviously doesn't know why they used an AMD proc
My thoughts exactly Pochi :D
What a failtastic CPU for an otherwise awesome machine....
Those two 9800GX2s in the middle will melt at full load also......
@maty
Did you stop to think that it should have?
@mike
Someone obviously doesn't!
Pochi, they don't need the best processor in the world. The GPU's are doing all the work anyway.
I did.
But then again, I'm not the mainboard manufacturer. And neither are you.
So quit yo jibba jabber, crazy foo'!
Pochi, they don't need the best processor in the world. The GPU's are doing all the work anyway.
...YOU DID WHAT WITH OUR GRANT MONEY!!???!!...but it plays crysis!
Surely they need memory bandwidth with all those GX2's so i assume they are using AMD's still superior bandwidth, even if the rest of their chip sucks, they on die controller was a brilliant idea.
I'm pretty sure that intel doesn't have an off-the-shelf motherboard with four PCIe-2.0 slots spread out like this so that rules out every intel processor. If the 9800gx2s are doing the work, you could probably run an Semprom and still get the same speed for this kind of work.
@maty
lol, fair enough. Maybe we SHOULD be...
Maybe if you watch the other videos, they may explain why it is that way.
http://www.youtube.com/user/FastraGPUSuperPC
That's my processor right there. It's pretty decent, but in my particular setup, need some graphics enhancements. This will do nicely, for when I make $75,000 a year.
BUT, and I know you all don't wanna hear this...
CAN IT RUN CRYSIS????
It should be able to, but we need a benchmark done to know for sure.
Hey Mister loves the caps lock.
What did I tell you about posting?
DO IT MAN.
that's very cool but the guy is the prototype of the nerd!
You mean stereotype..?
I believe nerds existed long before this one.
I think you mean 'posterchild' not prototype...
What?
Well it's a good thing he said it could play Crysis or else we'd get comments asking if it could.
And no,it will not blend either......but it could prob make a simulation about said pc blending in about 5 seconds...
We need a biiger blender.....
funny thing... my pc is a little over average and it can run Crysis... It's not that hard to run. So why don't we just kill the jokes...
Simulation about blending? That makes no sense. meta?
OOH! Big Buck Bunny goes online tomorrow!
Nothing so far can play it on Very High at a decent resolution with 16xQ CSAA.
Mine can barely (25-30FPS) play it on High with 4x AA at 1680x1050...
I believe the first three commenters posted on the wrong message. Nice job guys lol
No, try replying to the message above this one. Since they're both at the same time (5:00PM) it seems to put them on the second message. If you click on the date of the message above you can see all the comments correctly placed, but the comment system sucks.
where is the motherboard?
Underneath all the graphics cards obviously.
The silver block above the cards (black block) appears to be the CPU heatsink.
its probably an msi 790FX AMD board
# AMD Phenom 9850 processor + Scythe Infinity CPU cooler
# 4x MSI 9800GX2 graphics card
# 4x 2GB Corsair Twinx DDR2 PC6400 memory
# MSI K9A2 Platinum motherboard
# Samsung Spinpoint F1 750GB HDD
# ThermalTake Toughpower 1500W Modular PSU
# Lian-Li PC-P80 Armorsuit case
# Windows XP 64-bit
badass!
It's not easy being green...
Most excellent !!
The guy was articulate and, for a non-native English-speaker, spoke English very well.
Grooming: don't care
Overall grade: A+
It ain't easy being white.
It ain't easy being brown.
All this pressure to be bright.
I got children all over town.
wow no love for the arrested development quotes? pffffft!
Well actually I would think it uses a lot less power in several ways...
he said it performed on par with a 512 node cluster of computers . So using one computer instead of that would probably save some power. Plus if it computes faster than that it'll be able to do more work again saving power.
he gives nerd a bad name, in terms of looks.
No joke - he epitomizes the stereotypical nerd if anything...
gotta love the accent!
Yeah, but the hand gestures were getting pretty annoying.
He looks and sounds just like Professor Fink from the Simpsons.
He's like a cross between Thunderbirds Brains, and Kermit T. Frog...
They should market this to the gaming industry.
Character modelers, BEWARE!
The lengths people will go to in order to get someone else to pay for their gaming rig.
Tomography my a$$.
Now if you'll excuse me I need to go convince my boss I need one of these for uh.. video editing or something.
Is it strange that I'm tempted to worship it as though it were a god?
Bet that thing could play a mean game of chess, too...
But can it play Castle Wolfenstein??
@whatishalo
yes im sure it can. and before you ask, it can prob play any game you throw at it. with 4 graphics cards, it better be able to. a better question would be what game cant this do?
with 8 gpus they could prob do some good crypto work too
You know, it doesn't matter how fast the computer is when encrypting something, when it comes to DE-crypting something a quantum computer could do it in a few minutes
@ Captain underpants
No proper quantum computer is in existence as yet therefore what you say is meaningless, viva la fastra.