Glythen
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why cant' nvidia have 6way sli? i mean it would just be for braging rights. but could you slap togeger 3 duel cards? what is holding them back? it would crush the competition and would set new recoreds. am i just having wishfull thinking? im serious? is it hardware limitations? or software? does anybody know?
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Lordred
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Re:why can't there be 6 way sli? is it software limitations or hardware?
2011/03/07 23:18:04
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The power requirements would be astrnomical
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CraptacularOne
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Re:why can't there be 6 way sli? is it software limitations or hardware?
2011/03/07 23:24:18
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Power levels would be absurd, heat would be ridiculous and the cost would be atrocious.
Really though there is just no need for it. What game do you play that needs even remotely near that much GPU power? I have 3 GTX580's and I game in multi monitor Surround at 7920x1600 and even at that huge resolution I have boatloads of power in reserve. I can max out every game on the market in Surround and keep the games silky smooth.
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EarlZ
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Re:why can't there be 6 way sli? is it software limitations or hardware?
2011/03/07 23:49:13
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Putting aside power requirements, scaling on the 4th card is already poor!
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davekozy
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Re:why can't there be 6 way sli? is it software limitations or hardware?
2011/03/07 23:53:28
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You would need a 6GHz+ CPU to keep the GPU's busy. You could even do 8 way SLI with a four slot board!
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Alucard666
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Re:why can't there be 6 way sli? is it software limitations or hardware?
2011/03/07 23:55:43
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EarlZ
Putting aside power requirements, scaling on the 4th card is already poor!
+1 Simply no need for 6x sli...
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ziou.wang
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Re:why can't there be 6 way sli? is it software limitations or hardware?
2011/03/08 00:22:42
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Alucard666
EarlZ
Putting aside power requirements, scaling on the 4th card is already poor!
+1
Simply no need for 6x sli...
Can't you say that for 4-way SLI GTX 580s? YOUR ARGUMENT IS INVALID!!!!!!
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HeavyHemi
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Re:why can't there be 6 way sli? is it software limitations or hardware?
2011/03/08 00:32:31
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To answer the original question... it is currently both a hardware and software limitation. Matter of fact in the driver .INF file it says...
MaximumNumberOfDevices = 4
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HeavyHemi
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Re:why can't there be 6 way sli? is it software limitations or hardware?
2011/03/08 00:34:46
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ziou.wang
Alucard666
EarlZ
Putting aside power requirements, scaling on the 4th card is already poor!
+1
Simply no need for 6x sli...
Can't you say that for 4-way SLI GTX 580s? YOUR ARGUMENT IS INVALID!!!!!!
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MasterGohan
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Re:why can't there be 6 way sli? is it software limitations or hardware?
2011/03/08 02:30:50
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Glythen
why cant' nvidia have 6way sli? i mean it would just be for braging rights. but could you slap togeger 3 duel cards? what is holding them back? it would crush the competition and would set new recoreds. am i just having wishfull thinking? im serious? is it hardware limitations? or software? does anybody know?
One of the main reasons is software practicality.. I mean by that, there's no reason that it's not possible ... however, there's other factors here. All graphics cards are operating more or less independently with their own videomemory pool, typically rendering frames on their own. AFR works in practice ONLY if there's limitted to no interframe dependency. As you get interframe dependency (a future frame that relies on data rendered in a previous frame), then this resource either has to be intelligently re-rendered or transfered between GPU's. In the worst case of a transfer a pipeline stall can occur (have to flush transactions in order to render the next frame). -- You're at the mercy of the rendering engine here (drivers cannot magically fix it)! Software can restrict rendering to say a pbuffer, to every few frames rather than every single frame, but there are considerations required for multi GPU rendering. The other issue is that more cards = more frames being rendered in advance. rendering multiple frames into the future in parallel does increase performance, but also has a tendency to cause input issues, stuttering, etc etc (this can get worse as more cards are added). In the end though like everyone else says .. there's just not that much reason in the consumer market for beyond what's supported now (not to mention most motherboards, PSU's, can't even fit that many cards without special means). And if you're using GPU's for another purpose, you can code multi GPU capacity into your software without "SLI" support. It's just like asking if you can use a cluster of computers to play a game. Sure! Just code support in the game.
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freakysqeeky
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Re:why can't there be 6 way sli? is it software limitations or hardware?
2011/03/08 03:17:51
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Just throw an arm on each one.  That would be 16 cores? 
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Glythen
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Re:why can't there be 6 way sli? is it software limitations or hardware?
2011/03/08 09:34:56
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haha i just wanted to know why. i knew it would be outragous and inpracticle.
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meldog11
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Re:why can't there be 6 way sli? is it software limitations or hardware?
2011/03/08 09:42:21
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my basic problem is that nvidia could engineer single cards that could do what sli ,tri-sli ,quad sli set-ups can do but then they could only sell you 1 card......sli technology is a money grab....i remember the direction of nvidia before they bought out vodoo (remember them?) the engineers from vodoo (the original sli video card) changed the whole direction of nvidia and all of a sudden you needed two ro three of them to get great performance out of video games and other 3d applications....just my opinion
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fugatron78
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Re:why can't there be 6 way sli? is it software limitations or hardware?
2011/03/13 15:07:56
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Hello afther a LOT of digging for my Open CL monster for Photogrametry, i found that are driver limitation in Windows, every HW must have 4kB memory space aviable, and there is only 64 bit space for ALL hardware like USB, SATA etc.... so a practical limit is 8 GPUs bu even then is complicated to get it working - is a OLD BIOS problems.... in near future with help with UEFI BIOS should be not so a problem...... Under LINUX is possible to work with 16 GPUs.......... some CUDA app..... see the http://fastra2.ua.ac.be/ here you can find a lot of usefull info..... http://fastra2.ua.ac.be/?page_id=214 hardware and driver problematics.......
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SirWaWa
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Re:why can't there be 6 way sli? is it software limitations or hardware?
2011/03/13 17:17:40
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HeavyHemi
ziou.wang
Alucard666
EarlZ
Putting aside power requirements, scaling on the 4th card is already poor!
+1
Simply no need for 6x sli...
Can't you say that for 4-way SLI GTX 580s? YOUR ARGUMENT IS INVALID!!!!!!
LOL
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Re:why can't there be 6 way sli? is it software limitations or hardware?
2011/03/13 18:54:34
(permalink)
SirWaWa
HeavyHemi
ziou.wang
Alucard666
EarlZ
Putting aside power requirements, scaling on the 4th card is already poor!
+1
Simply no need for 6x sli...
Can't you say that for 4-way SLI GTX 580s? YOUR ARGUMENT IS INVALID!!!!!!
LOL
+1
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foxnesn
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Re:why can't there be 6 way sli? is it software limitations or hardware?
2011/03/14 17:37:27
(permalink)
Software limitations. Maybe even as far as the OS not supporting it on a kernel level.
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