ATI

[ctjoyce]

Quad SLI isn't really that impressive. It is beaten by 7900GTX SLI and X1900XTX Crossfire. Also, in many benchmarks it is beaten by single cards. I think Quad SLI is more of a marketing gimmick than anything.

My take on it is that its a great technology that hasn't been fully developed. I think that we are going to find as time goes on that having a SLi system for gaming is going to become the norm due to increasing graphics processing power from newer games. When this happens, I believe that proper resurch and devlopment will be put into QSLi and we will see a platform worth the price tag.

Unfortunately we wouln't see that until 2008.

Cheers
Cameron

[NicksFXHouse]

The X1950? Didn't think they did. Thought that was only the R600s

Cheers
Cameron

I was under the impression ATI has commited to incorporating PhysX on all its cores. It started with the x1600 card and has been on every ATI card manufacured above the x1600.

[-sam-]

Ati and Nvidia will both implement physics based on the Havok Engine on their Cards in on of their upcoming series
called HavokFX.. well at least I

[NicksFXHouse]

ATI already has PhysX incorporated into its core on all cards from the x1600 and up. They will continue to have that built into their cores. All that is required is a driver which enables PhysX which is now built into all the cat releases. Until the release of the next core products it requires either a crossfire 3 card setup or a dual card setup.. one card handles the PhysX. With the release of the next gen of cards it is expected the 2nd or 3rd card will no longer be necessary.

Nvidia on the other hand is placing PhysX on a separate section of the card which means the communication rate may be affected because it is not going to be part of the physical core.

It remains to be seen if the Nvidia approach will have issues however the ATI approach is proven to be issue free.

[-sam-]

Ati and Nvidia will both use HavokFX an not PhysX.
That

[cheesegrater]

What exactly is the benefit physics cards on video cards? It doesn't make sense to me because most systems are bottlenecked by a GPU. Why make the GPU make more calculations?

[NicksFXHouse]

The point was physics (be it HavokFX an not PhysX) will be driven directly off the GPU with ATI and Nvidia will be using a second chip on the card.


@Cheesgrater

It doesnt bottleneck anything. Thats the point of using the GPU, so the CPU is not bottlenecked.

Also.. as we progress into the next age of systems the power towers will be dual and quad core CPUs. Unlike WindowsXP, Vista will provide full suport for multiprocessors and will properly distribute the loads. Game development will also be gearing toward multiple GPU/CPU use and optimizing.