Nvidia Unveils New 64x SLI GPU Rig

The Register has an answer for the problem of what to get the graphics buff who has everything, Nvidia's new 64x SLI GPU rig. While it doesn't come cheap, a mere $17,500, it will offer rendering at around 80 billion pixels every second and a combined resolution of around 148 megapixels. The new hardware is being targeted at content creators and people doing scientific modeling, and is due to ship in September.

64x? Eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

The only thing "64x" in there is the FSAA... Not the cards. From TFA:

It doesn't come cheap, mind - prices start at $17,500. Nvidia has three models on offer. Two contain two Quadro FX 5500 GPUs, while the mid-range version, the Model II, has two Quadro 4500 X2 GPUs - ie. four graphics cores.

Nowhere near 64 cards, that's ridiculous...

score -1, did not read the article

[RelliK]

RTFA (or, better yet, go to NVidia's site to verify). It's not 64x, it's 2x or 4x depending on the configuration. Stupidest sensationalism ever! Here is the link [nvidia.com] for the lazy.

Re:64x? Eh?

[smallfries]

The other weird anomaly is the fillrate. 80 Gp/s is a long way ahead of the 7800-GTX. A long way. Currently the 16 ROPs on the 7800-GTX limit the fillrate to 25GB/s or 1.6Gp/s assuming 16 bytes per pixel. The claim of a 148 megapixel framebuffer in 2GB of memory implies 16 bytes per pixel but this would produce a whopping memory bandwidth of about 1.2 Terrabytes per second. Even if it were a single byte per pixel there is no way they will get 80GB/s of fillrate out of just two cards. DDR3 is maxed out at 25.6GB/s. Somebody in the marketing department has added a large side serving of bullshit to this press release.

Re:Video

[djdavetrouble]

I'll take 2.

um, doesn't SLI mean you are hooking a few together already ?

Re:64x? Eh?

[staeiou]

The only thing "64x" in there is the FSAA... Not the cards. From TFA:

The summary should say x64, instead of 64x. x64 is the amount of lanes (a measure of bandwidth - 1 lane = 250 MB/sec) the board can carry to the bus. The early PCI-E graphics were limited by lanes - one card ran at x16, but there wasn't enough bandwidth in the chipset for two cards, so an SLI setup had to run cards at x8 each, halfing the bandwidth. Newer chipsets can handle two sets of x16, meaning 32 total lanes for graphics. For this article, it means that there are four cards (albeit in two slots - it's the same thing with the dual core processors), each running at full x16 bandwidth. Considering that the number reaches 16 GB/sec, it is something to get a little excited about. Although not too much.