Quad Cross-fire

[lordtron]

Has anyone ever looked into Quad Cross-fire. I think that would be awesome to have a system with that setup in it.

I wonder what the requirements would be for such a setup.

 

[Dan]

What is Quad Cross-fire?????

 

[lordtron]

Quad Cross-Fire is the use of Ati Video Cards that have Cross-Fire enable.

To use 4 Ati Video Cards with Cross-Fire enabled, only the newest series of Ati cards can do this.

 

[Jacob Kid Mania Creator]

Huh

 

[Hazirak]

Seems to me like it would be just about as stupidly powerful as this whole three-way SLi thing they've managed to achieve at nVidia (really, who needs three 768MB cards?). Besides, imagine the power requirements for something like four cards... one card requires a 550W power supply, and two demands a 750W. If there's a pattern here, which I'm guessing there is, four cards would require 1150W.

Not only that, but I'll bet your case's ambient temperature will get warm enough to cook your ramen in the morning... Oh hey, there we go, how to turn your computer into a toaster oven.

Might be on to something here!

 

[lordtron]

Yeah I agree Hazirak, you can already cook many things just with your power supply's heat lol

I think the highest PSU I have seen so far is 1.5KW = 1500W

 

[HomerJ]

Yeah, I don't see what anyone except 3d graphics professionals could possibly need that for. And 1150W of power? I have a 450W PSU.

 

[lordtron]

And don't forget the High-End gamers could use that as well...1-3 of the newest games can't be ran on computers cause they don't have enough 3d processing power. 450W, thats not that bad, I have a 500W in my gaming system. But my new system will be having over 1Kw of power due to what I will be putting in it.

 

[Brandon]

I'm also assuming you would need a 2 ton air conditioning unit dedicated to your PC.

 

[Hazirak]

And don't forget the High-End gamers could use that as well...1-3 of the newest games can't be ran on computers cause they don't have enough 3d processing power.

I'm fairly sure any company in their right mind won't develop a game that has "4 ATI Radeon HD 3800 1GB or better in CrossFireX mode" under the minimum requirements section. As a matter of fact, I'll be willing to bet any sane company won't even have 2 cards under the minimum requirements section. For the average PC gamer, the cost of hooking up four 1GB cards on a compatible motherboard will cost too much, not to mention draw too much power and run too hot.

Sorry, but I seriously don't see this being a viable option for anyone other than the ultimate PC enthusiasts until the price of the video cards drops just a bit.

Heat generally shouldn't be a huge problem though, since most Peltier cooling devices are made to cool components below ambient temperatures (the challenge is finding them). They might just have a slim chance of actually keeping your quad-GPU system below melting point.

 

[lordtron]

And most high-end users goto water-cooling due to the heat.

But yeah I don't know of any games that require 4-video cards, but there are games that with 2 high-end video cards can't max out there game.

But games are getting more and more higher quality that they require more power. Plus they are getting into Quad-CPUs as well.

 

[Hazirak]

And most high-end users goto water-cooling due to the heat...

Right, and what I'm trying to suggest is that it's entirely possible that four graphics cards going at it could very well overwhelm your average water-cooling system, if not at normal clocks then in overclocking.

I mean really, you just bought yourself four graphics cards with a combined total of four gigs of video memory and set them all up in CrossFireX mode. Who WOULDN'T be tempted to push it a little further just to see if you could max out the settings on a game being played across eight 2560 x 1600 monitors? It certainly is a thought that makes me giddy, I'll be honest with you there.

 

[lordtron]

8 monitors, I would just use it for 2 or 3 monitors.

But yeah, it will for sure overwhelm your water cooling, you would have to have 2 different types of cooling in your system to keep the heat down just a little bit.

 

[Sharky]

You might need 4 or more SLI/CrossFire cards to run ever more complex video games at maximum res on a couple of these side-by-side: http://www.nvidia.com/page/technology_extreme_hd_home.html

One can dream...

 

[Hazirak]

8 monitors, I would just use it for 2 or 3 monitors.

But yeah, it will for sure overwhelm your water cooling, you would have to have 2 different types of cooling in your system to keep the heat down just a little bit.

I wouldn't see me using more than two myself, but still... eight monitors is always a nice little thought to go to sleep with at night.

But yeah, that's basically what my link was about... a Peltier cooling device one-ups a pure water-cooling system through a simple concept - one side is always cold, another side is always hot. You put the cold side on the component and then have some kind of system, be it a fan or otherwise, to continuously draw heat off the hot side. Because of its nature to remain cold on one side and hot on another, heat passes from the cold side to the hot side (in complete defiance of what science 101 tells us, mind you)... until the power gets cut, anyways.

Current water systems work by grabbing excess heat off the component and carrying it away. A thermoelectric device is always grabbing heat off components, whether there be excess heat or not (hence the claim that they can cool a device below its ambient temperature). A fluid-cooling mechanism could assist by constantly carrying heat away from the hot side in a more efficient manner than air alone, since it will always be warmer than the fluid and water tends to absorb more heat before becoming physically hot.

That could possibly keep the temperature down, but I guess we won't know until someone tries. It would certainly make sense in my mind.

 

[lordtron]

Yeah I guess when I build my new system I will have to try that out....Cause I will have a lot more items building up heat than just the GPU's

 

[Hazirak]

Be sure to let me know how that works out, if you can even find a system like that (I have yet to see one). Might sound silly, but I'm actually pretty interested in this stuff... then again, I'm interested in computer hardware in general. But, I digress...

Four graphics cards. Yeah. Silly stuff. Don't ever see it catching on that much with your average user within the next decade.

 

[lordtron]

Yeah, but you have to remember nobody at first thought Cross-fire in general would catch on with just 2 cards, but now they went to 3 and now 4.

 

[Hazirak]

I think deep down most of us knew the whole dual-card thing would happen some day. I mean, just look at AMD's Athlon 64 X2 - those are designed to be used in pairs. Look at any processor in a new PC or laptop nowadays - chances are it's at least a dual-core processor, if not a quad-core.

The main difference between these examples and multi-graphics-card solutions is the price - to put together a quad-card system, you'd need upwards of $1,500 for the cards alone. This doesn't even include the cost of the motherboard that can even support a quad-card setup, a power supply that can push enough power through to keep those cards running, and a cooling system that can pump heat out like there's no tomorrow. There's also the consideration that if anything else in your system needs a PCIe x16 slot, you're out of luck. I have yet to see both a motherboard with more than four PCIe x16 slots, and a CrossFire-ready graphics card that doesn't take a PCIe x16 slot.

Of course, that last point is fairly minor. For most of us, a good sound card is all that's required after that, and they do make those in just regular PCI... Then again, why not grab a physics card if you're going for four GPUs? Oh yeah, they make those for standard PCI slots too, and I have seen a motherboard that can theoretically hold all of that.

 

[lordtron]

When Ati first started doing 3xCrossfire they made it so that the 3rd card would be for Physics, so I think in the Quad-Crossfire 1 of the cards can be used for physics as well.

So far I only see that MSI made a Quad-Crossfire motherboard, but its not 16x for the Quad, its 8x 8x 8x 8x for the use of Quad-Crossfire. Plus to use Quad-Crossfire you need at least a 750W powersupply according to Newegg.com

So maybe it won't cost that much for this setup.