Is it worth it for AMD and Nvidia is make multi-GPU video cards?

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kenrickandbros

kenrickandbros

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Oct 31, 2015
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Is it worth it for AMD and Nvidia is make multi-GPU video cards? Considering:
- Poor SLI and XFire driver support and game support
- Poor SLI and XFire performance scaling (2 GTX 980s in SLI =/= 200% GTX 980)
- Memory capacity of only one GPU
- Higher TDP
- Manufacturing and design costs
- Low demand

The best modern example of a "successful" multi-GPU is the R9 295X2 because it was in the affordable price range. Bad examples are when AMD/Nvidia try to do it with expensive GPUs like they did with the Titan Z and the R9 Pro Dual.

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If you were the head of Nvidia or AMD would you make a multi-GPU video card for an newer architecture such as Pascal, or Polaris, or Vega? Or are multi-GPU video cards a failed dream of the past?
 
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renz496
Heck even 295x2 initial price was $1500. After several price drop they settle around 600-700 where the sales start picking. When they priced the new pro duo at $1500 it is clear they don't want to sell it cheap if possible. Just that this time they also throw in firepro drivers aside of regular radeon drivers with pro duo to justified the price tag.

For nvidia they don't really care about dual gpu card anymore. Titan Z? They not even trying. 3k a piece? That's indirectly telling your customer not to buy it. They even doing silly thing like announcing such high price tag despite knowing amd will have their own dual gpu as well. For AMD winning the dual gpu crown seems very important to them so they can brag about having "fastest gpu on...
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renz496

renz496

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Jun 16, 2009
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Heck even 295x2 initial price was $1500. After several price drop they settle around 600-700 where the sales start picking. When they priced the new pro duo at $1500 it is clear they don't want to sell it cheap if possible. Just that this time they also throw in firepro drivers aside of regular radeon drivers with pro duo to justified the price tag.

For nvidia they don't really care about dual gpu card anymore. Titan Z? They not even trying. 3k a piece? That's indirectly telling your customer not to buy it. They even doing silly thing like announcing such high price tag despite knowing amd will have their own dual gpu as well. For AMD winning the dual gpu crown seems very important to them so they can brag about having "fastest gpu on the planet" even if that's not really help them selling more gpu. And they will do anything to win that crown. That's why they go crazy with 295x2 power consumption.

With pascal nvidia finally drop the support on 3 way and 4 way sli. They are not completely locked from user but they also will not going to put effort optimizing 3 way and 4 way performance.
 
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renz496

renz496

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the point of having dual gpu mainly for marketing point. "fastest gpu on the planet". by having that they hope people will look at your brand as the best and it turn will buy any gpu from you because your gpu is associated with "the best". but yeah tech review making that kind of marketing useless. for nvidia as long as they hold the single gpu crown they will continue to do fine. the last time nvidia get serious about dual gpu probably those 690. to the point AMD temporarily hold the plan on releasing 7990. back then AMD probably thinking that nvidia will not be able to make 690 as a 300w card.
 
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renz496

renz496

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still different application. some of this pro application are not bound to "scaling" that we see with games. for example there are application that only look at the count of CUDA cores available on the machine. just put two, three or four cards and the app will detect how many CUDA cores available and scale the performance from there. they don't even need specific profile like SLI to work.
 
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renz496

renz496

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The last from mars series i think was 760 x2. Asus probably interested in making mars based on GK110 gpu but nvidia still have the final say if they allow such card to exist or not. In one of Tom Peterson interview with Ryan Shrout pcper Tom mention the disadvantages of dual gpu in term of cost. So it is alao probable that nvidia advice board partner to not really try making dual gpu type.
 
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J

junkeymonkey

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Nov 11, 2013
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''7950 GX2, GTX 590, GTX690? People seem to have forgotten those as well.''

I guess that shows the popularity / interest the AMD was easy the recall the radeon X2 cards you still see some pop up here at toms with ?'s like the 295x2

they talked about a furyx2 but don't know if it ever came about ?

http://wccftech.com/amd-fury-x2-delayed/
 
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Mousemonkey

Mousemonkey

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Sep 3, 2006
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Or it's just a measure of how bad your memory/knowledge is. :whistle:
 
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