Possible?

RWBRWB Icrontian
edited June 2003 in Hardware
Any of the following possible?

A motherboard with 2 AGP slots?

Maybe the ability for that motherboard to run both Card's at one time doubling the effect?

Possibly putting several Video Cards in a chain to work as ONE single card through one AGP slot?

It would be cool to see 5 TNT Card's chain linked running the same speed as a GF4 LOL(of course I know it wouldn't have all the other technologies like Pixil Shaders and such).

Comments

  • EnverexEnverex Worcester, UK Icrontian
    edited June 2003
    Just like the Voodoo 2 days eh, I doubt it will happen until they slow right down with the current speed that cards are advancing, and I dont see that happening any time soon.

    NS
  • mmonninmmonnin Centreville, VA
    edited June 2003
    Dude I have seen such a card!!

    attachment.php?s=&postid=1352

    Basically, no, no, and......no.

    You can run one AGP and several PCI if needed. Go matrox for that.
  • GargGarg Purveyor of Lincoln Nightmares Icrontian
    edited June 2003
    One time, I installed a Voodoo 2 passthrough card on top of my GeForce. I ran DeusEx in Glide for a few minutes, and then I remembered why I had a GeForce :D.
  • dodododo Landisville, PA
    edited June 2003
    Well, with multimonitors, each display has to process fewer pixels, so it should be hypothetically better to to use more than one video card. However, PCI cards in general are lousy when compared to AGP rivals, and the programming isnt there either, i dont think.

    ~dodo
  • RWBRWB Icrontian
    edited June 2003
    jdii1215 said
    OTOH, There is a card built so thick it claims one AGP and one PCI slot-- It DOES do AGP, DVI, and TV, and it uses multiple GPUs. They do not cooperate to feed one AGP socket though. You would get something that looked like an abstract painting trying that if it even displayed at all.

    John Danielson

    That is NOT what I mean, I have been there, done that.

    What I want to do is get down and dirty and chain link a few cards together. I was hoping maybe there was a guide out there that talked of the wiring process and such for soldering and connecting them. Yes I shall do it, but when is the real question.
  • ClutchClutch North Carolina New
    edited June 2003
    Well good luck. Be sure to take some pics for us to see to.
  • Omega65Omega65 Philadelphia, Pa
    edited June 2003
    2 AGP are not possible

    However under PCI Express (PCI replacement slots due next year) 2 linked Video card MIGHT be possible.

    Also Didn't Quantum3D do something like this back in the Voodoo2 days with up to 4 video cards?? I think the Voodoo5 was supposed to do something like this also. RIP 3DFX
  • SimGuySimGuy Ottawa, Canada
    edited June 2003
    ATI & 3DFX have both played with what you are suggesting. The now infamous Voodoo2 with SLI was the better technology of the 2.

    Remember the ATI Rage Fury Maxx? A 64 MB, 2 GPU video card that rendered alternating frames? When it was first released, it was insanely expensive and utilized the underpowered Rage 128 GPU (or quite possibly the Rage Pro Turbo), making it one of the most short lived ATI products ever created.

    In order to create a "home made" SLI interface, you would have to make the following modifications to your system:

    1) Create a dedicated, multiplexed transfer pathway for data to be shared between each GPU & onboard memory. With the AGP 3.0 specification, 32 signalling lines are used for each video card (24 if you don't utilize Side Band Addressing).

    2) If you created your multiplexed transfer pathway to utilize the same number of signalling lines as AGP, you would have no problem interfacing with the system core logic's AGP controller as long as the controller was designed to be able to handle the amount of data being shunted to it.

    3) You would have to write a device driver for the hardware to correctly function. The easiest approach to this would be to get your linked video cards to render opposite frames, essentially reducing the amount of work each video card must perform on the scene by a factor determined by the number of video cards you have.

    Eg, 4 video cards, rendering alternating frames, would reduce the load on each video card to a total of 25% of the original load.

    4) Finally, you would have to find a way to interlink all of the video card monitor outputs and reduce them to 1 output to interface with the monitor. As well, you would have to find a way for the video cards to output the frames rendered in the correct order. If not, you risk the problem of having frames being displayed that were rendered BEFORE the one on the screen, making it quite difficult to play games (or even utilize the computer) :).

    If you do manage to get any of this to work, it would be neat to see a guide for it.

    //Edit: Has anyone ever heard of an AGP riser card? Essentially a daughterboard that plugs into the AGP slot vertically and allows for additional AGP expansion slots?
  • dodododo Landisville, PA
    edited June 2003
    Yeah, um, that seems difficult. I'll let someone else do it.

    ~dodo
Sign In or Register to comment.