X-bit labs

X-bit labs CeBIT 2005 Coverage: Day 4 (page 4)

Category: Editorial

by Anton Shilov

[ 03/14/2005 | 03:41 PM ]

Shuttle Likes it Hot: NVIDIA SLI Barebone Demonstrated

The mania for multi-GPU is around the whole show – nearly every maker of more or less advanced mainboards has a platform that supports two graphics cards in its booth and at least three companies have dual-GeForce 6600 GT graphics cards in the lineup. The maker of barebones that are supposed to be small and quiet – Shuttle Computer – also has its dual graphics card capable product that is meant to deliver exceptional performance in 3D applications.

Shuttle is fairly tight-lipped over its barebone powered by NVIDIA’s nForce4 SLI chipset. The machine is exposed in a backroom and the company does not allow taking pictures of the product. Still, some details about the world’s most powerful PC barebone have been revealed.

The nForce4 SLI barebone theoretically allows installation of two GeForce 6600 GT, 6800 or 6800 GT graphics cards. Shuttle is expected to provide a special cooling solution for reference design GeForce 6800 GT boards. But this is not an easy task: the GeForce 6600 GT graphics cards used to render the 3DMark05 benchmark during the showcase were extremely hot – it was impossible to touch even their print circuit boards, not talking about memory or areas close to the backside of the graphics chip itself. Given that the GeForce 6800 GT consumes even more power, cooling it down is probably a more tough job.

The multi-GPU ready barebone will come in Shuttle’s well-known P-series chassis with 350W power supply unit, which, according to the company, will be enough for two GeForce 6800 GT graphics card and almost any AMD64 microprocessor.

The barebone is expected to emerge for sale within the next month or two, if the development proceeds properly.