X-bit labs

Nvidia, Dell Demo 4-Way Multi-GPU Technology.

Category: Video

by Anton Shilov

[ 01/05/2006 | 03:36 PM ]

Dell, the world’s largest maker of personal computers, and Nvidia Corp., a leading designer of graphics processing units, on Thursday demonstrated the world’s first personal computer (PC) for gamers that features four graphics processors thanks to Quad Scalable Link Interface (SLI) technology. In addition to the ultra-fast graphics sub-system, the forthcoming Dell XPS 600 Renegade will use overclocked Intel dual-core chip.

“Today’s demonstration of the new Dell XPS 600 Renegade with our Quad SLI technology takes gaming to new levels,” said Dan Vivoli, executive vice president of marketing at NVIDIA.

The Dell XPS 600 Renegade will be equipped with Intel Pentium Extreme Edition dual-core processor 955 (3.46GHz) overclocked to 4.26GHz, 2GB of PC2-5400 (667MHz) memory, specially designed graphics cards each carrying two NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX graphics processors with 512MB of memory per chip (2GB in total), Western Digital Raptor hard disk drives and so on.

Dell XPS 600 Renegade PC will be a limited edition computer featuring state-of-the-art components and offering breakthrough performance both overall and in graphics-demanding applications. According to Nvidia, the new Quad SLI technology will allow users to run even the latest and most-demanding games in resolution of up to 2560x1600 at comfortable frame-rates as well as enable 32x full-scene antialiasing.

“The ability to run today's hottest titles in extreme HD resolutions with all the eye candy turned on is absolutely amazing. Strap yourself in, because you are in for the ride of your life,” Mr. Vivoli added.

The Dell XPS 600 Renegade will be available this spring at undisclosed price.

Rumours about 4-way SLI graphics solutions have been floating around for some time now, for instance, recently it was said that Nvidia was aiming to allow such a capability in its ForceWare Release 90 drivers scheduled to arrive in early 2006.

While the cost of 4-way multi-GPU solution is unlikely to be lower than $1800 - $2000 or more only for graphics sub-system, provided that the drivers work fine, end users who agree to pay that amount of money are likely to get unbelievable performance. Even ATI Technologies, who first doubted about the success of multi-GPU technologies in the desktop space, recently said that 4-way multi-GPU was possible on the enthusiast market. Furthermore, technology may become very interesting for professionals seeking for the highest performance possible. 

As part of this technology demonstration, the Dell XPS 600 Renegade Quad SLI PC will be on display in the Dell booth and Nvidia booth at Consumer Electronics Show 2006, January 5-8^th, at the Las Vegas Convention Center.