Best Gaming PC You Could Build With No Budget?
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AMD/ATI has Crossfire (2 cards), CrossfireX (3-4 cards) and Nvidia has SLI (2-3 cards).Lacsapix said:
Interesting.shado_temple said:
So it wouldn't work if it was just for a personal gaming pc?MercurySteam said:
I'm actually not familiar with Crossfire. How does it work putting two GPUs into one motherboard? (Especially crossfiring that one foot behemoth of a GPU earlier)Lacsapix said:
Only partially true. Many workstations are built around server components rather than desktop components.MercurySteam said:
Downside is that server components are optimised for mass parallel data processing rather than high speed processing of only a relatively few tasks like desktops are optimised for.
first you must determine if your Motherboard, PSU and Cpu can handle two GPUs.JNA17 said:
Your motherboard should have 2 pci slots (with some space between them) where you can fit two beasts of GPU size (I had to put my HDD elsewhere so my asus HD6950 could fit).
then clip them together with the crossfire cable or clip.
then mess a bit with Catalyst and your good to go.
You need a certified motherboard for the multi-gpu solution you're using (Crossfire, SLI or Hydra) that will, when the all cards (which must also be certified for multi GPU use) are plugged into the motherboard and connected to each other via 'bridges' (flat cables), allow the system to use all the GPUs in parallel... although not at full efficiency (2 cards running in either Crossfire or SLI will give you about 180% the processing power of a single GPU)... Hydra is a different story again (and currently less efficient than the GPU chipset manufacturers own solutions), but as it's a very young technology it's not worth going into here.JNA17 said:
The AMD HD 6990 is a a dual GPU card itself... so crossfiring a pair of 6990s that are already in dual GPU mode is effectively the same as crossfiring FOUR HD6970s (the 6990 is basically 2 HD 6970s built on the same card - it's a fucking monster of a card and priced accordingly, you can buy a decent gaming rig for the price of a single HD 6990), giving you 340% the processing power of a single HD 6970... not to mention the MASSIVE wad of VRAM you'd have - 8Gb of GDDR5 VRAM. Of course at the moment very few makes of HD 6990 are Crossfire capable... The Asus and HIS ones are the only ones I know for certain that do (and strangely enough, sit at opposite ends of the pricing spectrum).
I've never seen it been done before, so no I don't think it's possible. Intel Xeon CPUs are quite powerful but only work as server CPUs. They can utilize Error-Correcting Code memory and are able to process and store huge amounts of data but they can only use their hardware to serve other computers that connect to them. Severs usually don't even have screens.JNA17 said:
As I posted above, AMD/ATI has Crossfire (2 cards), CrossfireX (3-4 cards) and Nvidia has SLI (2-3 cards). It's done by slotting the cards into PCI-e slots and linking them up with Crossfire (or SLI for Nvidia) bridges. The to be able to properly run one of these setups, you need to have enough slots on your motherboard, and the best performances comes from cards sitting in PCI-e x16 lanes. The more lanes, the more data that the card can process, though only the really expensive Intel mobos ($450+) can run two cards at x16, and the cheaper ones switch down to x8 for each card. Thankfully, any AMD mobo with an 890FX chipset can run two cards both at x16, though they cannot utilise SLI. I think any card set that uses more than two cards can only run at x8 per card.JNA17 said:
All you need to know is that you need two of the same cards (though AMD can run two similar cards in certain circumstances) an interconnecting bridge, a mobo that can handle it and at least at 750W PSU for best performance.
Unless you have a mobo with a Hydra chip... which means as long as the GPU chipset is supported, you can run any 2 cards you want... of course the closer they are in performance the better it works but it's currently the only way you can run an AMD and a nVidia GPU in multi-GPU configuration.MercurySteam said:
On a 'unlimited budget' computer I'd get a Hydra chipped mobo and have a HD 6990 and a GTX 590. Sure, the efficiency rating of Hydra is only about 150-160% of a single card but having the current flagship GPUs of both major GPU chip manufacturers would make my ePeen incalculably huge.
At it's current level it's really only for hardware enthusiasts and mad tinkerers... but it is slowly improving.
Workstations are also more expensive than all but the most over the top gaming rigs...MercurySteam said:
Basically, for the price of a workstation powerful enough to have the computational power to throw at games that would make them run as well as they would on an actual gaming rig you could buy a more modest workstation AND a gaming rig.
Yes, I've known about people who use an Nvidia cards in a Crossfire to utilize its PhysX Processing Unit, but that stuff isn't officially supported and uses custom firmware. It can be done, I just don't know much about it. As for use with another Nvidia card, I've never known anyone who's done it but I'm sure they're out there.Agayek said:
You must mean an unrestricted budget, not NO budget as that implies no money.
I would build something with:
An intel core i7 990x (top processor available).
Gigabyte ga-x58a-ud3r motherboard.
Corsair dominator GT 2000c8 ram.
Thermaltake toughpower 1.5kw power supply.
Seagate barracuda xt 2tb hard drive.
OCZ REVODRIVE pci-express solid state drive.
Radeon hd 6990 4gb Graphics card.
Asus xonar xense soundcard and headset bundle.
Coolermaster v6GT cpu cooler.
Coolermaster haf-X chassis.
Roccat cone+ mouse.
Logitech G19 keyboard.
Roccat alumic mousemat.
Corsair sp2500 speakers.
I would build something with:
An intel core i7 990x (top processor available).
Gigabyte ga-x58a-ud3r motherboard.
Corsair dominator GT 2000c8 ram.
Thermaltake toughpower 1.5kw power supply.
Seagate barracuda xt 2tb hard drive.
OCZ REVODRIVE pci-express solid state drive.
Radeon hd 6990 4gb Graphics card.
Asus xonar xense soundcard and headset bundle.
Coolermaster v6GT cpu cooler.
Coolermaster haf-X chassis.
Roccat cone+ mouse.
Logitech G19 keyboard.
Roccat alumic mousemat.
Corsair sp2500 speakers.