graphics card GPU clustering?

[Bushman5]

i see this being done for other fields, but can a GPU graphics card cluster be used for gaming?

 

[thefabe]

You'd probably be more informed by simply goggling your question as I did, It seems their is a lot of information on it.
Most of it is about using it for medical imaging uses, reason being that it's just simply overkill for the computations needed for gaming
.
One site clustered 4 dual GPU's in order to render MRI images from a single computer, speed of the rendering was the reason for clustering the 4 dual GPU's.
Then theirs the cost and the fact that special code had to be written to take advantage of the calculations needed for what they were trying to achieve.

Also for gaming purposes their are already boards out that can handle 4 GPU's( which would be considered a cluster of sorts) but you also have to take into consideration bottlenecking since all calculations have to be processed through your CPU and RAM not to mention the game can only be rendered to whatever limit it has been written for.
For instance once you have the game set at all the highest settings more GPU rendering power is no longer needed.

As you question stated you've seen this being used in other fields, but if you think about it it's already being used in gaming when you can run TRI SLI or Quad SlI, which is a cluster of GPU's in itself.

So my GUESS is yes you can use a cluster of GPU's since Quad SLI is available on certain MB's
But then again I could just be way off base that is why I suggest you search for your answer yourself (not trying to be rude) http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GUEA_enUS348US348&q=can+you+cluster+GPU%27s+for+gaming I just think you could narrow down what exactly your looking for in an answer.

Caution I only read a couple of articles on this so please take it easy on me I take corrective criticism well as log as it's done well. Thanks. Fabe

 

[cavemanjim]

i see this being done for other fields, but can a GPU graphics card cluster be used for gaming?

Yes, and no. Clustering inside a single system is possible, and called ATI Crossfire or NVIDIA SLI. Across multiple machines; no, the technology doesn't yet exist AFAIK. There are some interesting concepts with Microsoft RemoteFX technology and AMD Remote Workstation Graphics but I don't think those scale across multiple cards yet, let alone multiple servers.

 

[Bushman5]

ah thanks.....i am familiar with the crossfire concept, though i haven't explored it yet.

basically i was just looking for another "build" project, thought a GPU cluster would be killer for gaming....

 

[cavemanjim]

Actually I just remembered this - distributed OpenCL processing.

MOSIX Virtual OpenCL (VCL) package, which allows OpenCL applications to transparently utilize many GPU devices in clusters. In the VCL run-time environment all the cluster devices are seen as if they are located in each hosting-node – applications need not be aware which nodes and devices are available and where the devices are located. As such, VCL benefits OpenCL applications that can use multiple devices concurrently.

VCL can be used to build powerful parallel GPU based clusters from low-cost multi-core hosting nodes that can utilize cluster-wide (CPU and GPU) resources transparently.

 

[stormy13]

Nothing to add to what has been said already, just want to say hello and welcome to the Seven Forums to cavemanjim. Nice to see him over here from Rage3D, and hope he can stick around some.

 

[sygnus21]

i see this being done for other fields, but can a GPU graphics card cluster be used for gaming?

Yes, and no. Clustering inside a single system is possible, and called ATI Crossfire or NVIDIA SLI. Across multiple machines; no, the technology doesn't yet exist AFAIK. There are some interesting concepts with Microsoft RemoteFX technology and AMD Remote Workstation Graphics but I don't think those scale across multiple cards yet, let alone multiple servers.

Hey everybody, this is the cavemanjim from rage3d. Current technical writer for them. I'll vouch for his knowledge and will say if you want to know about ATI cards/drivers, he's one to ask.

Welcome aboard cavemanjim. Must have been my plea for help earlier that got you here

And thanks for the info here.

 

[cavemanjim]

I've actually been meaning to register here for a while, I found some interesting info here once from teh googlez but never got around to signing up till you put it back on my radar today

 

[sygnus21]

Welcome.

And again, thanks for the help earlier.

Peace