I wasn't able to make it to CES this year, but there were a few items that certainly stood out. The main product was the Dell XPS Renegade 600.
XPS Renegade
The reason this XPS is different than it's sisters, is because that it's the first PC to incorperate use of Quad SLI. Basically, there are four 7800GTX 512MB's superglued together to take up two 16x PCI-E slots. Whether or not current drivers even support Quad SLI, I don't know, but it doesn't matter since we will be waiting a few months to even see benchmarks.
While this is certainly a step forward, is there really a true need? Sure, if you have the cash, spend it. But are there ANY games on the market that would benefit from Quad SLI even at max res?
The computer also is equipped with the top end Intel DC, pre-overclocked to 4.26GHz. Surprisingly, the memory is a stock DDR2 667MHz, rather than 800-1000 to match the rest of the top end setup.
Of course, we will not see a Renegade with an AMD processor. This sucks, because it's evident that AMD's are the CPU of choice for games, so we will have to wait until Quad SLI hits the consumer market before we can test out the tech there.
What's also interesting though, is that in a few leaked images of the inside of the Renegade, there appears to be an actual AGEIA PhysX card. Whether or not this will prove true or not is yet to be seen, but the release date of the Renegade and PhysX are awful close to one another.
What are your opinions on this beast?
XPS Renegade
The reason this XPS is different than it's sisters, is because that it's the first PC to incorperate use of Quad SLI. Basically, there are four 7800GTX 512MB's superglued together to take up two 16x PCI-E slots. Whether or not current drivers even support Quad SLI, I don't know, but it doesn't matter since we will be waiting a few months to even see benchmarks.
While this is certainly a step forward, is there really a true need? Sure, if you have the cash, spend it. But are there ANY games on the market that would benefit from Quad SLI even at max res?
The computer also is equipped with the top end Intel DC, pre-overclocked to 4.26GHz. Surprisingly, the memory is a stock DDR2 667MHz, rather than 800-1000 to match the rest of the top end setup.
Of course, we will not see a Renegade with an AMD processor. This sucks, because it's evident that AMD's are the CPU of choice for games, so we will have to wait until Quad SLI hits the consumer market before we can test out the tech there.
What's also interesting though, is that in a few leaked images of the inside of the Renegade, there appears to be an actual AGEIA PhysX card. Whether or not this will prove true or not is yet to be seen, but the release date of the Renegade and PhysX are awful close to one another.
What are your opinions on this beast?
. They'd really have to work on the bandwidth side to keep all of those cards running smoothly. There's no way you could push enough video to them all lol. It'd be great though you'll have at steady fps of what? 250.. 300? I really see that only as a help to video and cad companies. I'm sure Pixar would love to have a couple of those. I couldn't imagine any game using 2gigs worth of video memory. The one's today don't benifit greatly by the 512 cards. They just don't have the processes to fill all of it up. But imagine the look on your friends face when he sees them though. Priceless.
