discussion When's the last time you seen a dual GPU graphics card ARC B60 by Maxsun looks very interesting.

[wade7575]

It looks like Intel is being more flexible then AMD and Nvidia and allowing their parts to make dual gpu cards again,from what I'm gathering the B60 in normal configuration is a single gpu but Maxsun is making a dual version of the B60 with 48GB of ram.

I would love it if the Maxsun gpu could encode video at twice the normal speed because if it has 2 gpu's that means it should have 2 compute unit's which is what does the video encoding,if that's the case I think I may just have to get me on of these cards.

 

[Bond007]

Very neat. I can’t picture dual GPU making a comeback for gaming, but for productivity it could be an easy drop in improvement…as long as it’s a similar price to 2 equivalent GPUs.

So 2 x 24gb GPUs, not 48 gb accessible to both.

 

[CMetaphor]

Thought the reason dual GPUs, SLI and Crossfire all died was because everyone realized that making two gpus talk together, wait for each other, etc was just too slow, negating most of the benefits.

That being said, I thought I saw a video on YT of people getting one AMD and one Nvidia working together on the same system with some notable benefits... but for the price, it's probably still better to buy one gpu that's twice as powerful.

Sadly, that fact, and @#$%ing miners / squatters made GPU prices end up as insane as they are today. 2 5k for GPU, hahahaha... NEVER.

Maybe SLI or Crossfire should make a comeback with PCIe 5 interconnect bandwidth? Would be nice to buy, say, a sub-1k GPU and double it up later for more performance.

 

[moocow]

Intel have new B60 and B50 cards too.

Intel B60 and B50 Arc Pro GPU

Just before going to sleep at 3AM, I saw GN's video tearing down a Maxsun B60 x2 card with a total of 48GB of VRAM. According to GN Steve (per what Maxsun told him), each GPU is PCI-E x8 with 24GB of VRAM. But no idea how exactly the bridging works or how it would function in apps that only...

hardwarecanucks.com

 

[wade7575]

Thought the reason dual GPUs, SLI and Crossfire all died was because everyone realized that making two gpus talk together, wait for each other, etc was just too slow, negating most of the benefits.

That being said, I thought I saw a video on YT of people getting one AMD and one Nvidia working together on the same system with some notable benefits... but for the price, it's probably still better to buy one gpu that's twice as powerful.

Sadly, that fact, and @#$%ing miners / squatters made GPU prices end up as insane as they are today. 2 5k for GPU, hahahaha... NEVER.

Maybe SLI or Crossfire should make a comeback with PCIe 5 interconnect bandwidth? Would be nice to buy, say, a sub-1k GPU and double it up later for more performance.

From what I have seen in video's that talked about SLI and Crossfire they have always said it was the software and trying to get the 2 cards to place nice was the problem.

I know from what I have seen with video's where they talk about older cards that had 2 gpu's built into them they weren't twice as powerful but did give a good bump up in performance,I think with some company's they understand that with the cost of stuff today and if the price is going to be more they know they are going to have a good bit more then a little bump,I think with gpu's Intel get's that more then Nvidia.

I look at it that with my B580 right now I get around 1200fps for the encoding that I do and even if I got 1800 to 2000fps that would still be a really jump in performance for what I do the most with my ARC card.

I don't know if it will be twice as powerful as a B580 card in all respect's or if any but for encoding video it's not as much the gpu's as it is the compute unit's that do the heavy lifting and work.

I have never really checked into it if you run 2 B580's on an Intel system that has a 265K or 285K processor or even a 13th gen cpu but from what I have heard that 2 ARC cards running on an Intel board and cpu that's supports the dual ARC cards for workload and productivity stuff you get a big jump for sure and it works flawlessly,but for gaming I don't know how that works.

The B50 and B60 are also what Intel calls their Pro cards meaning they are workload cards and not for gaming and they also use a different driver.

 

[moocow]

The problem is going to be the software that can leverage multiple GPU. For example, Invoke AI and ComfyUI can't use more than 1 GPU. Ollama may be able to do so. Now enterprise level custom AI software could be able to do it but at least at the hobbyist level, not yet. I'm keeping an eye out for this as it's suppose to be half the price of an AMD AI+ 395 with 128GB of unified memory. Also, support for Intel is still not there for some of the software.

 

[wade7575]

The problem is going to be the software that can leverage multiple GPU. For example, Invoke AI and ComfyUI can't use more than 1 GPU. Ollama may be able to do so. Now enterprise level custom AI software could be able to do it but at least at the hobbyist level, not yet. I'm keeping an eye out for this as it's suppose to be half the price of an AMD AI+ 395 with 128GB of unified memory. Also, support for Intel is still not there for some of the software.

Call me selfish but all I really care about is if Handbrake and a few other programs take advantage of a dual gpu

 

[FreeKnight]

Thought the reason dual GPUs, SLI and Crossfire all died was because everyone realized that making two gpus talk together, wait for each other, etc was just too slow, negating most of the benefits.

That being said, I thought I saw a video on YT of people getting one AMD and one Nvidia working together on the same system with some notable benefits... but for the price, it's probably still better to buy one gpu that's twice as powerful.

*snip*

The problem is going to be the software that can leverage multiple GPU. For example, Invoke AI and ComfyUI can't use more than 1 GPU. Ollama may be able to do so. Now enterprise level custom AI software could be able to do it but at least at the hobbyist level, not yet. I'm keeping an eye out for this as it's suppose to be half the price of an AMD AI+ 395 with 128GB of unified memory. Also, support for Intel is still not there for some of the software.

That's roughly what I remember. The last generation or two of SLI/NVLink or Crossfire having issues such as a combination of GPU cores having difficulty 'talking' to each other and that most games weren't able to effectively take advantage and use two discrete GPUs and ended not with 'double' or even 'time and a half' performance bump, but a 20-30% bump at best for 2x the price.

With GPU pricing now, even if 2-3x the price might be cost effective at the 'sub flagship level' for 50% increase, I can't see AMD or Nvidia (espescially Nvidia) wanting to promote that. Why make double the demand for certain cores when you're already struggling to meet your demand plus having to invest more to staff to work on driver support and partner programs for game devs when you can just tell them to suck it up and buy the next tier of card where they make higher margins anyway.

What a lousy time for PCs.

 

[moocow]

Techspot reporting no PLX chip onboard so it will be presented as 2 separate GPUs. Not familiar with PCI-e splitting but I don't think consumer boards can do 16 to 2x8 on the same slot?

Maxsun unveils dual-GPU Intel Battlemage graphics card with 48GB GDDR6 VRAM

The Arc Pro B60 is based on the full-fat Battlemage BMG-G21 silicon - the same die that powers the Arc B570 and Arc B580 graphics cards. Maxsun's...

www.techspot.com

 

[CMetaphor]

Techspot reporting no PLX chip onboard so it will be presented as 2 separate GPUs. Not familiar with PCI-e splitting but I don't think consumer boards and do 16 to 2x8 on the same slot?

Maxsun unveils dual-GPU Intel Battlemage graphics card with 48GB GDDR6 VRAM

The Arc Pro B60 is based on the full-fat Battlemage BMG-G21 silicon - the same die that powers the Arc B570 and Arc B580 graphics cards. Maxsun's...

www.techspot.com

Uh. Weird choice. So the two chips will never function as one, and will only be recognized by motherboards that support pcie bifurcation.

I really don't get why this even exists now. Unless you've got separate workloads for each gpu, AND have pcie bifurcation, AND have only one pcie slot available... there are many better options out there. Like buying two regular cards if you've got two pcie slots?