Quad SLI Supercomputer

Want a supercomputer on a budget? How about letting 4 "regular" graphic cards do the work?

By using four GeForce 9800GX2 (each one effectively being 2 graphic cards in one board) these researchers at Antwerp UNniversity were able to use the imense power of the 8 available GPUs to drastically improve the render time of 3D tomography scans.

What used to take hours in a 4 Quad-core PC cluster can now be easily done in about 30 seconds.

And of course, it must handle gaming (Crysis jumps to mind) quite well - I imagine. :)

Check the video:



If you're interested in building a similar rig:

• AMD Phenom 9850 processor + Scythe Infinity CPU cooler
• 4 x MSI 9800GX2 graphics card
• 4x 2GB Corsair Twinx DDR2 PC6400 memory
• MSI K9A2 Platinum motherboard
• Samsung Spinpoint F1 750GB HDD
• ThermalTake Toughpower 1500W Modular PSU
• Lian-Li PC-P80 Armorsuit case
• Windows XP 64-bit

That's about 4,000 Euros worth of computing power which is considered "cheap" in academic terms.

via [Engadget]