Nvidia Confirms No P2P On GeForce Cards By Forcing Expensive Pro Cards

The GeForce RTX 4090 is among the greatest graphics playing cards for gaming, however shoppers have additionally discovered different makes use of for the Ada Lovelace flagship, similar to content material creation, machine studying, and scientific workloads. However the GeForce RTX 4090 could also be dropping its enchantment as an Nvidia worker confirmed that the graphics card does not help P2P (peer-to-peer) performance.

In brief, P2P is a neat know-how that debuted on Nvidia graphics playing cards just a few years in the past. This characteristic principally acts as a freeway between the 2 Nvidia graphics playing cards. P2P permits knowledge transmission from one graphics card’s reminiscence to a different, bypassing the reminiscence within the system. It is a terrific characteristic for customers working with CUDA packages as a result of P2P hastens reminiscence entry and switch versus knowledge having to undergo system reminiscence.

Puget Systems (opens in new tab) just lately ran completely different multi-GPU benchmarks on AMD and Intel methods and found that P2P was partially damaged on the GeForce RTX 4090. The publication famous that P2P-related workloads both fail or are corrupted. When P2P is enabled, the simpleP2P check will fail. An Nvidia proprietor documented the problem (opens in new tab) again in November final yr, it detailed that commonplace Nvidia assessments failed when a system had two GeForce RTX 4090 graphics playing cards. Months later, an Nvidia worker The topic has been answered (opens in new tab) and confirmed that the GeForce RTX 4090 doesn’t help P2P.

“Hello all. Sorry for the delay. Engineering suggestions is that Peer-to-Peer will not be supported within the 4090. Purposes/driver shouldn’t report this configuration as peer-to-peer succesful. Reporting is being mounted and future drivers will report the next as a substitute,” wrote the Nvidia consultant .

It really works by way of P2P, PCIe or Nvidia’s NVLink. The benefit of utilizing NVLink is that you just take pleasure in decrease latency and considerably extra bandwidth. The humorous factor is that even GeForce RTX 10 sequence (Pascal) choices help P2P over PCIe. Sadly, GeForce RTX 20 sequence (Turing) graphics playing cards have been the final technology to help P2P. Nevertheless, P2P help is barely accessible by way of the NVLink bridge, successfully limiting the full variety of graphics playing cards per system to 2. Earlier GeForce RTX 30 sequence (Ampere) graphics playing cards additionally lack P2P help, as evidenced by assessments from Puget Techniques.

When you assume deeply about this, it is easy to know why Nvidia is progressively dropping help for P2P on GeForce graphics playing cards. The chipmaker has all the time accepted of shoppers to make use of their mainstream merchandise for something however gaming. Nevertheless, again within the Ampere days, it was heard that some system integrators have been beginning to use cooler variations of the GeForce RTX 3090 as a substitute of the higher-priced Quadro alternate options to ship cost-effective server merchandise. Consequently, it did not take lengthy for GeForce RTX 3090 fan graphics playing cards to be pulled from the market.

It is undoubtedly not good for enterprise when you could have a $1,599 GeForce RTX 4090 that outperforms the $6,800 RTX 6000 Island Gen in its area. Since you do not need to degrade your product’s efficiency simply because it would let your competitor win, you need to discover different methods to separate your mainstream choices out of your skilled and workstation components, like taking part in round with the characteristic set. For instance, the RTX 6000 Ada Era, which additionally lacks NVLink, has P2P help, in keeping with Puget Techniques. Nevertheless, the GeForce RTX 4090 and RTX 6000 Ada Era are on the identical Ada Lovelace structure and use the identical AD102 silicon; producer.

Not all Nvidia’s A-series choices, previously Quadro, are unhealthy; There are some promoting factors similar to licensed drivers for sure skilled functions, higher software program compatibility, and extra VRAM. Nevertheless, you find yourself paying an enormous premium for these options. If P2P is essential in your day by day enterprise life, when you have a price range, the RTX 6000 Island Era is for you. The earlier RTX A6000, which value $4,650, remains to be accessible and likewise helps NVLink in addition to P2P.