Tuesday, October 26th 2010
Zotac Designs GeForce GTX 460 X2 Graphics Card
Zotac is another NVIDIA partner who isn't pleased that the GeForce GTX 480 isn't holding performance leadership, but has the engineering potential to outdo it. Earlier in June, Galaxy showed off a dual Fermi graphics card that makes use of two GF100 graphics processors in the GeForce GTX 465 configuration. Zotac waited for a more mature implementation of the Fermi architecture, found out that the GF104-based GeForce GTX 460 isn't lacking much in performance compared to the GTX 465, with vastly better thermal specifications, and went on to design its latest high-end card, which it now refers to as the Zotac GeForce GTX 460 X2. The card makes use of two GeForce GTX 460 1 GB GPUs in an internal SLI, much like every other dual-GPU NVIDIA card.
The card uses an NVIDIA nForce 200 bridge chip to semaphore and broadcast data between the two GPUs, a dual 3+1+1 phase VRM that draws power from two 8-pin PCI-E power connectors, and display connectivity is relayed to the rear-panel from both the GPUs, that's four dual-link DVI, and one mini-HDMI. What this also means is that with just this one card, you can use the 3D Vision Surround feature, while retaining SLI multi-GPU scaling. If that's not all, there's a SLI connector, which lets you pair this with another card of its kind, for GTX 460 Quad-SLI. Zotac is yet to finalize a cooling solution to suit it best. GF104 could be NVIDIA's easiest route to a dual-GPU graphics card that establishes performance leadership. The GF104 physically has 384 CUDA cores (336 on Zotac's card, since it's in the GTX 460 configuration), and has shown to be capable of high GPU/Shader clock speeds. More details about Zotac's card are awaited.
Source:
Expreview
The card uses an NVIDIA nForce 200 bridge chip to semaphore and broadcast data between the two GPUs, a dual 3+1+1 phase VRM that draws power from two 8-pin PCI-E power connectors, and display connectivity is relayed to the rear-panel from both the GPUs, that's four dual-link DVI, and one mini-HDMI. What this also means is that with just this one card, you can use the 3D Vision Surround feature, while retaining SLI multi-GPU scaling. If that's not all, there's a SLI connector, which lets you pair this with another card of its kind, for GTX 460 Quad-SLI. Zotac is yet to finalize a cooling solution to suit it best. GF104 could be NVIDIA's easiest route to a dual-GPU graphics card that establishes performance leadership. The GF104 physically has 384 CUDA cores (336 on Zotac's card, since it's in the GTX 460 configuration), and has shown to be capable of high GPU/Shader clock speeds. More details about Zotac's card are awaited.
61 Comments on Zotac Designs GeForce GTX 460 X2 Graphics Card
Interesting that they choose to make the card taller to fit the VRM circuitry instead of longer ... could be handy in smaller cases.
quote W1zzard July 12 2010: "The future looks bright for a possible single card dual GPU solution from NVIDIA. If they manage to cram two of these GPUs onto a PCB, couple it with clever power saving mechanisms and release it at a reasonable price, there is no reason to keep the GeForce GTX 480 around."
Spot on W1zz. Sooner the better. Look forward to more details.
Props to Zotac.:respect:
I can't wait to see some reviews and even more so some overclocking numbers, if this thing clocks like most other 460's it will be one hell of a card.
I like the Folding@home potential.
hate the way it looks for some reason:confused:
That is about the current price of a GTX 460 SLI set up right now anyway.Plus they wouldn't do that anyway because it would hinder GTX 480 sales. But if they did release it and it wasn't set to hinder GTX 480 sales that means this card would have to be priced around $500 to $600 bucks. If not more..... Then know one would buy it for sure!
The only upside you could get from this if they charged more would be 4 way SLI.....but buying that for close to $1000 bucks for two would be ridiculous in my eyes.
None the less looks like a cool card.
mixed results typically come with this sort of thing. The sapphire x1950pro dual was a flop but then again the 4850x2 did seem to sell decently and even grabbed the attention of amd/ati to be added into the drivers.
then again sapphire manufactuers most of all amd/ati cards made. So an nvidia partner who doesn't wield that kind of power might not have as easy a time getting one off the ground, at least in mass quantities.
If it's sub-$400, I'd imagine that it would be an incredible seller. Better-than-HD5970 performance for sub-$400? Hell yeah :rockout:
If you put a arctic accelero extreme variation cooler on this, GG ATI.