Thursday, December 21st 2006
Sapphire producing dual processor X1950pro
Sapphire Technology, a leading manufacturer of ATI graphics cards, has a new card nicknamed The Godfather. The card features two X1950pro graphics processing units and has been built to the 9" riser board standards, utilising a single 16x PCI-Express slot. According to Sapphire, this card performs similarly to two X1950pros in Crossfire. If the card uses the same speeds as standard X1950pros then it can be expected to have core speeds of 575MHz and memory at 700MHz, although this might be reduced if there are heat issues. The card appears to be crossfire capable, so it is likely that two of them could be used together for "Quad-Crossfire".
Source:
DailyTech
60 Comments on Sapphire producing dual processor X1950pro
Long answer: The X1950XT core, which is really just a R580(90nm) used in the X1900XT/X and X1950XTX, puts out a lot of heat compared to the R570 used in the X1950Pro(80nm). The X1950XT cores requires a two slot cooler just to cool a single one, while the x1950Pro gets away with a single slot cooler. So if they were to put two X1950XT cores on one card, even a double slot cooler might not be enough to keep the card cool.
FINALLY SOMEONE DECIDES TO MAKE A DUAL CORE GRAPHICS CARD!!! :D (imagine... Octa Crossfire, not quad)
Octa-Crossfire.... I wonder when will PCs consume moore power than your air con....
Now of course, if you really jack up the clock speed(like the 7900GTX vs. 7800GTX) the power consumption will be a lot closer, but then again, performance will be a lot better also. Just like the other areas of the computer(CPU/RAM).
a) get smaller
b) get cooler and
c) use less power :p
and yet in a year a Kw psu will be the standard for us overclockers, gamers, and enthusiasts....
Should have invested the R&D to dual up on the new chips, instead of dualing the old chips that will be obsolete here shortly.
There is an exception to this right now - I'd bet if you weren't getting free upgrade to Vista with every copy of XP purchased, nobody would be buying an OS or new PC at the moment.