Monday, December 7th 2020

ASRock Rack Unveils M.2 Slot Graphics Card

by
btarunr
 Discuss (46 Comments)
ASRock's enterprise motherboard subsidiary, ASRock Rack, unveiled what is possibly the strangest graphics card, called simply "M.2_VGA." This card uses a Silicon Motion SM750 chip with an embedded memory, and is built in the M.2-2280 form-factor, with an interface that supports both the B-key and M-key slot types. The chip uses a PCI-Express 3.0 x1 host interface, and 16 MB of DDR1 embedded memory. A tiny header on the card puts out analog D-Sub through an expansion bracket, while another takes in 2-pin 12 V power from a Molex connector. While its performance is slightly short for maxed-out "Control" at native 4K with raytracing, you get just enough for a 1080p basic desktop display—which explains why ASRock is selling it through its enterprise subsidiary. The card is meant for servers.

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46 Comments on ASRock Rack Unveils M.2 Slot Graphics Card

#1
btarunr
Editor & Senior Moderator
Scalpers right now:
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#2
R-T-B
btarunrScalpers right now:
Why would scalpers bother with speciality parts that arguably have low demand in the first place?
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#3
OrlyP
^ I think the meme was meant to be a joke.

Although, other than the novel idea, I really don't see the need for such modules when the industry has been embedding the display circuitry on the motherboard for the most part of 30 years.
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#4
Mussels
Freshwater Moderator
OrlyP^ I think the meme was meant to be a joke.

Although, other than the novel idea, I really don't see the need for such modules when the industry has been embedding the display circuitry on the motherboard for the most part of 30 years.
modular IGP could save them money and give a new product to sell...

we'll call it removable integrated but not quite dedicated graphics
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#5
ityrant
seems like a chipset,similar to smartphone phone soc,could be install in future(image that nvidia tegra came back from grave 233:fear:
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#6
Ria33
I think that could be quite handy to someone building a home server on a consumer grade platform like Ryzen, as high core counts CPU don't come with integrated graphics and server grade motherboards with an IPMI module are more expensive and harder to find.
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#7
Tartaros
1080p with 16mb of ddr? Is that even possible?
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#8
Mussels
Freshwater Moderator
Tartaros1080p with 16mb of ddr? Is that even possible?
Uh yeah, ever seen how much dedicated ram intel IGP has?
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#9
Tartaros
MusselsUh yeah, ever seen how much dedicated ram intel IGP has?
I don't know, I always thought they picked everything from the system ram.
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#10
Mussels
Freshwater Moderator
TartarosI don't know, I always thought they picked everything from the system ram.
bingo. That what these will do, too. Just the bare minimum to boot before have access to that.
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#11
Jism
Tartaros1080p with 16mb of ddr? Is that even possible?
Servers dont have fancy OS / GUI's; servers run pretty much on plain text. It's used for a terminal and thats it.
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#12
kayjay010101
Ria33I think that could be quite handy to someone building a home server on a consumer grade platform like Ryzen, as high core counts CPU don't come with integrated graphics and server grade motherboards with an IPMI module are more expensive and harder to find.
Agreed - which is why it's so strange to only sell it through it's enterprise market and probably overcharge it to hell, making it unaffordable and unobtainable for the market that actually wants something like this; homelabbers. This would be very useful for a self-built budget server with consumer parts, but a user like that wouldn't be able to get a card like this until it's dumped on ebay years down the line for a fraction of the price.
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#13
CheapMeat
I want it. If I install it, will drivers show up? If someone from ASrock sees this, can I please buy it.
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#14
Tom Yum
Tartaros1080p with 16mb of ddr? Is that even possible?
1920 X 1080 X 4 (32 bit colour) = 8MB. 16MB would allow for double buffering which is enough to ensure smooth GUI/text performance which is all this thing will do.
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#16
slehmann
Why no HDMI? Can one even buy VGA capable Displays in 2020?
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#17
Fabio Bologna
slehmannWhy no HDMI? Can one even buy VGA capable Displays in 2020?
You can buy KVMs, normally they have vga/usb cable bundles...
The folding consoles that go inside 19" racks normally have the same vga/usb bundles...
Normally if you're in a datacenter the small carts they use for maintenance use really old second hand displays because generally connecting directly to a server you'll just see the usual black console with white text so...
But for example if you use the motherboard for a graphics workstation you may want to remove the integrated or opt to not have an integrated if it's not needed and make windows default graphics card be the dedicated quadro or firepro or whatever...
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#18
Ruru
S.T.A.R.S.
slehmannWhy no HDMI? Can one even buy VGA capable Displays in 2020?
Yes you can. Many basic 1080p monitors still have VGA.
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#19
kayjay010101
slehmannWhy no HDMI? Can one even buy VGA capable Displays in 2020?
Why bother with HDMI when VGA is a lot cheaper and all of the KVMs and infrastructure in datacenters already use VGA as standard? This is for displaying text and very basic graphics, nothing more.
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#20
Fourstaff
This can actually be a possible solution for upgradeable laptop graphics card.
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#21
InVasMani
FourstaffThis can actually be a possible solution for upgradeable laptop graphics card.
Aim high with that 16MB of DDR1 VRAM.
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#22
kayjay010101
FourstaffThis can actually be a possible solution for upgradeable laptop graphics card.
I'm not sure it would be much of an upgrade over anything.
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#23
InVasMani
That's just it if it's new enough to have a M.2 slot it damn well should have better integrated graphics in the first place especially in a laptop. It's current form isn't real impressive, but with a PCIE x4 M.2 and perhaps some HBM/GDDR with a GPU chip it opens up quite a bit of possibilities moving forward. I think it's the implications perhaps Fourstaff was alluding towards. To be fair they already have upgradeable laptop graphics in the form of mClassic.
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#24
Fourstaff
InVasManiAim high with that 16MB of DDR1 VRAM.
Not this chip in particular, but this form factor.
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#25
HammerOn1024
Tom Yum1920 X 1080 X 4 (32 bit colour) = 8MB. 16MB would allow for double buffering which is enough to ensure smooth GUI/text performance which is all this thing will do.
Uhmmm.... no. That's 4-bit color not 32-bit as you've written it; 16 actual colors.
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