ASUS Designs Monster Dual-GTX285 4GB Graphics Card 212
suraj.sun writes to mention that ASUS has just designed their own monster graphics card based on the GeForce GTX 295. While the card retains the GeForce GTX 295 name, same device ID, and remains compatible with existing NVIDIA drivers, ASUS has made a couple of modifications to call its own. "the company used two G200-350-B3 graphics processors, the same ones that make the GeForce GTX 285. The GPUs have all the 240 shader processors enabled, and also have the complete 512-bit GDDR3 memory interface enabled. This dual-PCB monstrosity holds 32 memory chips, and 4 GB of total memory (each GPU accesses 2 GB of it). Apart from these, each GPU system uses the same exact clock speeds as the GeForce GTX 285: 648/1476/2400 MHz (core/shader/memory)."
Re:GDDR3 (Score:1, Informative)
If your GDDR5 alone made your card faster people would care. It doesn't.
Re:So, when will be be getting dual-PSU cases... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:GDDR3 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Dual GPU card (Score:3, Informative)
So what happens when you SLI two of these badboys together?
The card supports quad-SLI, so I guess you just end up with 4 285s in SLI.
Re:GDDR3 (Score:3, Informative)
Ah, 448-bit vs 256-bit on the 4870. Didn't catch that, thanks for the correction.
Re:I surrender. (Score:2, Informative)
Graphics cards have their dedicated BIOS on-board.
Re:I feel nerd-emasculated (Score:3, Informative)
How can you compare something that costs $80,000 (plus running costs) to something that costs $800?
The other big difference is that this thing will be "normal" in a couple of years and only cost $100. Mid-range PCs will have this as standard.
A Hummer, OTOH, will still be just as expensive and just as stupid.
His analogy with the offroad makes sense... If you are familiar with off roading. My old First Generation 1989 4Runner will destroy a Hummer H2 offroad, and I am in the process of buying another rolling chassis for it today. Total cost? $500.00 off of Craigslist.
A H2 is something that APPEARS to do well off road, but in reality it does not. Plus, when parts come flying off of your offroading vehicle (and if you are doing real off roading, THEY WILL FLY OFF) replacing those parts on a old 4Runner is cheaper than a H2.
So, his analogy is valid. A offroad nerd can get much more out of a 1st gen 4Runner than an H2, in the same way an IT nerd can get more out of a non-4GB card than the twit that likes to drop $800/month on his gaming system.
Re:All we need now... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I wonder... (Score:2, Informative)
No, Windows can only access 3.5GB of system memory, the remaining 0.5GB will be mapped above 4GB in the physical address space. When you have lots of PCI devices in the system, they take up some space in the physical address space. So if your PCI(E) devices take up 1GB of space, the BIOS will fit less of that 4GB of RAM into the 4GB physcial address space. Your PCI devices would would already be allocating BARs like I said earlier. Like AC said, you can enable PAE to reclaim some of that lost space. I know there is a flag in XP (Run:msconfig, Advanced:) to enable PAE, but I don't know if that has any effect.
Re:So, when will be be getting dual-PSU cases... (Score:3, Informative)
This monster demanded vast amounts of power. So they designed an external power supply that plugged into the back of it.
Never saw the light of day; 3dfx collapsed after only a small number had been manufactured, and now they change hands for a small fortune from time to time on the collectors' market.
Re:So, when will be be getting dual-PSU cases... (Score:3, Informative)
Except you can't do that. A 4870x2 is already crossfired on the card itself. Quad crossfire involves two of those cards. Four of them would need 8 way crossfire, which ATi does not have support for.
Nor, for that matter, would such a thing be useful. You do not get linear scaling with multiple SLI/crossfire cards. As you start tacking more on, your gains rapidly decrease. About the only case where it would be useful is for extremely high resolution displays, but we are talking beyond 2560x1600.
You are also misreading their benchmarking. They are measuring the system power draw. So that means the power figure is for the total consumption of all hardware, including CPU and such, not the GPUs alone. Also, this is wall power draw. PSUs are not 100% efficient, they are about 80-85% efficient when you have a good one. So for every 100 watts they draw from the socket, they output only 80-85 watts to the PC. However the ratings they give are output ratings, not input ratings. So a 1000 watt PSU would, under full load, would draw around 1250 watts, perhaps more (PSUs are less efficient at full load than half load).
Thus their system in that example is asking the PSU to supply about 600 watts with 2 4870s.
A 1kw PSU really will do the trick for any system you are likely to build, even high end ones. Yes you can find hardware that if put all together would need more. No you aren't going to put that in your desktop. 1000 watts will do you fine for an OC'd quad core, two high end video cards, a bunch of disks, and so on.
Re:I feel nerd-emasculated (Score:3, Informative)
That wasn't his point. The point was that for somebody who actually knows what the heck he's doing, it's overkill. By a wide margin. On a par with the Killer NIC. Yes, it will perfrom a little better. But for a real world application, it's really not worth the added cost.
Case in point, my laptop has a Core 2 Duo @ 1.66GHz, 2GB of RAM, and a 256MB GeForce 8600M GT. It's driving a 1680x1050 LCD. The lappy is getting a little long in the tooth... it'll be 2 years old in September. But it's still plenty powerful enough for every game I play. There's not a game on the market that won't run on the laptop, and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone when I say that the game mechanics and fun factor are what keeps me playing a game, not the poly count or photo realism.
You can play any game out there on a $100 video card. Why on earth would you spend $1000 on one, if not for bragging rights?