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Gigabyte's 3D1 brings SLI to a single card

Posted by Hemos on from the good-coverage dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Gigabyte have implemented nVidia's SLI on a single graphics board, dubbed the "3D1." The card features two GeForce 6600GT cores (I would imagine two 6800 cores would draw too much power and create too much heat for a single PCB.) Hexus.net have a review of the board, which in various tests was able to compete with a 6800GT, but will it be marketed at a favourable price? You may also want to read Hexus' article - 'An Introduction to SLI' - for a look at how SLI technology works."

8 of 153 comments (clear)

  1. multicore GPU's by confusion · · Score: 3, Interesting
    This seems like a lot to pack onto a single board - heat and power for sure. With all the talk from AMD & Intel about multi-core CPUs, a multi-core GPU seems like the best plan. Otherwise, we're going to be back to the full length PCI cards soon.

    Jerry
    http://www.syslog.org/

  2. If I read the article right by stupidfoo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's basically the a little less than performance of the 6800 at the cost of the 6800, but with more heat than the 6800. Didn't the multiple 6600s perform better than this at a lower cost?

    Am I missing something here?

    And what's this all about? Putting a video card on the carpet? Or a towel? Static electricity kills, people!

  3. Son of a bitch ! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

    I just ordered a dual 6600GT setup from Newegg and here this thing is about to be released.

  4. Gigabyte's Designs by Hiigara · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I can't figure out what Gigabye's roadmap is. I mean, the dual 6600GTs on a single card came out of no where. Now there is the dual PCI express board coming out that allows any two Video Cards to run in parellel, it's not SLI. Now they come out with this.

    I dunno what they have in mind, but they sure are stiring things up a bit, but arn't they risking alienating nVidia with these "almost" SLI competetor alternatives?

  5. Re:PCBs by ppanon · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Sure but the interface specs for AGP, PCI, et al. specify how much power a card can draw. If you try to draw too much power it may stress components on the motherboard and lead to failure. Perhaps the parent meant that putting two 6800 cores on a single board would draw power in excess of the maximum ratings for AGP or PCI-X?

    --
    Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
  6. Re:Some numbers for you by crazy_pikachu · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I wonder what the performance would be if you put 2 of these cards on the SLI board. that would be #$%@ing NUTS

  7. Re:PCBs by hughk · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Having worked with dinosaurs, well at least later generations, I can assure you that modern PCs aren't that dense from a thermal viewpoint. The higher-end dinosaurs had the chips sitting in special modules that provided thermal coupling. Unfortunately, you are certainly going to break the ATX spec if you start to generate so much heat and get rid of it.

    Liquid cooling will do it easily, but it would be unusual and non-standard to require it,

    --
    See my journal, I write things there
  8. Re:Why? by master_p · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I've bought an 6800 GT thinking that it just might be able to run Half Life 2 and Doom 3 on my Athlon 3400+. Guess what? the game runs at a very respectable frame rate, over 80 FPS, with all settings maxed out at 1280x1024, except for the anti-aliasing, which I tried it and I saw no real difference (x8 and x2 looks the same; you have to have a very trained eye to spot the difference; and in the heat of the action, it's not important). So I think the press overreacted a little for those two games...I think that they can be run nicely on a lower setting than mine, especially HL2 which scales very well to lower spec machines.