Posted on Friday, February 09 2007 @ 21:49 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
The Inq
got their hands on more info about the ATI Radeon X2800 (R600) series. They say the architecture and PCB designs are pretty flexible and that we'll see a bunch of new product based on the R600, R610 and R630 design in the next six months.
ATI is preparing something really, really special. If it manages to pull it off, it will be a breakthrough even Captain Hook couldn't have dreamt of. We are talking about a GPGPU product, the FireStream/Stream Processor board with no less than four (4) Gigabytes of local video memory.
The biggest issue we can think of is the probable requirement for 1024 Mbit GDDR-2/3/4 memory chips, and neither Samsung nor Qimonda is manufacturing them. However, design documents specifically mention 4GB of memory, which made my head dizzy. If they cannot make it, they will release a version with "only" 2GB, but our sources are talking about the ultimate monster board.
The planned design of the board with maximum of four Gigabytes isn't some trick like putting a GPU on an ATX form factor mobo and calling it a "graphics board", the design is a variant of its upcoming top-end 12-inch design.
This board will feature only one DVI connector, but this board is not targeting the world of multiple monitors, rather one where monitors are irrelevant. It will be interesting to see those External CrossFire boxes stacked into an array of GPUs whose sheer power is unrivalled in the computing world.
