Sapphire presents multichip Radeon9800PRO MAXX

Posted on Monday, September 22 2003 @ 16:18 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck

During a meeting at the Computex 2003 exhibition in Taiwan Sapphire had a very interesting prototype to present, the Radeon 9800PRO MAXX! This card has 2 Radeon 9800PRO chipsets on it.

The technicians from Sapphire have had some hard work to get two R350 chips on one card, especially problems of thermal nature. This card is far from mainstream production process, and most likely it will never hit the shops.

But they write that it still remains extremely interesting that Sapphire has been able to develop this type of technology. Maybe in future they will be experimenting even more with multichip solutions, so maybe we can expect a dual chip R420 card from Sapphire.

If those things will ever retail then one thing is sure ; these will be extremely expensive.

Source : Hardware Upgrade

About the Author

Thomas De Maesschalck

Thomas has been messing with computer since early childhood and firmly believes the Internet is the best thing since sliced bread. Enjoys playing with new tech, is fascinated by science, and passionate about financial markets. When not behind a computer, he can be found with running shoes on or lifting heavy weights in the weight room.

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Re: Sapphire presents multichip Radeon9800PRO MAXX
by Anonymous on Monday, September 22 2003 @ 18:28 CEST

"most likely it will never hit the shops"

Too bad... I wonder if they realize the potential demand for something like this...

Reply by Anonymous on Monday, September 22 2003 @ 18:35 CEST

want want want want want want want want want want want want want want want want want want want want want want want want want want want want want want want want want want want want want want want want want want want want want want want want want want want want want want want want want want want want want want want want
Reply by Anonymous on Monday, September 22 2003 @ 20:33 CEST

um potential demand is VERY very low..

most of the cards sold are 9100s, or 9500s/9600s...

only like 5-10% of their sales are the high end cards..
- Reply by Anonymous on Tuesday, September 23 2003 @ 2:03 CEST
  
  True, but at $700-$1000/card...
  
  I'd buy one or two... probably two... one for the dually, one for the nf7... :)

Re: Sapphire presents multichip Radeon9800PRO MAXX
by Anonymous on Monday, September 22 2003 @ 18:39 CEST

Once DDRII becomes much faster and cheaper, and when PCI-X or PCI-Express become mainstream, maybe then we'll see something like this on the market.

I can only imagine the amount of bandwidth that monster could eat up if it were ever given the chance.

Reply by Anonymous on Monday, September 22 2003 @ 19:18 CEST

This has to be the holy grail of video cards!!
If it hits the market I know one card that will be buried, MY VISA CARD!!
- Reply by Anonymous on Monday, September 29 2003 @ 6:26 CEST
  
  u r the champ. ^^b

Re: Sapphire presents multichip Radeon9800PRO MAXX
by Anonymous on Monday, September 22 2003 @ 19:21 CEST

Well, yes and no. If you figure that you're running something at 2048x1536, each GPU will only have to handle a 1024x1536 image (assuming it's done the same way Voodoo did it...), and that's not THAT big of a deal. Of course it could benefit from more memory bandwidth, but even with two normal R9800 chips, it'd still have what... 64GB/s? (the R9800 is 32GB/s, right?)

Reply by Anonymous on Monday, September 22 2003 @ 19:32 CEST

Didn't the first MAXX do every other frame per chip?
- Reply by Anonymous on Monday, September 22 2003 @ 20:11 CEST
  
  yes, ATI's MAXX technology did what is known as AFR, or alternate frame rendering. They said it is better principle than SLI (scan line interrleave, the voodoo cards did that), because, unlike SLI, both cards have to do the same amount of work.
- Reply by Anonymous on Monday, September 22 2003 @ 20:14 CEST
  
  I don't know how the original maxx did it, but it would seem to me that doing every other frame would not work very well...
Reply by Anonymous on Monday, September 22 2003 @ 23:44 CEST
Reply by Anonymous on Tuesday, September 23 2003 @ 3:11 CEST

The original Rage Fury MAXX used Alternate Frame Rendering (AFR) instead of Scan Line Interleave (SLI) like the Voodoo chips. That resulted in better image quality, since SLI didn't always line up the images correctly...

Re: Sapphire presents multichip Radeon9800PRO MAXX
by Anonymous on Monday, September 22 2003 @ 19:32 CEST

Heh! ;) I'd buy that 4 a $ !!

Re: Sapphire presents multichip Radeon9800PRO MAXX
by Anonymous on Monday, September 22 2003 @ 21:47 CEST

the thing that bothers me is that..it has the same number of ram chips..

Reply by Anonymous on Monday, September 22 2003 @ 22:23 CEST

its a bloody hoax you dimwits.

look at the reflection of the card in the glass surface.

see how there is a LING there? that extra bit on the end of the card is fake.

GULLIBLE.
Reply by Anonymous on Monday, September 22 2003 @ 22:27 CEST

We don't have an image of the layout on the back though. Remember this is a custom PCB design, so they very likely have put stuff on the other side as well.
Reply by Anonymous on Tuesday, September 23 2003 @ 2:36 CEST

I want 1

Re: Sapphire presents multichip Radeon9800PRO MAXX
by Anonymous on Monday, September 22 2003 @ 22:52 CEST

I think its easier to design a chip from the ground up with double the number of pipelines for everything and that should be a more efficient and cost effective solution.

Re: Sapphire presents multichip Radeon9800PRO MAXX
by Anonymous on Monday, September 22 2003 @ 23:06 CEST

useless!

i can buy much higher frequency cpu! with premiermum MB with a set of premiermun mems

Reply by Anonymous on Monday, September 22 2003 @ 23:13 CEST

and what will that give you? Video Game Performance is still directly related to the video card. So even if you spent your saved money on the better CPU, mobo, RAM as oposed to this card, your games still would never look as smooth.

Re: Sapphire presents multichip Radeon9800PRO MAXX
by Anonymous on Tuesday, September 23 2003 @ 0:35 CEST

look like just another Dule monitor card to me?> Did they say it was anything else?

Reply by Anonymous on Tuesday, September 23 2003 @ 1:10 CEST

um did you notice the fact that it has two hsf on it, and there for 2 cores...

Re: Sapphire presents multichip Radeon9800PRO MAXX
by Anonymous on Tuesday, September 23 2003 @ 6:27 CEST

Mmmm, no thanks.
I love the single chip radeons...
But I also used to own a Ati Rage Fury MAXX :s

I think it is a fake...
by Anonymous on Tuesday, September 23 2003 @ 7:17 CEST

After looking at the larger image from the souce website, you can see some strange things. The reflection of the card's orange-ish color stops where the original card would have stopped (just past the AGP support). There are also no fiducual marks (those black circles with the shiny dot in center) to aid in the placement of the second core. Without those the skew of the core would be out of tolerance, and it would fail. The card also all but completely covers their ATI sign behind it, which is out of par for a display.

Maybe someone with good image skills can take the larger photo from the source website and dissect it...

Reply by Anonymous on Wednesday, September 24 2003 @ 23:46 CEST

Well, if you look at the reflection, it's the reflection of the heatsink that's blocking the reflection of the pcb. I don't think it's fake.

Re: Sapphire presents multichip Radeon9800PRO MAXX
by Anonymous on Thursday, September 25 2003 @ 6:29 CEST

Nah look, it's got to be bollocks.

You can see the reflection below the card off the table.
Look, you can see the reflection of the AGP slot at the bottom, but notice there's no reflection of the second HS/F on the right hand side at all? The reflection shows only the PCB with no fan, so it's got to be fake ;)

Bob

Reply by Anonymous on Thursday, September 25 2003 @ 14:35 CEST

What you are seeing is 3 things.

1) The card. (DUH)
2) The reflection of the card. But only the AGP connector, as:

3) A second card of somesort lying where the reflection would be.

Re: Sapphire presents multichip Radeon9800PRO MAXX
by Anonymous on Thursday, September 25 2003 @ 6:54 CEST

there are two cards there, one upright and one laying down, if you look close enough you can start to see the reflection of the back heatsink, once you get to the end of the card laying down.

Re: Sapphire presents multichip Radeon9800PRO MAXX
by Anonymous on Thursday, September 25 2003 @ 9:10 CEST

The previous MAXX boards did not work by rendering every second frame like the voodoos. The two VPUs share the load by rendering alternate frames.

Reply by Anonymous on Thursday, September 25 2003 @ 18:08 CEST

Actually, the VSA-100s worked by rendering alternate horizontal chunks of anywhere from 1 to 32 pixels high (normally). I believe the Rage Fury MAXX cards rendered every second frame.

Re: Sapphire presents multichip Radeon9800PRO MAXX
by Thomas De Maesschalck (lsdsmurf@dvhardware.net) on Thursday, September 25 2003 @ 11:36 CEST

This photo is taken at Computex 2003, so it is not a fake.

There are two cards on the picture. Why would anyone try to fake a card and a reflection? Wouldn't it be easier to leave out the reflection?

Reply by Anonymous on Saturday, September 27 2003 @ 2:43 CEST

if you look at the chip on the board, you'll see that it says:
Ati Rage theater.. is't that a bit old?

Re: Sapphire presents multichip Radeon9800PRO MAXX
by Anonymous on Saturday, September 27 2003 @ 2:44 CEST

if you look at the chip on the board, you'll see that it says:
Ati Rage theater.. is't that a bit old?

Reply by Anonymous on Saturday, September 27 2003 @ 7:37 CEST

Ati Rage Theather is Video in/out encoding/decoding chip. Newest version is Rage Theather 200

Re: Sapphire presents multichip Radeon9800PRO MAXX
by Anonymous on Monday, February 16 2004 @ 18:27 CET

i know everyone says that high end cards are only 10-15% of sales but if you offer people a incredable high end card that is worth buying alot more will be sold!

Alot of people are regular income so the regular gaming cards will be sold alot more which is normal stats...

But offer this incredable card that everyone has been waitng for that destroy's anything out there and to come it will sell like hotcakes!!!

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