Any Dual GPU NVIDIA cards coming out soon?

[Butch]

I still am running my GTX295 and want to update to a DirectX 11 card.

Is there any news of an NVIDIA Dual GPU card in the near future?

Thanks,
Butch

[Pehu]

Why do you need to have a dual GPU part? A GTX480 is already faster than a GTX295 and a GTX580 is 'then some'. Why not simply go with the GTX580? I don't see what added value 'forcing' dual GPU gives - quite the opposite.

[Meridian]

Given the heat and power issues, it doesn't seem likely. Not at the top end anyway.


M

[jethro]

Given the heat and power issues, it doesn't seem likely. Not at the top end anyway.


M

That's always the case. The GTX295 was somewhere between a 260 and 275 when 285 was the top chip. 5970s are downclocked 15%.

I could easily see a dual 460 card, heat and power would not be an issue.

[Meridian]

That's always the case. The GTX295 was somewhere between a 260 and 275 when 285 was the top chip. 5970s are downclocked 15%.

I could easily see a dual 460 card, heat and power would not be an issue.

This is all true, but illustrates the big problem: what will you charge, and will it make money at that? You can only really do it with lower-to-middle range hardware, and it may not actually scale well enough to beat the top model. If the design costs more than you can realistically charge the customers due to the performance, then you are out of luck. So if your dual 460 has the performance of (and this is probably about right) a 475, then you can't charge more than a 475 cost for it. But you already have a 475, so why spend the money on development? You would need to end up with something better than a 480, and by a margin, for that game to work.


M

[jethro]

This is all true, but illustrates the big problem: what will you charge, and will it make money at that? You can only really do it with lower-to-middle range hardware, and it may not actually scale well enough to beat the top model. If the design costs more than you can realistically charge the customers due to the performance, then you are out of luck. So if your dual 460 has the performance of (and this is probably about right) a 475, then you can't charge more than a 475 cost for it. But you already have a 475, so why spend the money on development? You would need to end up with something better than a 480, and by a margin, for that game to work.


M

If this happens, my guess is it will be a full version of GF104 and priced at $600. I think that would be both profitable and buildable. (as well as outperform a GTX580)

Furthermore, I don't even know of it would be important for such a card to beat ATi's upcoming dual core part- the feature set and being able to do single card 3d Vision Surround and NVidia Surround would be big selling points.

If I could have a card like that with 90% of the performance of an ATi dual core card, I'd take the nV card because let's face it, once you get into that realm of performance the differences in fps have hugely diminishing returns and feature set is what matters.

[Keven]

Why do you need to have a dual GPU part? A GTX480 is already faster than a GTX295

Not quite. The GTX 480 is faster but the GTX 295 can hold its own against the card and is faster on some of the benchmarks that PCPer posted. This is why I didn't exchange my GTX 295 for a 480 when it came out. I was completely unimpressed with the GTX 480 and opted not to upgrade.

That being said, I will be upgrading to the GTX 580.

[JackVancouverBC]

Galaxy showed a prototype PCB of a dual GPU 470, but now that the 400 series is nearing EOL, I'm thinking this might not surface again:

[3dfxrain]

I got impatient about a month ago. I think two separate cards for SLI were good enough.

[Sansa]

:edit: I fail at reading.
Anyway, I kind of hate that Nvidia/ATI waits to edit their cards after their competition releases stuff. Means they aren't pumping out their best when it happens.

[Butch]

Thanks for the great replies!

I think I'll wait a little longer to see the NVIDIA dual GPU cards. My GTX 295 still fills my needs I just thought DX11 would be nice.

Butch