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Hardware Sapphire Demonstrates HD 2600 Dual
Anh Tuan Huynh (Blog) - June 5, 2007 10:18 AM

14 comment(s) - last by DingieM.. on Jun 6 at 4:11 AM

Sapphire packs two ATI Radeon HD 2600 GPUs on a single card

Sapphire Technology is demonstrating the follow-up to the X1950 Pro Dual at Computex 2007. The new graphics card is based on AMD’s recently announced -- but not shipping -- ATI Radeon HD 2600 graphics processor. The product is still in development and unnamed. However, the prototype card features two ATI Radeon HD 2600 GPUs in CrossFire mode.

The two GPUs are joined together by the same PLX PCIe bridge chip as the Sapphire X1950 Pro Dual. Each ATI Radeon HD 2600 GPU feeds off its own pool of memory, as with two separate cards operating in CrossFire. This time around, Sapphire has opted to equip the dual ATI Radeon HD 2600 graphics card with quad DVI outputs instead of dual DVI and dual VGA.

The card also features internal CrossFire connectors for multi-card quad CrossFire configurations. Sapphire expects to have quad CrossFire drivers ready for the card in the future for quad HD 2600 action.

As the product is still in development, Sapphire has not set a launch date, core clocks or memory configurations yet.

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Pownage

By Alphafox78 on 6/5/2007 11:26:27 AM , Rating: 3

Cumon, we all know a Voodoo 6000 would own this card!! I mean it has to since its a foot long!

RE: Pownage

By Fenixgoon on 6/5/2007 11:33:39 AM , Rating: 2

i'm running my voodoo5 5500 PCI onboard SLI till my new motherboard arrives! =D

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RE: Pownage

By Moishe on 6/5/2007 11:42:27 AM , Rating: 2

my 5500 still is cooking along after all these years :)

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RE: Pownage

By Goty on 6/5/2007 12:26:44 PM , Rating: 3

Psh, I'm still running my old PCI Voodoo3 2000. LONG LIVE GLIDE!

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RE: Pownage

By emboss on 6/5/2007 8:20:42 PM , Rating: 2

I've got two 12MB Monster 3D II Voodoo 2's in my retro gaming box. Noone believes me when I tell them that I've got a P2 with SLI :)

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RE: Pownage

By MonkeyPaw on 6/5/2007 8:49:45 PM , Rating: 2

Nice. I've had a V3 2000 in my Mom's PC for at least 6 years now. A month ago, her Power supply blew, taking virtually all the hardware inside with it (DVD drive, hard drive, and motherboard). Lo and behold, the old Voodoo 3 still works like a charm! I've never had another video card prove to be so durable.

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RE: Pownage

By Goty on 6/6/2007 12:39:53 AM , Rating: 2

Mine started to overheat pretty badly later on in its life, but that's about it. I bet if I had stripped off the HSF and reapplied some thermal epoxy that it would work perfectly again.

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Not bad

By FITCamaro on 6/5/2007 1:31:16 PM , Rating: 1

I wonder what the performance of this thing is? And it looks like it runs relatively cool and quiet. If they keep the cost low on this thing, it might actually be a good contender for the price/performance crown. Another good thing is that these GPUs feature the full on-hardware HD video processing so now we can have better performance and that in a single slot card. At least it looks to be single slot.

RE: Not bad

By Screwballl on 6/5/2007 2:05:25 PM , Rating: 2

this is a dual clot setup... the second set of DVI ports takes up slot 2 and looks to me like the cooler is a bit bigger for more airflow

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RE: Not bad

By FITCamaro on 6/5/2007 3:34:04 PM , Rating: 1

Yeah it does block the lower slot. But if you had say a RAID card that didn't require the support you could take it off and put it in the slot if it fit. Especially in an HTPC that laid sideways.

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RE: Not bad

By PCDestroyer on 6/5/2007 4:36:09 PM , Rating: 2

This card might be more successful than the X1950 Pro Dual. I'm saying this because it uses a lot less power (1 PCI-E power connector vs 2 on the X1950 Pro Dual)and the final product might have a smaller cooler. I personally likes the looks of the cooler on the X1950 Pro dual and would like to see a similar one on this card. It's bad enough to have a single small and loud fan in my PC why should I get one with 2?

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RE: Not bad

By watkinsaj on 6/5/2007 3:45:45 PM , Rating: 2

I agree. The 2900 is too hot and power hungry in it's current form. Until the 65nm version of that card comes out, this could be the best Direct X 10 solution.

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this isnt

By GlassHouse69 on 6/5/2007 2:03:07 PM , Rating: 3

this is not demonstrating.

demonstrating is when you show what it does, not sitting behind an NDA.

pwnd.

nda's suck. we need more people like me, underhanded and greedy.

Very good scalability

By DingieM on 6/6/2007 4:11:33 AM , Rating: 2

I've heard that R6xx AND crossfire scales really really well, according to some overclockers who done HD2900XT in crossfire and almost 100Mhz above reference.

So this could be a nice performing part.

I still have the upcoming HD2900pro at 65nm on my wishlist though. This thing should have the improved R650 core.

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