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Hardware Sapphire Releases ADD2 Card
Anh Tuan Huynh (Blog) - September 27, 2006 9:10 AM
Print E-mail del.icio.us 7 comment(s) - last by johnsonx.. on Sep 27 at 8:49 PM
Add DVI to your integrated graphics system

Sapphire has released its new ADD2 card for integrated graphics equipped motherboards and systems. The Sapphire ADD2 card takes advantage of the available PCI Express x16 slot designated for graphics and adds a single-link DVI video output. This is no way a graphics card upgrade but a video output expansion module. Nevertheless the single-link DVI output supports resolutions up to 1600x1200.

With the ADD2 card installed, systems with integrated graphics can simultaneously output to multiple displays using a variety of the onboard and ADD2 video outputs. As this is simply a TMDS transmitter on a low-profile expansion card, it does not require any cooling. Official compatibility is limited to Intel’s 915G Express, 945G Express and ATI RC410 chipsets. Nevertheless this card should work with all motherboards that support ADD2 expansion cards.

US availability is unknown at the moment, though it should arrive quite soon. Pricing hasn’t been set yet, though when asked at IDF, a Sapphire representative gave a ballpark range of around $20 USD, if not less.

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1600x1200?
By therealnickdanger on 9/27/2006 9:41:05 AM , Rating: 2
I suppose some IGPs may only be capable of that, but it would have been nice to see output of 1920x1080/1200 as well... Would the system recognize this as a second or third display output or would it just mirror the RGB output of the IGP?




RE: 1600x1200?
By Flunk on 9/27/2006 9:50:53 AM , Rating: 1
How many integrated video solutions can even handle 1600x1200? Especially with Vista coming up soon 1600x1200 is more than enough. If you need more you can just buy a graphics card.


RE: 1600x1200?
By Scorpion on 9/27/2006 11:47:04 AM , Rating: 2
Would have been nicer to have dual DVI on an expansion. But this is not for me and I'll never have to worry about something like this so I guess my opinion is moot.


Asrock has done this
By plewis00 on 9/27/2006 1:36:41 PM , Rating: 3
Asrock supplies cards like this with their ConRoe945G-DVI mainboard. I got the board and the card looks almost identical to this, it is just a TDMS transmitter with a DVI port on the end. On the one I have, you do get dual-monitor output, so probably do with this as well. As you can tell from the name, this board uses the Intel 945G chipset. My next stop is to test this card with other boards than Asrocks own. Mine worked great for the brief period I used it, it's now been replaced with a 7900GT. And I had mine running at 1680 x 1050 just fine for the record.




RE: Asrock has done this
By smilingcrow on 9/27/2006 5:05:12 PM , Rating: 2
I have the same ASRock board and was also using the DVI connection at 1680x1050 before I added a discrete graphics card. Being limited to 1600x1200 is just very poor by today’s standards even for an IGP.


Idiocy
By Runiteshark on 9/27/2006 7:33:53 PM , Rating: 2
And of course this isn't PCI-E 1x! No no, those slots are for dust, not for such things as useful cards.


Seriously, if a IGP board has IGP graphics, then they will most likely have a PCI-E 1x slot, and since there is so few PCI-E 1x cards anyway, why don't they just use that instead? Its not like they will be transmitting anything super-bandwidth heavy that would warrant the use of 4x anyway.




RE: Idiocy
By johnsonx on 9/27/2006 8:49:14 PM , Rating: 2
The idea is that this card goes in the x16 slot that would otherwise be used for an add-in graphics card. See, if you have a graphics card, then you can't use this anyway.


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