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Quad-crossfire in the wings
Our report that Sapphire has made the first dual-ATI-GPU based graphics card that fits into a single PCI Express slot should not only please ATI/AMD fanboys, but also Nvidia worshipers.
The X1950 Pro Dual has an internal crossfire connector present, which means linking the two together resulting in a quad-crossfire setup could be right around the corner.
It's a common belief in the IT industry that quad-SLI performance was deliberately crippled by Nvidia because there was (and still is) no competition from ATI.
In our original quad-SLI review we got a score of 13,000 in 3DMark05, when we were expecting 18,000.
The x1950 Pro has a lot in common with Nvidia's 7950GX2 designed for quad-SLI: Both have a gigabyte of Ram, the GPUs that aren't top end (i.e. fewer pipelines or lower clocked chips than present in 7900GTX and X1950XTX) and they will, of course, both fit into a single x16 PCI Express slot.
Where they differ is Sapphire's design uses a single PCB, whereas the 7950GX2 uses two PCBs stuck on top of each other, making it thicker, less elegant and uglier (although internal PC components don't usually look 'attractive').
We look forward to a flurry of driver development from ATI and Nvidia's response.
Posted by Emil Larsen on January 9, 2007 | Permalink
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