Topic: Gigabyte launches dual graphics mobo - for any PCIe graphics card

[Redshift the Kook]

http://www.tomshardware.com/hardnews/20050106_120044.html

Chicago (IL) - Thinking about a dual graphics card system? Not sure about Nvidia's SLI? Here is another option: Gigabyte just announced its own dual graphics card technology and offers a new motherboard that lets users combine any two graphics cards.

It may be expensive, but there is no doubt that the idea of combining two graphics cards within one system has spurred a flurry of new products can sparked innovation of motherboard and graphics card manufacturers. However, only Nvidia's SLI technology currently is available and users will have to work with GeForce 6600GT or higher graphics card, if they want to accelerate graphic performance in games that support SLI. Alienware's Video Array as well as ATI's Multi Rendering are still in the works.

While most motherboard manufacturers and system builders currently follow the SLI track and offer systems mainly for Nvidia's nForce4 chipset and AMD 64 systems, Taiwan manufacturer Gigabyte recently surprised with its 3D1 dual core graphics card. The side step was widely applauded and Gigabyte apparently has more ideas left in its drawers: The company now announced the first dual PCI Express for Intel processors. Since Nvidia's SLI does not officially support Intel yet, Gigabyte came up with its own approach of combining two graphic cards. The new GA-I915P board will be offered for about $150 and allows users to combine any current and future PCI Express graphic cards.

According to a spokesperson, Gigabyte engineers were able to "make the 915P chipset function like a SLI feature". The company did not disclose many details, but said that the patent pending design makes use of the PCI Express lane from the South Bridge to support an additional graphics card. The new motherboard also supports up to four displays

The company said that the GA-I915P is "not just about performance" but about innovating new solutions, this time for enthusiasts using Intel systems. Speed increases are not as dramatic as with SLI, but apparently can reach levels of 33 to 53 percent, according to benchmark results provided by Gigabyte (depending on applications and graphic cards).

That's a very cool setup but the CPU would be a bottleneck, I'm not sure how fast it will actually run.

[Javora]

...and I have 376 mb of DDR2100 or 2700 ram.

Since you added this part after the initial post I'll respond to it now.  Actually you have 384MB of Ram, your on-board video card is taking 8MB for itself.  Look and see what the maximum amount of Ram your motherboard can handle before you look into buying more Ram for your system.  Since you are running WinXP you going to want at least 512MB of Ram or more if you can.  I wouldn't go more than 1024MB if your machine can even handle that much.  Also look and see what type of Ram is in your machine now (2100 or 2700), you don't want to mix those two types of DDR Ram in your system.

BTW since you?re on-board video is only using 8MB of Ram.  Any video card you stick into that system is going to make a huge performance difference.  That on-board video is a serious bottleneck on your system.  I'm surprised some of your games are even running with that.  If you want to upgrade your system and not buy another one, I would suggest both a Ram and video card for your system.  If you can only afford one upgrade at a time than I would go for the video card first.  Hope this helps.

[Age]

...and I have 376 mb of DDR2100 or 2700 ram.

Since you added this part after the initial post I'll respond to it now.  Actually you have 384MB of Ram, your on-board video card is taking 8MB for itself.  Look and see what the maximum amount of Ram your motherboard can handle before you look into buying more Ram for your system.  Since you are running WinXP you going to want at least 512MB of Ram or more if you can.  I wouldn't go more than 1024MB if your machine can even handle that much.  Also look and see what type of Ram is in your machine now (2100 or 2700), you don't want to mix those two types of DDR Ram in your system.

BTW since you?re on-board video is only using 8MB of Ram.  Any video card you stick into that system is going to make a huge performance difference.  That on-board video is a serious bottleneck on your system.  I'm surprised some of your games are even running with that.  If you want to upgrade your system and not buy another one, I would suggest both a Ram and video card for your system.  If you can only afford one upgrade at a time than I would go for the video card first.  Hope this helps.

Yeah it does and I can go up to as high as 1 gigs of ram of PC2100 and I need a bigger hard drive as well. I am looking at is video card and hard drive first?What suggestions do you have for midrange vidcard for either Nividea or ATI.I kinda like Nvidea.Thanks.

[Javora]

Yeah it does and I can go up to as high as 1 gigs of ram of PC2100 and I need a bigger hard drive as well. I am looking at is video card and hard drive first?What suggestions do you have for midrange vidcard for either Nividea or ATI.I kinda like Nvidea.Thanks.

1GB Max is good, I would go with to sticks of 512MB, which should be pretty cheap now.  As for hard drives I just bought a 200GB Seagate hard drive for about $130USD and have been loving it.  Seagate comes with a 5-year warranty now which I think is hard to pass up.  My first suggestion for a video card is the one I have to stick with, for price/performance I really can't think of anything that will beat that 9600XT.  I have been running ATI for a few years now and I really like the way ATI handles them selves.  ATI's drivers are as easy to install now as anything nVidia has to offer IMHO.  So I don't think you will go wrong with that video card.  Just remember when everything is all said and done and a year or two down the road when you are ready to buy another system.  This machine will be a very good second machine for running as a game server or as a second machine for the kids.  Again hope this helps.

[Monty]

The first 3D graphics cards (Voodoo I think) were a seperate card that had to be added on to an existing 2D card and required a passthrough connector. The 3D rendering calculations were offloaded to the graphics chip, away from the main processor. Since then, the trend has been to offload as much of the work away from the main processor, freeing it up for other things, by adding new instructions to graphics chips. The Central Processing Unit, is not really very central anymore, and many components can now speak to each other without having to go through the CPU at all.

Its not so much the second graphics card and SLI technology, but rather, the implementation of PCI Express. PCI-Express has risen to be the industry supported successor to the PCI bus which has essentially remained unchanged since 1994. The AGP port extended the life of PCI was relieving the bottleneck of video data, but even that now has reached its limits. PCI-Express sounds good on paper, ir replaces the parallel PCI bus with a host of serial busses that each connect individually to one device. Each device is guaranteed of having its own bandwidth, since it no longer needs to share with other devices on the PCI bus. PCI-Express also has much greater bandwidth.

However... you cannot have a PCI-Express bus with an AGP port. Furthermore, the motherboard chipsets that support PCI-Express are currently only available for the Prescott Intel processors, which have been dubbed as lemons. The Athlon64 is really the only option currently if you want PCI-Express. I think this is a very bad move on Intel's part, as they deliberatly limit supplies of the 865 and 875 Intel chipsets forcing manufacturers to switch to the 915 and 925 chipsets for the Prescott processor. It also makes redundant that brand new AGP8x graphics card you just bought and forces everyone to buy not just a new graphics card, but new RAM as well, since these chipsets utilise DDR2 RAM.

If you are thinking of upgrading, I would advise against it until the market settles down again. You could be buying junk.

Interesting story here... if its true.

P4 chipset which has AGP and PCIe.

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=20784

[Javora]

Interesting story here... if its true.

P4 chipset which has AGP and PCIe.

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=20784

It doesn't supprise me, most duel PCIe motherboards are PCIe 8x boards (namely Asus).  The PCIe and the AGP are running off the same data chain.  I was wondering when something like this would happen.  However this also tells me that SLI is a fad with a very limited life span unless PCIe goes through a major speed upgrade (PCIe 64x anyone).  I expect that the next generation video cards will over power current SLI and we will go back to single video card systems.  Just another reason IMHO to hold off buying the "latest and greatest" for a while.

[F9th0mega]

AFAIK the above Gigabyte motherboard can only use Gigabyte brand video cards which is a draw back.

nah the moard works with any pci-e card unless its somthin real special... you must be thinkin of the gv-3d1 made by gigabyte... its a dual gpu card wich only works on this mobo... although id wait for dfi to make its sli board... or go with agp for now... i like my msi k8n neo2 platinum... runs great...