||Red_Evil||
Portugal@Home Member
The chaps over at TweakTown take a look the GeCube's unreleased, highly anticipated and upcoming Gemini 2 dual GPU Radeon X1650XT graphic card. Here's a taster:In this case, GeCube managed to make dual GPU technology work by placing two GPU's onto a single PCB with two separate memory buses each holding 256MB of DDR-3 memory each and linked internally through a PLX bridge which supports a total of 32 switchable PCI-E lanes. All of this is achieved using a method that GeCube call "Self-Crossfire" – just adjust the driver a little to make it think that the single card with two GPU's is actually two separate cards. Before you get too excited though, currently there is no way to run Crossfire with a quad GPU setup. If ATI / AMD change their drivers to support quad GPU Crossfire, then in theory GeCube Gemini 2 cards should do Crossfire (quad GPU) but that's yet to be proven but an interesting thought to ponder.
To be honest, our thoughts on GeCube's Gemini 2 are mixed. Given that it is a non-final product and GeCube and ATI are still working together on drivers for further 3D performance on the dual GPU's, it's looking like quite a positive product to us. Even before the card is ready, it's starting to prove itself against the higher-end X1950PRO and at times would come close to matching Radeon X1950XT 256MB's performance.
The idea is quite an interesting one in that you can run ATI Crossfire mode from a single graphics card in what GeCube are calling Self-Crossfire. I can't help but thinking though that this idea would have been better executed when Crossfire first finally hit the market. Back then it was more of a pain to get everything setup, trying to find master cards and what-not. Nowadays and with the very latest Catalyst drivers, you can run many different kinds of Radeon cards in software Crossfire mode without the need of a master card or even an annoying dongle. If GeCube could somehow make Gemini 2 officially work on any motherboard, regardless of chipset, it would make a big difference, we feel.
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