ATi Multi-Card solution

[Mr. Switch]

ATI's dual-card technology will be dubbed Multi Video Processing units (MVP). The first card that will take advantage of MVP will be the PCIe Radeon X850 XT, which will be shipping in the near future. The neat thing behind ATI's MVP tech is that you don't have to pair cards of the same model. As long as the two cards are MVP compatible, they'll work together. For instance, you buy the X850 XT in a couple months. Then later you buy ATI's latest and greatest, the "X900 XT." Don't throw out the old card, just set it as the slave to the X900 XT and you're good to go with MVP!

Nothing kinky here folks, the "Master/Slave" reference tells you which card is in control of assembling the final image in its frame buffer. Just like NVIDIA SLi, the ATi MVP solution will require a compatible mainboard (first seen by HEXUS on the ASUSTeK booth at this years CeBIT exhibition) and so it will be interesting to see which core-logic technology ATi will be supporting with its MVP.

so...

Having developed military solutions based on up to 32 cards in the past, it appears that ATi has decided on a "tile" based rendering approach as the default technology and perhaps the judgement was that this method offers the most ideal balance of speed and image quality (minimum size 32 pixels square). However it's more than likely that the ATi MVP solution will be flexible to offer other rendering modes like AFR (Alternate Frame Rendering) as well.

and also, not only that, but another scenario given was if the motherboard had an on-board ATI graphics processor. Guess what, that also gets included into the mix! So it will be possible to have three VPUs running at the same time, powering our games.

Looks like the graphics war has become even more complex and confusing!!!

 

[dhw200]

damnit ATI, i actually respected you once!!

Though it is cool that they dont have to be the same model

Wonder if DFI will release a mobo like this. hope so

 

[Mr. Switch]

Thats all i know. it will probably only work on the ATI Xpress chipsets because as far as I know, no dual PCI-E x16 motherboards have integrated video and no Nforce 4 motherboard will support a 6600 and a 6800GT combined. the difference is way too much.

 

[SteveGTA]

what would be funny is if nVidia were hiding some great new technology and a week or so before the MVP technology comes available, nVidia releases a whole new thing for ATI to play catch up with .

 

[Mr. Switch]

That would make me so happy. just like the good ol' days.

 

[GageMW]

ah yes.... i can remember it like it was 5 months ago.... wait, maybe cause it was

 

[Mr. Switch]

LOL.