Here's your first glimpse at the PPU card.

[HAVOC]

My lastest opinion on (2) card solutions has changed. I used to consider it, but now i'm going the "nubius & gaara" route and saying, "the heck with that!".

My new ideal system is high-end dual core CPU, (1) highend GPU & a highend PPU. That's it... I'm not going to spend an extra $500 to $600 dollar on another videocard, just so i can score 14,000 in 3DMARK05.
My main concern now for games is UNREAL2k7 and games that follow.

The only way right now that i'd buy into a dual GFX card solution would be if I ever bought a HUGE LCD monitor. Like the Apple Cinema 30" sucker and wanted to continue to run everything at the highest resolutions and settings.

http://www.pcsuperstore.com/products/E17879-Apple-M9179LL_A.html/froogle/

Imagine playing UNREAL2k7 on that freakin' thing?

But, actually i saw an article where they were testing a X1800XT with (2) of those 30" LCD's in dual desktop mode. And the X1800XT performed very, very well. So even in that case, (2) GFX cards or GPU's isn't really needed.

But, i'll never buy one of those monitors so... oh well...

 

[DoomUK]

I don't think a PPU built into the graphics cards would be as powerful as a stand alone one in a PCI-E 4x slot with it's own cooling and power like whats shown in the pictures in this thread.

Good point, although it depends on how the PPU is integrated into the GPU; a seperate chip on the PCB? Or are we simply looking at a GPU that can do everything the proposed PhysX unit can do, that is, an on-die PPU? Who knows what the next gen (i.e DX10-class) of video hardware will bring...

 

[Apokalipse]

although it can mean that the PPU communicates faster with the GPU if it's on the same card, just like how AMD put the memory controller on the CPU to speed up communication with RAM

 

[Amd2800]

no ...that is aGP

 

[Apokalipse]

no, I mean if you had a seperate PPU and GPU card, they would communicate slower than if you had a single card with the PPU and GPU

 

[Nubius]

yeaaaah, but if the PPU was going to look like the pictures or atleast somewhat similar, how the HELL are you going to make a card with an ondie PPU that powerful? As you can see in the pics (remember we're talking hypothetically assuming the final PPU products look like the pic) it's its own processor which needs cooling and obviously a decent amount of power if it's requiring a molex connector....you're gonna shrink that down, keep it as powerful, obviously using less energy and less heat?

I doubt it'd be the same as doing away with the north bridge and putting a memory controller in the CPUs like AMD did

 

[DoomUK]

you're gonna shrink that down, keep it as powerful, obviously using less energy and less heat?

We're in the 90nm stepping era. Give it 12-18 months and the same PPU die could well be shrunk in physical size, requiring less voltage and producing less heat.

 

[Apokalipse]

they managed to fit 2 6800 cores on a single board. I forget where I saw it though.
the card was pretty huge though.