Hello Happy New Year, today is the eighth day of the Chinese New Year. With the end of the Spring Festival holiday, our technology rings will continue to be updated~ This Friday, Brother Xiaotian will talk to you about the "short-life cards" in the history of graphics cards - those graphics cards that have not been released by , or have not been mass-produced by after the release.
▌HD2900XTX
High frequency high-bit width GDDR4 strategy
The first part we want to talk about is the HD2900XTX of ATI. In May 2007, the HD2900XT was released, but it was priced at $399 - this was obviously not the 8800 Ultra ($829) that was high on the top, and it was even lower than the 8800GTX ($499), and it only played against the 8800GTS. The problem is that 8800GTS is a product that Lao Huang castrated with one knife, and the HD2900XT already represents the complete specification of the ATI R600 core , which made the players at that time sweat for ATI: Can HD2900XTX shoulder the heavy responsibility of challenging 8800GTX/Ultra?
However, the players waited and waited, did not wait for HD2900XTX, but waited for HD2900XT 1GB GDDR4 version - yes, the real HD2900XTX was left in the factory forever when it was produced in the ES version. (Some say some products are flowing into the review media, and some say that the computer used for projection at the Beijing Olympics used to use this graphics card, but it is impossible to confirm it)
Since the core frequency of R600 exceeds 750MHz, the 800MHz XTX was officially abandoned. Especially for the 512bit video memory controller, the complex wiring is undoubtedly a worse problem for this core. In addition to the disadvantages of GDDR4's high memory latency and large power consumption, the HD2900XTX finally only leaked a few dozen engineering version sample cards. , but HD2900XT 1GD4, by chance, led to the title of "first block 1G graphics card" , which should have belonged to HD2900XTX. The generation of Card Kings who were once highly anticipated have only legends left.
▌ Yingchi GTX470+GT240
Just show you
Before talking about this card, we want to talk about the "motive" of this card. Most people think that this graphics card was made by Yingchi. In order to show its R&D strength - "Look, can we make this kind of card, isn't it awesome?" However, this card has another purpose, which is to "strike" another card - EVGA GTX275 CO-OP. Let's first take a look at this "strange" GTX275:
This is a picture created by EVGA in the GTX200 era, consisting of the GTX275 on the right and the GTS250 on the left. The purpose is very simple. allows the GTS250 to act as a PhysX calculation card to accelerate the GTX275 physically, and allows the GTX275 to devote himself to the rendering of the 3D game, providing players with a better gaming experience. Unfortunately, due to the dual-core strategy, the frequency of the GTX275 and the specifications of the GTS250 are "castrated" to a certain extent.
Yingchi felt itchy when I saw it, so in the GTX400 era, also imitated EVGA to create a GTX470+GT240:
This Yingchi was smart. Since PhysX does not require too strong core, I used GT240, which saves power than your GTS250; this made my GTX470 full of blood and even run super-public frequency. However, this graphics card is as mentioned at the beginning, and its main mission is to "show off", so Yingchi only lets it appear on the ComputeX booth and has not been truly mass-produced.
▌R9 285X
was beaten by Lao Huang and couldn't find Bei
Next card, you may have heard of it in the previous technology rings - that's right, it was the R9 285X mentioned in "Talking about the history of AMD GCN graphics card architecture (Part 2)" (click me to transmit). Interested friends can find a detailed explanation of the GCN3.0 architecture in the last technology ring. Here we will only mention the tragic fate of this card.
In the second half of 2014, AMD focused all her energy on Fiji core and the matching HBM video memory, and she had no time to deal with the upcoming GTX980/970 of NVIDIA, and only launched the castrated Tonga PRO core - R9 285 to rush to fight. However, just as players are eagerly looking forward to the full version of Tonga XT's core R9 285X, AMD sentenced it to death.The high power consumption and high cost brought by the 384bit video memory controller make the R9 285X have no power to fight back against the GTX970. Therefore, just like the HD2900XTX of that year, it was always left in the factory with ES version engineering samples.
As can be seen from the GPU-Z diagram, the R9 285X has a complete 2048SP and 384bit video memory controller, which is exactly the same as the HD7970. Although leaked out of the factory two years later in 2016 as a mysterious "resurrection card", and appeared in Xiaotian Ge's hands , but there were only a few dozen pieces. At this time, the RX470/480 is in full swing on the market, and the orthodox heir of the HD7970, the HD7970, could only leave sadly.
▌ Yingchi Dual-core GTX460 HOF / Dual-core GTX470 Dual
Time falls back to 2010, and it is Yingchi, a company that is "not willing to be lonely". The GTX480 is on the market. Although its performance is powerful, its power consumption is comparable to that of a nuclear bomb. This has caused the double-core GTX480 to be miscarried directly and cannot be done at all: it is too hot. Yingchi started to think wrongly, GTX480 dual-core is not good, can I use GTX470? So, the dual-core GTX470 Dual appeared like this -
However, the GF100 core's excessive power consumption, even Yingchi took it lightly. Although this card was exhibited on ComputeX in 2010, players could not wait for the news of its mass production. That's right, like the dual-core GTX480, it is completely defeated by the problem of heat dissipation. Yingchi even tried three-slot and three-fan cooling, but it could not suppress the huge heat generated by the two GF100 cores. In this way, the Yingchi's GTX470 Dual was only left in the PCB boarding stage, and we finally couldn't see it wearing the radiator.
(At the same time, I don’t know what the Yingchi felt when he saw the public version card of R9 295X that “the air is not cold, but the water is cold”…)
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Although the GTX470 Dual was miscarried, Lao Huang’s GTX460 was released immediately. Yingchi saw hope again. Just half a year later in 2011, it was a coincidence that Yingchi chose to "make a big news" on the same day as EVGA - On the morning of March 11, 2011, Yingchi exposed its dual-core GTX460 HOF, and in the afternoon EVGA released the EVGA GTX460 2Win... can be said to be another "tit-for-tat" after the GTX275 CO-OP.
can be seen that since the core of GF104 is not so "boxy", Yingchi chose to erect it to shorten the length of the entire card; but what followed was the design of the overshoulder PCB - is not long enough, so let's make up the height! When the GTX480/470 consumes too much power to make a dual-core, EVGA and Yingchi's dual-core GTX460 can be said to have helped NVIDIA to defend the last line of defense. However, because EVGA and NVIDIA have various PY transactions, and Yingchi has slowed down EVGA, other people's cards have released it and it is still in the exposure stage. has led to Yingchi's graphics card becoming a show-off work again - it is only exposed, not mass production.
▌ASUS EAH3850 Trinity
only meets the dual core? What a man!
Let us dial back two more years. In 2008, the war between 9800GX2 and HD3870X2 was in full swing, but Asus was no longer satisfied with the dual-core card and began to move towards the "N-core card" idea (I won't mention the Voodoo series for the time being). However, the world's largest board and card manufacturer is not a cover. In May 2008, Asus launched its first "three-core graphics card" - EAH3850 Trinity.
It is not an exaggeration to call this hand-built world-wide unique graphics card "HD3850X3". From the appearance of the card, we can see that it is extraordinary. It is not that the traditional soldering of GPU to the PCB, but that connects three RV670 cores through the MXM graphics card modules of three notebooks. Two were placed on one side and only one on the other. , and the core used is also the RV670 core of the mobile version. Due to the low voltage, its power consumption control is better than that of the desktop version, but the frequency is also limited. Therefore, the default frequency of the mobile version GPU is relatively conservative. The card core defaults to 668MHz, which is the same as the core frequency of the public version HD3850, which is much lower than that of the HD3870X2.
Each MXM module is connected to two heat pipes, and then finally connected to the Thermaltake 5.25-inch water-cooling module. The length of the PCB alone is equivalent to the full-size ATX motherboard. plus a set of complex cooling modules such as water tanks, cold discharges, and fans, it is conceivable that this graphics card will inevitably be impossible to mass-produce. and even Asus do not specifically develop optimized drivers for it. When sending the test media, they use catalysts to open the three-card CrossfireX and it will be done. Compared with the Yingchi GTX470 Dual, which was stranded due to heat dissipation problems, this senior Asus can be said to be a lucky show.
, this is the end of this issue's technology ring. If you know other graphics cards that have died halfway, please leave a message below~ In the next issue of technology rings, let's talk about the real "god cards" in history.
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