Photo of the day: Gigabyte 3D1 (2xGeForce 6600GT) + K8NXP-SLI in our lab!

EN6600GT Dual: a couple of NVIDIA GPUs onboard, surprises from ASUS

PH-K2500: a new Text-To-Speech handset from Pantech/Curitel

Photo of the day: Gigabyte 3D1 (2xGeForce 6600GT) + K8NXP-SLI in our lab!

Recently Gigabyte unveiled its unique dual-GPU card with two GeForce 6600GT GPUs and 2 x 128MB of 1.6ns GDDR3 memory onboard, which is essentially the same GeForce 6600GT SLI, but is claimed to provide higher performance.

Today we have this novelty in our lab:

256MB of 1.6ns GDDR3 memory total:

The most interesting is that this card works with the only one board (from Gigabyte, naturally) based on NVIDIA nForce4 SLI — K8NXP-SLI, which we obtained for testing as well:

The preliminary examinations indicated that 3D1 indeed doesn´t work with ASUS A8N-SLI, system locking up after ForceWare installation.

I believe the company will be selling such cards together with these motherboards, otherwise it´s just senseless.

Read more details in the review to come.

EN6600GT Dual: a couple of NVIDIA GPUs onboard, surprises from ASUS

GIGABYTE´s GV-3D1 won´t be alone in the market soon, because ASUSTeK Computer decided to introduce a competing solution with two GPUs onboard. Taiwanese Digital-Info.Net posted intriguing photos of a sample named EN6600GT Dual:

Though this card is based on the same GeForce 6600GT GPUs, it´s totally different from GIGABYTE GV-3D1:

EN6600GT Dual has two DVI-I interfaces, 9-pin S-Video that also supports video capture (with Philips SAA7114H chip). On card´s PCB there´s also 6-pin power connector, 256MB of 256-bit 1.6ns GDDR3 memory from Samsung similar to that installed on GV-3D1 (8 x K4J55323QF-GC16 chips).

The architecture is still a matter of guess, but GIGABYTE already patented its version of it. It seems that GPUs share PCI Express evenly, each using 8 x PCI-E channels. Perhaps, GPUs are interconnected with SLI (Scalable Link Interface) that has the switch integrated into the PCB circuits.

I wonder, is it possible to install 2 x EN6600GT Dual card to get yourself a whole 4 GPUs? Perhaps, it is, because the novelty from ASUS has two 14-pin connectors, one in the place of SLI interface, so if you take a couple of cables...

It seems a configuration of two EN6600GT Dual will require a special daughterboard like TYAN Thunder K8WEX to provide each fully-fledged PCI Express slot with 16 PCI-E channels, otherwise the #9 to #16 PCI-E channels of the 4th GPU won´t be connected (in 16 + 4 PCI-E channels mode).

So, the motherboard should be able to switch 8 + 8 PCI-E channels (or 16 + 4 PCI-E channels) as channels #1 to #4 for 1-1/2-1 GPUs, channels #8 to #12 for 1-2/2-2 GPUs (or channels #1 to #8 for 1-1 GPU, channels #9 to #16 for 1-2 GPU + channels #1 and #2 for 2-1 GPU, channels #8 and #9 for 2-2 GPU). This can be done by DFI nForce 4 based series, for example. But, of course, if GeForce 6600GT supports multi-GPU modes, ASUSTeK is bound to release a new board to handle two EN6600GT Dual cards at once.

PH-K2500: a new Text-To-Speech handset from Pantech/Curitel

Pantech/Curitel announced its new PH-K2500 mobile handset. The new clamshell features 1.3-megapixel CMOS sensor, supports MP3, Photo Caller ID and Text-To-Speech.

Besides, the novelty is even capable of recognizing and sending text photographed by phone´s built-in camera.

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