Following on from its Radeon X1950 Pro Dual, Sapphire showed us its latest dual-GPU graphics card, the Radeon HD 2600 XT Dual. The GPUs aren’t quite final silicon yet, so the product wasn’t shown as a working demo – final RV630 silicon is expected in the third week of June.
There have been a number of improvements made over the dual X1950 card, the first of which was an improved set of connectivity options. Instead of dual DVI and dual VGA connectors, there are now four DVI ports, meaning you can connect up to four digital displays to a single card.
The cooling solution has also been refined too and now sports a pair of 80mm fans and a copper cooling solution for each of the two GPUs. We were surprised how light the cooler was actually, but it’s questionable whether moving to two fans (instead of one) is a good move or not from a noise point of view. Without listening to the card running though, it’s hard to tell.
Sapphire also told us that it is working with AMD to make drivers for a pair of these cards to run together in a quad-CrossFire configuration. These drivers are expected to hit by the end of the year, but there was nothing more specific than that at this moment in time.
Of course, you could use a pair of these cards for up to eight digital outputs for massively multi-monitor setups – ideal for those that need a lot of desktop real estate. We’ll leave you with a few pictures for now, and we’ll bring you more on this product as and when we get it.
Were you tempted by the Radeon X1950 Pro Dual, but disappointed because it's based on DX9 technology? How does this refinement sound in contrast? Share your thoughts in the forums.
There have been a number of improvements made over the dual X1950 card, the first of which was an improved set of connectivity options. Instead of dual DVI and dual VGA connectors, there are now four DVI ports, meaning you can connect up to four digital displays to a single card.
The cooling solution has also been refined too and now sports a pair of 80mm fans and a copper cooling solution for each of the two GPUs. We were surprised how light the cooler was actually, but it’s questionable whether moving to two fans (instead of one) is a good move or not from a noise point of view. Without listening to the card running though, it’s hard to tell.
Sapphire also told us that it is working with AMD to make drivers for a pair of these cards to run together in a quad-CrossFire configuration. These drivers are expected to hit by the end of the year, but there was nothing more specific than that at this moment in time.
Of course, you could use a pair of these cards for up to eight digital outputs for massively multi-monitor setups – ideal for those that need a lot of desktop real estate. We’ll leave you with a few pictures for now, and we’ll bring you more on this product as and when we get it.
Were you tempted by the Radeon X1950 Pro Dual, but disappointed because it's based on DX9 technology? How does this refinement sound in contrast? Share your thoughts in the forums.
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