GeCube Radeon X1650 XT Dual 512MB

Review: GeCube Radeon X1650 XT Dual 512MB

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Let's play good cop, bad cop.

We're fans of innovation and congratulate GeCube on designing a working dual-GPU card featuring twin Radeon X1650 XTs on one PCB. Performance is reasonable for the expected £120 outlay and quad-monitor support is handy for a niche market.

But bad cop has a bigger list. The Radeon X1650 XT GPU was reasonable for its time. Now, however, AMD's Radeon HD 2000 series and NVIDIA's GeForce 8500/8600 offer DX10-supporting tech that's coupled with impressive high-def video-decode performance. They may not be quite as fast in pure pixel-pushing grunt but we'd love to see GeCube (really) quickly release its multi-GPU Radeon HD2600-based card instead.

By the very nature of the Radeon X1650 XT GPU, GeCube misses out on dual-link DVI and, as far as we can discern, HDCP support on our sample.

Further, a dual-GPU design works well when multi-GPU support is efficiently implemented and that may not always be the case. Add in our sample's noisy cooler and, really, we'd advise you to either go for the cheapest - currently around £90 - Radeon X1950 Pro you can find or, if you really want innovation in your box, wait until GeCube launches the RV630 dual-GPU model.

The premise here was good. Late time to market, a comparative lack of features, and reliance on CrossFire relegates the GeCube X1650 XT Dual 512MiB to being just an interesting product: there are better buys out there right now.

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GeCube X1650 XT Dual 512MiB

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This may be a very stupid question but, is it remotely possible to put two GPU cores on one die, sort of like dual-core GPU? I mean, aren't GPUs already as complex as CPU's? I apologize of this may seem a very stupid question to some people. :tomato:

Quantum-M
This may be a very stupid question but, is it remotely possible to put two GPU cores on one die, sort of like dual-core GPU? I mean, aren't GPUs already as complex as CPU's? I apologize of this may seem a very stupid question to some people. :tomato:

Very far from being a stupid question - and it's what NVIDIA and AMD are planning.

AMD's strategy will be to have silicon that can the GPU and CPU on a single bit of silicon, some with multiple GPUs others with multiple CPUs - mix and match to suit the application.

A bit like this, in fact:

Here's a bigger version.

Bob

Here's some background reading.

And some more.

Minor correction on pg2:

“Stripping it down, you see the two RV530 cores are apportioned their own 256MiB framebuffer, making 512MiB in total.”

X1650 XT = RV560

Also here on pg5:
“Strapping a couple of RV530s provides decent framerates in Far Cry”

Well spootted, that man :)