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Asus shows off triple GPU graphics card
Asus EAH3850 Trinity features three Radeon HD 3850 GPUs on a single graphics card
While working at a Taiwanese tech firm has got to be had work, it’s good to see that the engineers at Asus occasionally get to try their hands at something fun too. The latest engineering feat to come from Asus is the EAH3850 Trinity, which goes one step further than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 by featuring three whole GPUs onto a single card.
The card features a huge PCB that’s 300mm long, and sports three mobile Radeon HD 3850 cards – two on the back and one on the front. Despite the large number of GPUs, though, the chips’ low power requirements mean that the card only needs a single eight-pin PCI-E power connector.
Asus has released a few photos of the card to who off its efforts, but Iain Bristow from Asus UK told Custom PC that it’s ‘not going to be released as a retail product.’ According to Bristow, the card was put together in an office and connected to a water-cooling block to say: ‘look what we can do, because we’re amazing engineers.’ And who can blame them? Only ten have been made, according to Bristow.
However, Asus revealed a similar feat of engineering when it put together the EN7800GT Dual, and that card even made it to the production line, so the Trinity may see the light of day yet.
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It might be possible that they're looking for an alternative solution thingy that can give a good power-to-performance ratio; High crossfire performance but at low power consumption kinda stuff?? Well, they're engineers of Asus rather than ATI, thus I recon they wouldn't do much for Catalyst drivers, which should be the stuff ATI engineers should work on... Maybe after this, they'd do two GeForce 8800 on one PCB like they did last time (ASUS EN7800GT DUAL).... & then, have two of those sandwiched like 9800 gx2 to make it a quad-SLI on a single PCI-e slot... WAAA!!!! Impossible without heat problems tho, but... who knows?? :P - The only certain thing about the future is uncertainty... -
Comment by Euromentacranus at 8:41am 28th March 2008
Erm how will it take a nuclear power plant to run? It only takes one PCIe power connector, and the GPUs are mobile ones... that means it would likely use less power than an 8800GTX. Also it doesn't really matter, because if you had read the article the whole way through you would see it's not a retail product like the 9800GX2.
Comment by RedHotsRule549 at 11:51am 27th March 2008
AMD already have a fast card in the form of the 3870x2. Instead of waisting time and money on new cards, they should be injecting that time and money into drivers and support for the 3870x2 and release the shackles on the poor beast!
Comment by marcus at 11:31pm 26th March 2008
...so we can all tell MS what we'd like to see in the next version of Windows. http://custompc.co.uk/blogs/edarch/2008/03/26/windows-what-do-you-want-to-see/
Comment by EdArch at 4:08pm 26th March 2008
theres only 10 being made, its clearly a willy-waving tech demo: veyron effect maybe? but id still love to see this vs 8800GT SLI
Comment by soddit113 at 11:22am 26th March 2008
Yes.... a fast ATI graphics card. That *is* funny. :-)
Only joking of course. Ahem.
Comment by cjagusz at 10:49am 26th March 2008
Its a shame its an ATI not an Nvidia.... Why ? Because this will likely take a nuclear power plant to sustain at idle... Heat and size will be another factor losing two other slots, especially if they are pci ones... And i still bet my wealth and my pc that this wont be near the 9800 Dual...... not by a long shot
Comment by Lightning_Pete at 10:39am 26th March 2008
1 - ATi need to stop optimising they're drivers for 3DMark before this thing can even dream of performing in games. 2 - They need to get Crossfire working properly. 3 - Did I say they need to fix they're drivers? Besides, I find this card to be a very interesting product, but a complete and utter waste of time.
Comment by C7ouD at 2:05am 26th March 2008
I wonder if the engineers will release any benchmarks. Comment by l3v1ck at 6:36pm 25th March 2008 That would imply they have bothered to code half decent drivers. :P Hobgob.
Comment by TheHobgob at 8:57pm 25th March 2008
they seem to have been the best GPU's ever to have been modified to date (in my opinion!!!) and i hope that this will make quad core GPU's become as standard as Quad core CPU's instead of having this SLI Crossfire Molarky... got to say though although its great i wouldnt buy one... because i meen great as in great for the world of technology... but not the mainstream market... not yet anyways... p.s, when i say quad core i am refering to the tech that could come out of this in the end
Comment by NikoBellic at 6:44pm 25th March 2008
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