ATI: plans to use RV560 and RV570

It seems that the Canadian manufacturer, like its biggest rival, sees a serious opportunity in the "1 PCB: 2 GPU" philosophy.

It is very likely that the RV560 and RV570 GPU cores, which will enter the market soon, will tread the path that ATI actually wants to take: with the help of the CrossFire connection, 2 central units can be placed on a video card-sized board. To implement the idea, an electronic centipede is needed that can ensure communication between the two control units. This chip is none other than "PLX Technology ExpressLane PEX 8532 PCI Express bridge chip", which spans approximately the same area as a GPU. There is no need to be afraid, as the "small" has a dissipation of barely 8 W.

But what is the point of this, why is the "plain" CrossFire connection not good? On the one hand, these cards boasting a dual solution have a PCIe 16x connector, which means that a special motherboard (nominally equipped with multiple PCIe 16x interfaces) is not required. This also means that the 16 PCIe channels are shared by the 2 GPUs. The other reason (maybe) is that by manufacturing it together, we can get it somewhat cheaper than if we had to buy 2 cards, and this solution is also more advantageous in terms of ventilation of the computer case.

If we choose this path in the future, of course we don't have to give up the 4 monitor outputs thanks to the twin DMS59 connection. ATI also reported that in the future we will be able to configure our card in such a way that one GPU operates as a physical accelerator, while the other has to make do with "boring" image rendering.

The RV560 and RV570 chips are expected to debut in late summer, using a bandwidth of 80 nm.