[Anandtech AMD Center] AMD teasing dual GPU card

[Jodell88]

It looks like AMD is starting up another one of their tongue-in-cheek video card marketing campaigns, if the latest package to arrive on my doorstep is any indication.
In an envelope from AMD’s marketing department labeled “Top Secret”, AMD included in a single picture with the text “Wouldn’t you agree that two is better than one?” On the backside is a Twitter hashtag, #2betterthan1.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7862/amd-teases-forthcoming-dualgpu-video-card

I wonder what the power requirements would be. :biggrin:

Update #1

Following last week’s dual-GPU teaser, AMD’s marketing department is back with another teaser for their forthcoming product.
This time they’ve sent along a bottle of water and two cans of (potato) chips. All 3 items are adorned with the “#2betterthan1” hash tag.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7881/amd-teases-dualgpu-video-card-once-more

 

[Phynaz]

Please AMD. Outsource your marketing.
Please.

 

[Grooveriding]

Probably will be the first reference card using an AIO water cooler..

 

[OCGuy]

If they are going to cut-down Hawaii, which is the only thing that would even make sense, then they should cut it down for single GPU first.

Although at this point 28nm Halo cards are played out either way.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

It makes a lot of sense for them to do dual GPU cards now that crossfire is working better than sli overall in their most recent GPUs.

I'm interested to see what they do about power usage and heat however. If they cut something down to around 7970 size with the with xdma it would be ridiculously fast.

 

[tviceman]

This card is going to make the gtx590 and HD6990 look like Toyota Prius's while simultaneously making the gtx480 feel like a nice spring-time breeze.

It makes a lot of sense for them to do dual GPU cards now that crossfire is working better than sli overall in their most recent GPUs.

In good old AMD fashion, two steps forward, one step back. They have functional dual-GPU usability now but they broke the power bank with Hawaii.

 

[Silverforce11]

Probably will be the first reference card using an AIO water cooler..

Yup, such a beast can only tamed under water.

If they price it right, a dual card with a reference waterblock would be significantly cheaper than 2 R290 with 2 separate blocks.

 

[ultimatebob]

It will probably require a 800+ Watt power supply, need three PCI Express power connectors, and will retail for over $850... not that you could actually buy it for less than $1,000 thanks to the cryptominers.

 

[mindbomb]

are we sure it's a dual gpu card? what about just a new crossfire technique?

 

[biostud]

are we sure it's a dual gpu card? what about just a new crossfire technique?

They already have that with the 290, so I doubt they have a new technology.

 

[richaron]

Ermmm... So it seemed obvious to me (maybe I was the only one) that Hawaii was being squeezed pretty hard to beat Titan level performance.

No doubt power is vastly more sane when operating at another point on the efficiency curve. This combined with much better multi-card scaling should make an unbeatable card. Unless nV feels like totally blowing the power bank, kinda like a reverse 290X launch but with much bigger numbers all round.

 

[3DVagabond]

nVidia could likely keep up with a dual 780 part. The 7990 is already the fastest card made. They must be doing this to add GK1.1 features to the top card. Likely lower clocks and let the AIB's come out with a water cooled cards to run at +1GHz. Just speculating, of course.

 

[el etro]

290x consumes this absurd because of the 95°C operating temps. With lower temps, power consumption can be lowered.


AMD needs as fast as they can liberate custom designs for this card, too. 20nm GPUs can make the dual GPU card much less relevant.




With GTX 580 chips Nvidia managed to make a dual card and that card consumed close to what 290x(quiet mode) consumes, so why think 290x power consumption would be so high?

 

[wand3r3r]

Yeah they do have to get this out the door quick, although they are the only ones who know when 20nm will actually come. They may have plenty of time to play with if it's only coming at the end of this year.

I hope they have tamed the 290x-X2 dual card well with great temps, noise, and without sacrificing performance much. I'd love to have a bunch of them in my rig provided they actually do the above (fill every slot ).

 

[piesquared]

Might have something to do with the dual memory controller patent AMD was issued. 20nm is also a possibility given the high margins required and timing of the FirePro announcement. AMD has been the leader advancing to the next node for many years, while NV has followed AMD and TSMC's leg work. So perhaps a consumer ASIC of the new FirePro.

 

[Grooveriding]

They're going to cost a huge amount regardless. The pro miners will snap these up because it will allow them to have 8 Hawaii cores in each system instead of only 4.

Card will probably be marked up to $1500 within days of release. Heck, it could release at that price and sell with how popular it would be for miners. :awe:

 

[JDG1980]

They're going to cost a huge amount regardless. The pro miners will snap these up because it will allow them to have 8 Hawaii cores in each system instead of only 4.

Card will probably be marked up to $1500 within days of release. Heck, it could release at that price and sell with how popular it would be for miners. :awe:

2x Hawaii would give roughly 1800 KH/sec (for Scrypt). Now that the price gouging has subsided a bit, you can get three R9 280X cards for under $1000, and these usually get about 720 KH/sec each - so a total of 2160. There's no way that a $1500 dual-Hawaii card would be competitive for mining. Whether gamers would want it or not is a different question.

Now, if it was released at $1000, the ability to fit more cards per rig might make it worth it. I don't expect to see a MSRP of over $999 on this, and with Scrypt profitability having substantially declined in the past week, that pricing might well hold.

If AMD really wants to pander to cryptominers, they or one of their board partners should release a quad-Pitcairn card. That could post 1600+ KH/sec at a price point of maybe ~$500 without sacrificing too much profit margin (remember, they'd need a lot less VRAM than four separate cards, and just one PCB). Or better yet, four Pitcairn chips integrated on a motherboard with a Jaguar SoC, 4GB or so of shared GDDR5 (like on the PS4), and 16GB of onboard flash, and the whole thing covered in a giant heatsink. Just add a power supply and off to the races!

 

[Grooveriding]

My point was that the serious miners want as much hash per box as possible. These cards would allow them to double that metric.

Availability of these will be scarce and they're going to cost at least $1200 imo, likely more with the supply/demand brought to bear by professional mining setups.

 

[piesquared]

CeBIT: AMD Radeon R9 295X2 1 GHz clock speed and gets water cooling

Nice.

 

[OCGuy]

CeBIT: AMD Radeon R9 295X2 1 GHz clock speed and gets water cooling

Nice.

I don't care if they only make 10 of them, if they can put 2 1GHZ Hawaii chips on a single PCB and stay within PCIE spec, color me impressed.

Although like basically everything else these days, I will believe it when I see it.

 

[guskline]

My guess is the power requirement will be at least 800 Watt psu. Watercooling will be a must. See the FX 9590/9370.

 

[Will Robinson]

CeBIT: AMD Radeon R9 295X2 1 GHz clock speed and gets water cooling

Nice.

That's one badass card.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

That's one badass card.

That's not the actual card they are talking about. Just that websites best guess as to what the cooler will be like.

 

[OCGuy]

Anyone believe that that website got an exclusive?

Obviously a card is going to be announced due to Anand's post, but why would details be leaked through the source in the OP?

 

[Rvenger]

PCB will probably be 12 inches or more. No way that pic is a 295x2.