Socket System for Graphics Cards

[paadness]

Since its rather annoying and frustating to spend $ 400 + each year for gaming alone. SLI being to expensive so iis Cross Fire.

How about Socket system. Keep a socket for 2-3 years and work around it releasing faster cores.

This way we can all afford extreme gaming. We will only need the upgrade the core, should not cost that much.

What do u think?

 

[ryanv12]

Interesting thought. I wonder what the technical limitations of this are. These high end cards cost as much as whole budget computers, maybe this system should be considered.

 

[Jeff7181]

You mean have a smaller "daughter board" similar to a motherboard? Where you can plug in a GPU of your choice and RAM of your choice? Would be nice for a given series... like... start with a 6600... then later on replace just the GPU with a 6800 and/or RAM.

I wonder if it would be more cost effective to manufacturers too. It would reduce their costs because they could sell bare GPU's without PCB's and RAM and RAMDAC's and all that. Then again... they won't be able to make a profit on all that stuff either.

 

[mwmorph]

but then the pcb would be at a set memory bandwith. so there will still be 3 levels 128bit, 256bit and 512bit memory bus probably. then you have to develop cores specially for each, then ram, then the companies wouldnt be making as much $. never going to happen. remember when they tried to standardize battery sizes into 2 or 3 standard models until the laptop manufacturers found out it's cheaper to make proprietary battery packs.

 

[paadness]

It should be done. Do u know the people who dash out $ 500+ on graphics cards are those who either don't know anything about them or those who know quite a bit about them, the later includes all of us.

This socket system i thought for just one reason in mind which is the price.

However, comes the socket design for graphic cards and down go all the partner companies.

Since ATI and NVIDIA will be producing core on mass scale, the board makers will be left to produce cards now on lower scale.

Technically, this could be done. U know an Intel S-478 took u from all 1.5 Ghz all the way upto 3.2 Ghz or more.

The major technical limitation may be the RAM but that has been done a decade back.

My 4 MB Opti Card has 4 memory slot, two of those which are still empty. I could have upgraded its RAM.

All in all, this would be a real feat.

Both ATI and NVIDIA will benefit from it in a way that they would work on one design for a long period and save millions each year.

 

[Pete]

Micron tried to do this back when Rendition was in the 3D game. It went nowhere, and probably will continue to do so if 3D memory bandwidth continues to outpace system memory by as much as it does now.