Question Why don't they (or people) start making graphics cards with several old processors on them?

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SaltyNuts

Platinum Member
May 1, 2001
2,398
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With graphics cards prices being INSANE these days, I mean LITERALLY insane, why haven't the graphics card makers, or even aftermarket people like you guys, started pulling processors off old graphics cards and putting them all together on a single graphics card to make graphics cards that are very powerful but still very cheap because the processors were pulled off decade plus old graphics cards? Like hell, get 20 RIVA 128 cards. Pull off the processors. Sure, although each was badass back in its day, they are slow by today's standards. But.... what about 20 of them soldered on a single graphics card? Write some simple drivers to make them work in concert, and I bet it would be fast as fuk, and cheap, or hell probably free if you accept old PC donations... why has no one done this?
 
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PingSpike

Lifer
Feb 25, 2004
21,747
579
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Remember when you could actually add VRAM chips to a card? Would be kind of cool with a graphics card using SO-DIMM slots, but not really efficient. Bandwidth would also take a major hit.

I think that might have only barely overlapped with the early 3d accelerator generations. I have a cirrus logic card with slots for extra ram chips and I want to say I've seen an s3 virge with the same (I just remembered I have the internet and looked it up, they did exist). But after that era I can't recall ever seeing them. Perhaps Intel's ill fated i740? It was kind of neat.

Its the same sort of problem as motherboards though, adding all the extra traces and bus width cost money and if you aren't going to use the bus width all the time its just kind of stupid to add the cost.
 
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Stuka87

Diamond Member
Dec 10, 2010
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This doesn't work on so many levels.

For practical physical reasons you probably won't get more than 4 GPUs working on card. The most old multi-GPU cards ever had were two GPU chips ( maybe some 3DFX prototypes escaped with more).

Voodoo 2 used three GPUs, each with its own memory. But it acted as a single GPU to the PC/Mac they were installed in.

But even if you could get twenty(!) Riva 128s to work together, they would still be unusably slow for even 10 year old games.