CeBIT 2007 - GeCube show finished RV560 Gemini, RV630 version coming

Thursday 15th March 2007, 11:11:00 PM, written by Rys

GeCube have finally brought their RV560-based Gemini dual-chip single board project to completion, and are now looking forward to doing the same thing with RV630. Running a live four-head demo on their stand at CeBIT, their X1650 XT Gemini pairs two RV560 ASICs and a PCI Express bridge IC on a single PCB with a single-slot cooler.

Dual DMS59 connectors provide the display outputs, each providing two single-link DVI ports each with the provided cable, with an internal Crossfire link providing the conduit for the performance increase. GeCube note that Gemini Crossfire is only available on Intel's 945 (yes, nine four five), 965 and 975 core logic, strangely, with seemingly no support for AMD's own Crossfire mainboards.

GeCube's Jeff Fu is responsible for the all-copper cooling solution which impressively only uses a single slot, and Jeff mentions that power consumption is not much more than 100W, with a single 6-pin power connector needed. The board gets the rest over the PCI Express x16 slot it fits into.

In terms of performance and IQ enhancements from running two GPUs in tandem in Crossfire mode, you get the usual SuperAA antialiasing modes, and all the Crossfire performance modes are available via a driver that GeCube has helped AMD to engineer. The pics below show the spec and the board driving four displays in non-Crossfire mode. In Crossfire mode the first display is the only one that remains active.

Click for a bigger version
Click for a bigger version


We learned a little about the planned RV630-based Gemini product, too. It'll be dual-slot, sadly, but there'll be four independent dual-link DVI ports on the backplane, something which makes it instantly attractive for running that four-way array of 2560x1600 panels you've always dreamed of.

Given a UVD implementation on each RV630 GPU, there's probably room for decoding a 20Mib/sec H.264 stream on each of those panels, too. It's not clear in what form any RV630 Gemini will hit retail, but with the knowledge gained from the RV560 version shown at CeBIT today, it's likely that GeCube can avoid many of the implementation issues they encountered and get the product up and running much quicker than before.

Tagging

graphics ± gemini, rv560

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