ATI with quad displays?

[Fenrir(AVA)]

Mr Kwok Yuen Ho, the CEO and chairman of ATi Technologies has given a speech during the press announcement and presentation of the Radeon 9000 and 9700 at China today. Here are some of the interesting highlights during the Q&A session with Mr Kwok :

Based on the Radeon 9700 technology with parallel connection of up to 256, ATi is currently examining the possibility of having Dual Radeon 9700 VPUs on a card. Also Quad display outputs is possible with such card. However, there is no official schedule on when such card will be launched. Most likely the target segment for Dual VPU card is for simulation market.
Radeon 9000 for mobile segment will be released within 2 months and the mobile edition of Radeon 9700 will be taped out in time to come.
The Lite edition of Radeon 9700 which is possibly the Radeon 9500 will be targeting at the mainstream market will have the number of rendering pipelines and memory channels reduced by half.
ATi does not have plan to make Radeon 9700 to be based on 0.13 micron process but the next generation R350 will and it is scheduled to be launch by first half of next year and supports DirectX 9.1
ATi is currently partnering with TSMC as their main foundries but UMC will be producing for them as well.

Hmm maybe parhelia will get a boost in game support if ATI jumps on the surround/quad monitor setup.

[Greebe]

A quad monitor setup would leave the center of the scene split down the middle... ie not useable for Surround Gaming.

Besides this doesn't have anything todo with Matrox Hardware... should be moved to TCB

[SteveC]

Problem with quad though is that there'll be a break between the two screens in the middle - with the 3 screens the middle screen is complete which I like.

[SteveC]

Great minds think alike eh Mike?

[Ant]

Great?

[Greebe]

... like clueless n00b(s) GREAT

Imagine the cost of such a critter... virtually double the cost to implement. single retail for ~$400, dual retail for $800?!

[mhm]

How about this CAE Tropos 4x Radeon8500 card?

[Kruzin]

Moved to General Hardware/Software

[impact]

This could potentially rock! Have three screens ala parhelias tripplehead, but with the fourth one being the "rear view mirror". You could position the fourth monitor on top of the second one and voila - Quake player heaven. No longer can cheesy bastards sneak up on you. Plus they could use the games that are already patched to use triple head and just add the support for the fourth monitor... piece of cake... no scene split in the middle and with twin radeon chips quite fast, too.

[blacklotus]

Re: ATI with quad displays?

Interesting...can we say Voodoo's SLI on a card all over again?

But I find his comments on the availability of MOBILE 9000 and 9700 to be more interesting...

Originally posted by Fenrir(AVA)


Hmm maybe parhelia will get a boost in game support if ATI jumps on the surround/quad monitor setup.

[borat]

i am probably gonna be bitched at again but why would it be twice as expensive?the sot to implement will be at most double(probably less) and as these things cost only a few 10's of dollars to actually manufacture then there would be no need to make it double the price, they could charge say $600 as the rrp and then retailers would knock this down to $500 or $400 dollars a few months after launch i mean another processor will only add about $40 to the actual cost of production at an absolute exteme so the $200 increase in price would give ati $160 dollars extra as the people who buy these boards would most likely buy a single 9700 anyway if the dual were not available. also why would you need to use all 4 heads for gaming? just use three and you have surround gaming the fourth would be there if you wanted it for other things, i mean how many dual head owners play games on 2 heads? this card is a good idea and could help out matrox with surround support, i think ati should be praised for taking some initiative in the sector and adopting these features as it gives nvidia some real compition which can only be good for the consumer.

[Wombat]

as these things cost only a few 10's of dollars to actually manufacture

Clueless.

[borat]

wombat i know we've been here before but how can they cost much more than this?i am refering purely to manufacture packaging and shipping costs not R&D and we see products like gf mx's and ati 9000 and ve editions retailing for $60 - $90 at launch and these are just trimmed down versions of the full blown $200. the stripped down varients can only cost around $20 - $30 dollars to make as otherwise there is nothing inn it for the manufacturer. the 9700 is on .15 micron which is established and we are seeing 9000's for $90 so why do the 9700's cost way more (as in 4 times more) to manufacture?

[Wombat]

No, there's no way that's a $30 board. Maybe $60-$70. And the faster boards do cost a lot more. The cost/performance curve is exponential. Finding a use for parts that don't cut it (a.k.a. yield salvage) is a common, and smart move. They can sell things that they would normally have to throw away. Suppose it cost around $600 to make a certain processor and have the die run at 2GHz. You could probably sell a lot of them at $900. Now, if you were only getting 20% yield, you'd have 80% trash. Suppose that 1 in 4 parts of the "trash" could run at 1.5GHz. Now you essentially have free money. Price the 1.5GHz parts at such a level that people that would never pay $900 would pay $500 for this part, but people that need the performance will still pay for the $900 part. This is a lot smarter than just ignoring a market niche.

So you get your "trash" parts for free, along with the discounted "trash" parts from your partners (RAM makers, etc). So yes, the "premium" board can cost well over two, three, times what the "value" board costs to make, <I>just from the parts perspective</I>.

[borat]

yes thats a fair point actually andone which i hadnt thought of before, but what kind of yeaild will something like the 9700 get and what happens to the under performing ones,like wise with parhelia i know there is the oem version but its only slightly slower than the retail, maybe they are storing the fast ones up for a unanticipated september reales(jus kidding) thqnks wombat