New MVP rumors

[DanTheBanjoman]

Hexus (http://www.hexus.net/content/reviews/review.php?dXJsX3Jldmlld19JRD0xMTY1) gives us some great news about ATi's MVP, ATi's answer to SLI.
All cards starting from the 9700 pro will be capable to be a "slave" card. This means your new MVP capable VPU will be able to work together with your old card if you have a MVP capable motherboard. If this board has on-board graphics you could even be looking at a triple VPU setup!

[DanTheBanjoman]

I myself am wondering if the logic is actually in the core, if not could a driverhack allow other cards (non-ATi?) to work in MVP?
Also working together with a 9700 sounds fun, but MVP boards will be PCI-E boards, won't you need an AGP port for that 9700? the 9500 is the same core as the 9700, will it work too? 9600 is newer though mid end, this brings up so many questions :)

[15th Warlock]

Dan, I could be wrong, but I think the report states that the technology has "been built into every top-end ATi product since the ATi RADEON 9700 Pro", (no lower end support 9600, 9500 or X700 support? :confused: ) but it never mentions the possibility of using such older cards in a MVP configuration, check this:

"So now you’re thinking how cool is this, and you want one…. well, erm… the thing is right now there aren’t actually any of these cards available, so although ATi have done us all a favour by building in a level of future proofing by maintaining the use of ‘older’ cards for us, we can’t actually go ATi MVP right now."

As a matter of fact, according to the report, as of this moment, only X850 based cards will support MVP, and they'll use an external "dongle" connector (a lá voodoo 2 SLI according to the report), instead of nVidia's bridge connector.

If my memory seves me well, SLI voodoo cards, used an internal connector, that was kinda like a small IDE cable, and the external connector was used only to connect the card to a 2D video card (early voodoo cards could only render in 3D), so, Ati's approach is different from 3dfx's after all.

Thanks for the news link, this is very interesting indeed! :)

[grazzhoppa]

The original poster misunderstood the article.

It seems that the hardware to do this has been built into every top-end ATi product since the ATi RADEON 9700 Pro, and opens up interesting possibilities up and down the price range.

That sentence was there to show that ATI didn't just copy nVidia's SLI - ATI had been planning it for a long time. Otherwise It has no practical value. You can't use an AGP card in a pci-e slot :rolleyes: .

edit- someone posted while I was typing.

[DanTheBanjoman]

Actually grazzhoppa nowadays chipsets that support both agp and pci-e exist, if only they'd support MVP also... So that could be onboard+2×pci-e+agp :D

Also ATi couldn't use 3DFX's way, Nvidia bought 3DFX, why would they let ATi use it?

[djbbenn]

I read a good article on xbitlabs about MVP. Suppositly its be around for 3 years just not to the public. Can't wait to see the benchmarks for it. :D

-Dan