14 DAY TRIAL // GeCube has announced its new Star Twin 2 graphics card. Sounds interesting but actually what's behind the huge cooling system is what matters most. The new card is being powered by two AMD RV560 ATI Radeon X1650XT GPUs which are mounted together on a single PCB. Each ATI Radeon X1650XT graphics processor features the same numbers we've all gotten used to: 24 pixel shaders with 8 pixel pipelines.
GeCube doesn't say anything regarding Star Twin 2's memory and GPU clocks but I think the actual working frequencies will be in par with standard single GPU X1650XT parts, maybe a little lower due to the extensive heat. As a reminder, ATI Radeon X1650XT is typically clocked at 575 MHz GPU and 675 MHz memory on reference designs but many manufacturers use higher settings in order to produce a higher performance using a safer "factory overclock" instead of the usual "home-overclock".
Having two GPUs onboard the GeCube Star Twin 2 features no less than 4 DVI video outputs obtained by using two DMS59 cables. In addition to the DVI outputs, the Star Twin 2 is fully HDCP capable for Blu-ray and HD DVD playback and can decode H.264 HD video content. AVIVO video features are also present here.
Unfortunately, the GeCube Star Twin 2 has only been announced for the Taiwanese market. An actual launch date on the US market is unknown at the moment but I really hope that they will launch it in US as it would make a perfect mid-range solution. This is not the first attempt of Gecube to create a dual GPU Ati card. But I hope it will be more successful than the last attempt when a dual GPU Gecube X1600 card sold poorly.