14 DAY TRIAL // Graphics cards arranged in multiple units setups are not something out of the ordinary but 'traditional' configurations like Nvidia's SLI or ATI's CrossFire technologies have a number of bad parts like the need to buy two or more graphics cards ( a very big money sucking trend), lots of power needed for stable operation and a compatible mainboard. For users not having all of the above, the traditional setup may or may not work, so a number of computer hardware manufacturers came up with an alternative solution: the dual graphics processing units on a single card.
Among the companies interested in developing such dual GPU graphics cards is Sapphire Technology which already has one such card on the market and now it prepares another one based on the ATI Radeon HD 2600 GPU. The new card brings a number of innovations like the higher speed video memories and some increased compatibility with a wider range of mainboards and chipsets. According to the news site xbitlabs, Sapphire's HD 2600 dual GPU graphics cards are equipped with ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT graphics processing units clocked at 800MHz as well as with 512MB or 1GB of GDDR3 memory clocked at 1600MHz, which is much lower than the standard recommended memory settings for that generation of GPUs.
While Sapphire's graphics cards are having lower speed memories that the default 2200MHz ones recommended by AMD's graphics division, they are still higher than the ones used by the competing company, GeCube. The new dual GPU cards are considered to offer viable alternatives to Nvidia's 8600 GTS products. The ATI Radeon HD 2600 graphics processing unit comes with 120 stream processors, 8 texture units and 4 render back ends, so two of these GPUs will double the number of stream processors being very close to the number of such units offered by similar in class Nvidia solutions but much lower than the 320 stream processing units that can be found on a single ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT chip.
While the performance level of the dual GPU card is high enough to satisfy every customer, it lacks the compatibility offered by similar solutions from Nvidia as it is physically taller and it may not fit in every computer case out there. As it is only compatible with mainboards based on the following chipsets, AMD 580X CrossFire, AMD CrossFire Express 3200, Intel 975X Express, Intel P965 Express and Intel P35 Express, the dual GPU card may not see a very wide expansion.