some ATI's MVP info

the X800XT does not have an external molex connector either, basicly both of them needed to adjust the cards to this requirement, and probably some others(the interface seems very "alien" to me). and like geforcer said NV just didnt spent more then the minimun which was needed to make the cards work. thas creating that freaking monster the size of a keyboard. since unlike PCs all MACs share the same exact design(well every modle~), NV simply dumped the space problem on apple and didnt gave it a second tought.

 

Are you suggesting Apple had to redimension their G5 workstation to accommodate this card? That sounds a wee bit absurd. I think reality is that there is no space problem, but why debate this back and forth in a thread that has nothing to do with 6800 Ultra for Mac.

 

It's AGP Pro.

wireframe: i think he meant that because of the room available inside the PowerMac, the 'problem' wasn't a problem at all. The room is there, why not use it?

 

no im saying that G5 have tons of free sapce as it is.
but if Apple would like the redesign them in the near future(it would take some time untill we`ll see another gen of cards for MACss) they`ll have to take in mind the outrages dimensions of the 6800U. thas if there would be a problem Apple will have to handle it, i doubt NV would redesign thier card after so much time.

woah! havent seen that for a long time
btwl its AGP 4 or 8?
the pro means its just supplies more power :?

 

Back to the ATI "master card" point, and in relation to this completely unrelated Geforce 6800 Ultra for the Mac, I really doubt ATI would create a card that huge for the PC mass market. I don't doubt that some people may have seen such a large board, but that is most likely because they were looking at a prototype/testing board. These types of boards hardly ever use the final PCB design because they are built to accommodate different set ups for testing. Even those tiny X800 XTs were once on large boards until the final routing was decided and the final PCB was printed.

Now, I am not sure if this thread is about "more negative news" about upcoming ATI products, but I see absolutely no reason to expect the final master-capable ATI boards to be huge (especially when put into context of the 6800U Mac edition). Look at all ATI cards and the ones you have shown in this thread. They are relatively small. Of course it is entirely possible that ATI will need a huge board and that they even miscalculated their approach in this sense, but I see absolutely no reason to speculate in this direction. Again, because I think what people saw (or maybe they just made it up, who knows) was a pre-production board.

As a side note, I think it will be very interesting to see ATI's final "SLI" implementation and compare it to Nvidia's, although it may be more appropriate it be compared to Nvidia's SLI-2 as there may be some refinement in future SLI capable Nvidia products. There's been so much talk about how ATI's solution will be more effective and efficient, simple to implement and so on. It certainly looks like "SLI" is here to stay so it will be key that the Big Two match up in that arena as well as in the single card market. One can only hope that future mainboard support will mean products from either IHV can be used so that you are not tied down to using only one brand of "SLI" cards with any one mainboard.

 

I recall the "original" MVP talk suggested that would be able to link any two ATI cards without a need for any connector. Of course we know almost nothing about ATI's multicard solution, but this latest suggestion (Master-slave, external connector), regardless of the size of master card, doesn't seem all that elegant to me.

 

The only "elegance" I'm concerned about is game compatibility / OOTB experience.

 

WRT to the original quote AFAIK there are no difference in board sizes.

 

Wonders how it matches up against the V5-6000...

 

I think the GF6800U uses the power from the ADC slot edge connector with the extra power from the AGP Pro slot connectors. The extra components look like inductors, capacitors, and transistors for what I assume would be power regulation. The GF6800U appears to have two DVI ports and no ADC port, but everyone though knew this right? However, there is a slot edge connector way at the front of the Mac GF6800U. This is an ADC slot edge connector, this connector has USB data and 24V to 28V of power on it. Now, assuming the PSU in the G5 could still handle running the old Apple 19" ADC monitor which I think runs at about 4A@24V. However, this 24V may be right off of the main transformer in the PSU and unregulated. So the components on the extra length is probably used to regulate the power from the ADC slot.

The GF6800U card itself looks like it is 12 inches. This is a perfectly reasonable length for any card. However most PC cases these days will not accept a 12 inch card because they are not long enough or they have drive bays in the way.