Flip Chip GPU's

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PRIME1

2[H]4U
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http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2570

So how about upgrading your GPU instead of your whole video card? It seems it may be possible in the future.

It would be kind of nice to select your board seperate from your GPU the way we do now with CPU's. Not to mention the ability to upgrade. You could also pick and choose your HSF if you wanted to. :cool:
 
only if there is an option to do the ram also or if the the board w/ the memory is going to be cheap
 
It is a market scam IMHO. The only thing it will do is drive up the general price of the video card. Putting a bigger badder GPU on a board in with a fix supply rating and fix RAM speed make absolutely NO sense.

The only way around that is to design the base board on the superset which would make the real price difference between the cheapest version and the most expensive version $50 at best.

Again...no sense.

-tReP
 
PRIME1 said:
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2570

So how about upgrading your GPU instead of your whole video card? It seems it may be possible in the future.

It would be kind of nice to select your board seperate from your GPU the way we do now with CPU's. Not to mention the ability to upgrade. You could also pick and choose your HSF if you wanted to. :cool:
Click to expand...

I hope they put a heatspreader on their GPU's if they go this route; chipped cores are no fun.

It seems the main problem with this is that 3D performance is tied very closely to both GPU power and memory bandwidth. Since the memory will still be soldered to the board, it seems a GPU upgrade would probably leave you bandwidth limited in most cases.
 
you guys aren't READING the article!

"They claim that NVIDIA is working on flip chip GPU sockets for motherboards. Apparently, inside NVIDIA engineering teams have several prototypes where the GPU, rather than the CPU, is the main focus of a motherboard with two sockets: one for the GPU and another for the CPU"

NO CARD!!!!!!!!!!! replace/cool the GPU like you would a CPU. One would assume video would use system memory or have dedicated ' video memory module ' slots. (just like DIMMs)

This would be an AMAZING coup by Nvidia if they got other mainboard manufactures to support it. After all, Nvidia already makes ALL their cores. No more middle-men applying your core to their product and adding their markup. Direct sale = direct PROFITS baby :)
 
weebling1 said:
you guys aren't READING the article!

"They claim that NVIDIA is working on flip chip GPU sockets for motherboards. Apparently, inside NVIDIA engineering teams have several prototypes where the GPU, rather than the CPU, is the main focus of a motherboard with two sockets: one for the GPU and another for the CPU"

NO CARD, replace/cool the GPU like you would a CPU. One would assume video would use system memory or have dedicate 'video memory module' slots.

This would be an AMAZING coup by Nvidia if they got other mainboard manufactures to support it. After all, Nvidia already makes ALL their cores. No more middle-men applying your core to their product and adding their markup. Direct sale = direct PROFITS baby :)
Click to expand...

Yes, I saw that. I was also thinking of the article on ATI's version, which is made for PCI-e cards:

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2574
 
I can see everything being onboard eventually....Being the gpu, physics....Even interchangable north and southbridges.....I can see the day where that comes....
 
then again, why even have separate memory?? How 'bout just put it on the chip? (like 1mb CPU cache)
edit: 256mb > 1mb DOH!
 
weebling1 said:
How 'bout just put it on the chip? (like 1mb CPU cache)
edit: 256mb > 1mb DOH!
Click to expand...


On-die memory/cache is prohibitively expensive. Remember the Intel Extreme chips? 2x-3x the price for twice the cache.

I could see them using extremely low latency SO-Dimm style memory...I had an ATI card a Looooong time ago that had a sodimm socket on there. let you upgrade from 2mb to 4mb. :p
 
less expensive?

WHOA THERE BIG FELLA!!

/me slaps Genocidal[v2] with a large trout

don't upset the status quo!
 
I can't see it lasting that long, especially with new motherboards, memory and processors it would mean you would nearly need a new system everytime you wanted to update something.
 
weebling1 said:
This would be an AMAZING coup by Nvidia if they got other mainboard manufactures to support it. After all, Nvidia already makes ALL their cores. No more middle-men applying your core to their product and adding their markup. Direct sale = direct PROFITS baby :)
Click to expand...

I seem to recall 3Dfx thought the same thing: that by not selling their chips to video card manufacturers, and doing them in-house, they could rake in the cash...didn't quite turn out that way. There were various reasons, supply being one of them; I don't think nVidia would have that problem though.

I really can't see this as being anything nVidia would bring to market for enthusiasts though, it just doesn't make sense -- not for motherboards at least. Things are bad enough with new sockets for AMD and Intel every two years. Plop an extra socket that simply could not deal with new GPUs every 12-18 months, and you're exhausting the buyers.

What I can see, is that nVidia would utilize this method for future game consoles, mainstream/lower-end OEM solutions for Dell & HP, and maybe even server boards (awesome high-end server boards today often still have ATi Rage 128 onboard graphics - this would be a nice little little piece to take away from ATi).

Bottom line is: I don't think enthusiasts have anything to worry about here. If such a thing ever comes, it won't be marketed to most of us, and for the markets that could use it, it might even be pretty cool.
 
Main reason servers still use Rage 128 chips is because half the time they are headless, or are all console driven. Dont really need to accelerate a 3am console session.
 
The idea of single unit graphics cards is because the technology changes quicky and drastically.
What about pipelines? Or is that all on the core.
 
thats in the core...

i wonder what sort of standards are going to have to be set in place... as far as the gpu's interface with memory. and how it would be able to handle different types..

i suppose companies would have to use the same pin out over and over.. .until the next board that is.
 
I think this would be good for the value/on board graphics market, you can decide just how much to spend from a gf4 mx to a gf 6600 :>
 
I'd like to see three main sockets on a motherboard. CPU, GPU, and Physics sockets. All upgradable with dual core support. Memory could go on PCI-E boards. One or two cards with 512+ megs for use as graphics and physics memory. Shweet.
 
Not that it matters much, but the article uses the term "flip chip" incorrectly. Flip chips are chips where the die is on top, rather than the bottom (e.g. the original Pentium had the die on the bottom of the package, facing the mobo, nearly all current CPUs have the die on top. This was done to help heat dissipation.

For the article, it would be more appropriate to use socketed or drop in or something along those lines :p
 
quote Servant of Shodan: "I seem to recall 3Dfx thought the same thing: that by not selling their chips to video card manufacturers, and doing them in-house, they could rake in the cash...didn't quite turn out that way. There were various reasons, supply being one of them; I don't think nVidia would have that problem though."

but nVidia already makes ALL the chips. There would be no board to affix them too so video card assembly would be complete at the chip fab

"I really can't see this as being anything nVidia would bring to market for enthusiasts though, it just doesn't make sense -- not for motherboards at least. Things are bad enough with new sockets for AMD and Intel every two years. Plop an extra socket that simply could not deal with new GPUs every 12-18 months, and you're exhausting the buyers."

ya, the CPU side of things is crazy these days, but all video GPUs in a series are based on the same core. It should easily be possible to maintain a form factor for twice that period.

"What I can see, is that nVidia would utilize this method for future game consoles, mainstream/lower-end OEM solutions for Dell & HP, and maybe even server boards (awesome high-end server boards today often still have ATi Rage 128 onboard graphics - this would be a nice little little piece to take away from ATi)."

Upgradable consoles, thats scary enough to think about, but it all comes back to the bottom line, COST. It's far cheaper to solder a chip directly to a board and not pay for a special socket. Ya never know though, I could see Microsoft enjoying the fact that the year after Xbox720 comes out, users plop a new chip in and it kicks butt on PS4.

I think enthusist market is exactly whats driving this thinking
 
Socketed, not flip chip. Grr.

There are a couple BIG issues with this.

One is you get another socket standard to contend with on the MB and worry about changes in. You're also not going to see ATI and nVidia use the same socket so you just doubled the configs of MBs out there. The MB people will HATE this from an inventory and config management standpoint.

The memory will be slower if there is some kind of replaceable DIMM since you can't take advantage of the shorter traces with no connectors in the path. If not then you have to solder it all the on MB.

Both the memory and the socket will take up a lot more space on the MB than a PCIe slot as well as needing better cooling. I think you'd need to move to a BTX style MB to have any chance of doing a decent job of it. I also don't see being able to do SLI on a MB of reasonable size either.

Don't hold your breath.
 
Upgrading a GPU on a PCB could be nice if you needed to upgrade to a new feature set or more shader performance, but with the memory soldered on you'd be stuck with whatever was on the PCB. The only way I can see this as a viable option is if upgrading the GPU is much cheaper than just buying the whole video card.
 
I like the idea. The other interesting tidbit I read from that article was the part about PhysX being delayed into Q2 of 06...hadn't heard that before.
 
TroubleMagnet said:
One is you get another socket standard to contend with on the MB and worry about changes in. You're also not going to see ATI and nVidia use the same socket so you just doubled the configs of MBs out there. The MB people will HATE this from an inventory and config management standpoint.
Click to expand...
ATi, nVidia etc. will surely realize that if they want this to succeed, they can't start competing with different sockets.

The memory will be slower if there is some kind of replaceable DIMM since you can't take advantage of the shorter traces with no connectors in the path. If not then you have to solder it all the on MB.
Click to expand...
Which is why high-performance videocards will stay where they are, on a dedicated PCB connected to a fast link to the NB. This solution, however, is perfect for those who are fine with onboard graphics, but don't want something like Intel's Extreme Graphics (extreme 2D, perhaps). I know I'd not mind using it if it offered me the same features as my current videocard (Matrox G550), which include dual-monitor support.

Both the memory and the socket will take up a lot more space on the MB than a PCIe slot as well as needing better cooling. I think you'd need to move to a BTX style MB to have any chance of doing a decent job of it. I also don't see being able to do SLI on a MB of reasonable size either.
Click to expand...
You should think of such a CPU+GPU mainboard as basically a dual-CPU mainboard.

The BTX layout is by definition unsuitable for dual-CPU, as it offers a) no room on the mainboard's PCB and b) even if some room could be cleared, only one CPU could be properly cooled. Also, BTX is has been basically dead for at least a few months already.

Look at the hybrid socket 754/939 mainboard by Asrock for one way to get two sockets on a single ATX mainboard.
 
I haven't followed it recently but last I knew ATI and nVidia have different standards for laptop vieo upgrades. This is a fairly similar situation.

I see no reason why a low-end video solution would want to be socketed. People buying this are not likely to upgrade. Even if they do I think just adding a regular card and disabling the on-board video would still be done. Sockets are not free so there needs to be a compelling reason to switch to it.

I think the BTX front to back cooling is better than the current ATX mishmash is all. The actual BTX form factor is likely dead but something similar could be useful. I think you can have two moderately hot cores in line with each other in a front to back airflow path. A new standard centered around one or more front to back cooling paths with the ability to have card slot boards in the path would allow us to get away from the current clever but inefficient video card coolers and likely result in quieter PCs.
 
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