Upgradable graphics card

[dagger]

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/asus-graphics-card,5324.html

Any thoughts? Think this will take off? It's strange no one is discussing it. I thought something like this might grab some attention.

 

[pauldh]

I think it would end up being more expensive to upgrade than we'd like. Personally I don't see it taking off, but I'd be curious to hear some opinions on this.

I'd like an external video card box you could swap from machine to machine, even to a mobile gamer. That would be a nice one to be able to then upgrade in this manner.

 

[Plyro109]

I rather like the idea, and hope the other manufacturers get in line with Asus, here.

I'd LOVE to be able to buy a mid-range $150 card or so, and three months down the line, spend $80 or so and upgrade to faster RAM in larger quantities, then another four or five months, spend another $120 for a new GPU on it that better matches the RAM, and so on and so forth in a tick-tock cycle.

The problem with this, is that without other companies getting in on this upgrade policy to compete, Asus is going to jack the prices up enough that it may just be more worthwhile to buy the cards seperately every year and a half/Two years, like it is now.

 

[yipsl]

I like this idea. Too bad my 3870x2 isn't modular, with the 4870x2 due in July or August! I've never understood why GPU's weren't socketed on the motherboards to begin with. ASUS shows that graphics ram can be part of the module and upgradable.

Look at it this way, if ASUS goes this route with 3850, 3870, 4850 and 4870 cards, then it's a no brainer. Just get the card at your price range and if a module becomes available in the future, upgrade that way. If not, then it's still a good card for however long it's viable. Unless the cost were much higher than nonupgradable versions, I see this as a win win situation.

 

[GinoS]

This is ingeneous!

Think about it. It'll be much easier to upgrade. You could add or upgrade every few months. I spend about $250 to $300 every 2 to 3 years to upgrade my video card. I figure I average in everything else in life, so this may be the norm.

I've always thought what's the point of minimal upgrades. I rather take big leaps at $200 to $300 ever few years.

But if it only cost you say, $300 for the original card. I'd be willing to upgrade for $100 to $150 ever 6 months.

They will sell a lot more video cards and upgrades if they do this. They can then change their name to A$U$

 

[englandr753]

The concept sounds great but the problem would lye within the limitations of the board. Bandwidth issues pop into mind first thing to me. I have a hard time believing that a 4800/5800 would be identical other than the vpu and memory compared to say a 2600/2900 or even the 3850/3870's.

Im sure there are a few other less obvious issues with that as well.

I do like the idea, I wished it would happen and I wished it would be a guarantee to not be any less beneficial performance wise compared to buying a completely new card, but I doubt it..

That reminds me of the attempt to make a multi use power tool that you change the head and its a skill saw, sander or a jig saw.

It worked but not nearly as well as the single use counterparts.

 

[Flakes]

computers used to be like this, mabey your all to young to remeber, there was a time you could buy RAM chips to install on cards to get performance, it never really took off.

 

[Horhe]

This isn't practical. Graphics cards depreciate and their specifications improve much to quickly for a modular design to make sense. A new GPU module would certainly have new video memory packaged with it, and could have radically different power requirements, thus requiring most of the power circuity to be packaged with it, too. The cooling solution may also have to be packaged with the GPU module, if the original design can't dissipate heat quickly enough. What's left on the base board that actually, you know, costs a significant amount of money? Nothing. (quoted 'athauglas')

I agree with this guy.

 

[Slobogob]

Maybe a MXM slot on the mainboard would make this interesting. Since it is using laptop gpus it is only interesting to get the size of those SLI/crossfire setups down. The price will be exorbitant.

 

[FHDelux]

Its a step in the right direction IMO. ATI/NVIDIA should go farther and make socketed graphics chips and standard slotted memory. That way we could buy a graphics card 'motherboard' and just upgrade the chips. I personally am sick of having stacks of old graphics cards hanging around. This doesn't really solve that problem at all because now you would just have graphics card modules hanging around, and im sure they are still just as expensive as the card itself.

 

[Guest]

Everytime they do a die shrink you gotta buy a new card anyway. Most people buy a card every 2 or so years. How often does ATI/nVidia do die shrinks? Every year?

Its a very interesting idea, I just don't see it working out.

 

[rodney_ws]

I'm predicting it will fail. Several laptop manufacturers have sounded like they were going to go this route and where are GPU upgradeable laptops today? I imagine Alienware (or some similar company) offers one... but other than that? And we're talking something that would allow you to save your whole flip'n laptop!!! This is just to save a single PCIe card? I'd have to imagine a majority of the cost associated with a video card is in the GPU and RAM. So we're going to re-use the card and replace the GPU/RAM? It's just not going to work (financially)

 

[cah027]

I don't think it will work either. Just like other people are saying, when you upgrade to a faster gpu it might do better with faster ram and the memory controller on the board might not handle it.

I think they will start integrating the gpu cores into the cpu chip and then system ram bandwidth will be saturated. Then they will need to move from ddr3 to ddr4 faster than the move from 2 to 3.

Then they should make a separate gpu socket on MB's with its own IMC and integrated on die memory. Now I know what your thinking.. That would have to be one big arse chip to hold 512mb to 1gb of ram.. But think about it. Ram and everything else is getting smaller.. why not ?