Next-gen Radeons to be Multi-core?

so your telling me that the GPU would work more with the cpu in processing images? if that come true AMD/ATI got my thumbs up

we await an outline for next gen. nVidia products....

Kinda weird to think about the possibly of say a quad-core GPU hmm? Haha

That's an awesome idea! I can only pray that this puts ATI on top for once (and that they get this done quickly).

that would be nice... however it would be even nice if the GPU's were to migrate back onto the CPU's

So 1 question. does this mean we will have to wait on games to take advantage of these multiple cores or does it work like SLI kinda does and makes the work load easier?

I think that it makes the load more easier, I mean why have sli (2 video card) if you could go SLI (4gpu into 2 cards)

Yeah, I can't imagine what else it would do.  Actually, I could see this as a way to enable the card to perhaps, sharpen the quality of the graphics.

Well, we here this kind of stuff from time to time, and it's not REALLY clear as to what's happening.

We have already seen two GPUs on one card - Rage Fury Maxx, Voodoo 5, GeForce 7950 GX2, and the upcoming Radeon HD 3870 X2 come to mind.

Also, keep in mind, that the scalable GPUs of today are already "multi-core". The 2900 XT for example has 320 stream processors, the 2600 XT has 120. Each of those steam processors is basically a 'core'. ATI adds or subtracts cores as necessary to build the product stack.

Lots of so-called tech journalists don't seem to understand this fact.

Now what we haven't seen yet is multi-chip-packages with GPUs, ala Intel's Kentsfield and Yorkfield. If NVIDIA and ATI eventually go that route, and the performance is determined by actual hardware an not a combination of hardware and software like CrossFire and SLI, that would be interesting. But if it turns out that high-end cards with say four 'cores' don't work at 100% performance with new games until driver updates incorporate profiles for those new games, that's going to stink. Go check out my Radeon HD 3870 article and see what happens to ETQW and Crysis in CrossFire mode. If that's going to happen to every new game after shelling out $500 for a high-end card, consumers are going to be in for some annoying times.

I can see it now! Crysis 2 goes gold in November 2009! To arrive on store shelves in February 2010 to coincide with drivers that'll run the game properly on today's multi-core GPUs!

Thanks for ur experienced Voice & Comment :p

Thanx Marco. You addressed exactly what I was asking about.

There are some considerations to keep in mind here. Just one RV670 (666 million transisters) or G92 (754 million transisters) are larger than even quadcore processors from AMD/Intel (582 and 463 million transisters respectively). So even if the GPU's are architecturally apt to multicore designs there are other issues such as fabrication/voltage/heat to consider. It is very doubtful we'll see 2 GPU's on the same chip anytime soon. And we all know how crappy multiple GPU's on one PCB is. There are examples of how it is bad in the past. GPU's bottleneck one another, the PCB is much more complicated. So even in the case of having a multicore GPU that complexity ends at the chip fab. In the case of implemented more GPU's on the same board a larger burden is being put on companies like Asus, XFX, eVGA.

Hi All,

This is just my opinion but it would seem to me that a Multi Core GPU would be a more efficient solution to run Games like Crysis, instead of SLI or Crossfire.

I just want them to start making graphics processors like they make CPU's- direct connect to the MB. I think they could go much faster and run cooler if they were to do this.