ASUS Cancels Dual-Chip GeForce 6800 Graphics Cards

@ 2005/06/24
ASUSTeK Computer has decided not to launch its dual-chip graphics cards featuring two GeForce 6800-series chips in the light of NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX launch, the company’s representatives told X-bit labs.


During the launch of the GeForce 7800 GTX a representative for ASUSTeK told that the company no longer has plans to commercially launch its dual-chip GeForce 6800-series product. Instead, the company is looking forward to utilize two GeForce 7800-series chips on a single graphics card targeted for hardcore enthusiasts. The cancellation of the project is suggested to be the launch of the new-generation GeForce 7800 GTX graphics processing units.

Earlier this year ASUS demonstrated a prototype of a graphics card featuring two NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra graphics processors, in addition, the company also indicated plans to make dual NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT graphics cards.

ASUSTeK’s EN6800-series Dual prototypes featured two either the GeForce 6800 GT or the GeForce 6800 Ultra graphics processing units which were connected to each other using NVIDIA’s multi-GPU technology branded SLI. Each GPU was equipped with 256MB of 256-bit GDDR3 memory.

According to a report, ASUS EN6800GT Dual was 1.7 times faster compared to a single-chip NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT graphics card. With 32 pixel and 12 vertex processors, such graphics card might end up as a more powerful compared to the forthcoming single-chip products based on the code-named R520 and G70 visual processing units from ATI Technologies and NVIDIA Corp., graphics cards makers thought.

A disadvantage of a dual-chip GeForce 6800-series based graphics cards may be its sizes, as the print circuit board of the EN6800GT Dual is both longer and higher compared to typical graphics cards and may not fit into typical computer cases.

Comment from Rutar @ 2005/06/24
Have you seen the prototype? It was almost as big as a motherboard