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@ 2007/07/13Let's play good cop, bad cop. We're fans of innovation and congratulate GeCube on designing a working dual-GPU card featuring twin Radeon X1650 XTs on one PCB. Performance is reasonable for the expected £120 outlay and quad-monitor support is handy for a niche market. But bad cop has a bigger list. The Radeon X1650 XT GPU was reasonable for its time. Now, however, AMD's Radeon HD 2000 series and NVIDIA's GeForce 8500/8600 offer DX10-supporting tech that's coupled with impressive high-def video-decode performance. They may not be quite as fast in pure pixel-pushing grunt but we'd love to see GeCube (really) quickly release its multi-GPU Radeon HD2600-based card instead.<br><br>
By the very nature of the Radeon X1650 XT GPU, GeCube misses out on dual-link DVI and, as far as we can discern, HDCP support on our sample. Further, a dual-GPU design works well when multi-GPU support is efficiently implemented and that may not always be the case. Add in our sample's noisy cooler and, really, we'd advise you to either go for the cheapest - currently around £90 - Radeon X1950 Pro you can find or, if you really want innovation in your box, wait until GeCube launches the RV630 dual-GPU model. The premise here was good. Late time to market, a comparative lack of features, and reliance on CrossFire relegates the GeCube X1650 XT Dual 512MiB to being just an interesting product: there are better buys out there right now.
By the very nature of the Radeon X1650 XT GPU, GeCube misses out on dual-link DVI and, as far as we can discern, HDCP support on our sample. Further, a dual-GPU design works well when multi-GPU support is efficiently implemented and that may not always be the case. Add in our sample's noisy cooler and, really, we'd advise you to either go for the cheapest - currently around £90 - Radeon X1950 Pro you can find or, if you really want innovation in your box, wait until GeCube launches the RV630 dual-GPU model. The premise here was good. Late time to market, a comparative lack of features, and reliance on CrossFire relegates the GeCube X1650 XT Dual 512MiB to being just an interesting product: there are better buys out there right now.
