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Out of the Box thinking on Upgradeable Video Cards

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jlepri

Member
Joined
Nov 13, 2003
Location
Pittsburgh, PA
Here is an idea that came to mind this morning on my why to work. Now I am not a Computer Engineer and still learning my way around my first build PC so bear with me. With the price and performance of video cards steadily increasing – why not consider an upgradeable video cards. Since a video card are like a mini PC in itself, design a card that could have an upgradeable core, additional memory slots and possibly a way to add additional rendering pipelines.

Probably a little far fetched, and I know the manufactures would loose $$ - but who knows?
 
It's viable solution on ethat has been brought up here more than once. But like you said manufactuers would loose money. Plus design would be a pain, and the memory/core would be a pain to install. Also the PCBs are different. If you look at the PCB of a Ti4200 compared to a 6800 they are worlds apart.
 
^^ and that standardization would likely limit video cards level of upgrading - mainly due to the resitors and PCB they are made on.
 
Kind've how bus-pipelines are limited on your motherboard... if we had a standard PCB where you could stick a GPU and GPU RAM like a motherboard.. we'd probably create more companies, and more profitibility to the video realm.. however, I think it would overcast more and more the CPU section...

System Motherboard - cpu, system ram, cards, drives
Video card motherboard - gpu, gpu ram...

You'd have to worry about upgrading two or three pieces like a motherboard upgrade... going to 745 or 939 pin, you need new DDR2 ram, and a new proc...

-Frank
 
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