Modular Graphics Cards

[H0R53]

Why haven't manufacturers tried this yet?

 

Swap in a new GPU core, or more GDDR memory, the same way we do it with out motherboards.

 

I mean what if I want a GTX 460SE with 8GB GDDR5? It performs very well for the old card but the amount of memory is too small. Just an example but still

 

And for the hell of it, make it backwards compatible.

[Aytex]

Money

 

Why sell a upgrade kit for $50 when you can sell the upgraded GPU for $100

[Oshino Shinobu]

Because it would be like having an entire motherboard and system plugged into another motherboard. All of the R&D that would have to go in to making things compatible would be extremely high, let alone making it compatible with other combinations on the main motherboard. 

 

 

[EunSoo]

Honestly, that sounds like a terrible idea. I would change almost everything each generation anyway. 

[H0R53]

1 minute ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

Because it would be like having an entire motherboard and system plugged into another motherboard. All of the R&D that would have to go in to making things compatible would be extremely high, let alone making it compatible with other combinations on the main motherboard. 

 

 

So? These companies already make tons of money.

[TheGhzGuy]

Just now, H0R53 said:

So? These companies already make tons of money.

They want to maximise profits. 

[HKZeroFive]

Simply put... cost and complexity.

[Aereldor]

2 minutes ago, H0R53 said:

So? These companies already make tons of money.

It's very stupid to suggest that a business should stop thinking about profit and be charitable once they've made a certain amount. 

[TrollPlattformen]

It's really unlikely to ever happen, but I personally think it's an interesting idea, H0R53

[App4that]

2 minutes ago, H0R53 said:

So? These companies already make tons of money.

Would you pay twice as much for the same card? As the socket size would have to remain the same a low end card would be the size of a high end card, not good.

 

Young people don't understand that these companies have employees counting on them to make that money. You'll count on a company too. Making money is what let's people live their lives. 

[H0R53]

Just now, TheGhzGuy said:

They want to maximise profits. 

Not going to do that by being a lazy fuck that doesn't change. I use nVidia cards but I'm starting to seek out alternatives because it's just one powerful GPU compared to the next on a 10-month release schedule. Everything is overhyped and its the same shit they've been feeding consumers for decades - show some innovation for once. Everyone is doing the same thing, shrinking the die to fit more shit on it. The lack of actual improvement in PC components in recent years has plummeted.

[Oshino Shinobu]

Just now, H0R53 said:

So? These companies already make tons of money.

I'm not talking money, I'm talking how damn complicated it would get. The amount of testing that would have to be done to ensure compatibility in so many different configurations is insane. In the event something is incompatible due to lack of testing (you're not going to be able to test every combo), the manufacturer is going to have to deal with the returns and/or patching/additional testing. 

 

Lets say you have a normal CPU and you want to test it with... 50 combinations of hardware (different motherboard, CPUs and RAM). That means you have to switch hardware 50 times. Now lets say you want to compare the same 50 combinations of hardware with a modular GPU. Lets say you want to test with 2 sets of RAM and 2 GPUs. That's 4 possible combinations of hardware for the GPU, which means 200 tests overall. When you're talking hundreds of hardware combinations and dozens of GPU combinations, with multiple GPU motherboards, you're going to increase the testing required in the realms of over 100x what it currently is. 

[H0R53]

Just now, Oshino Shinobu said:

I'm not talking money, I'm talking how damn complicated it would get. The amount of testing that would have to be done to ensure compatibility in so many different configurations is insane. In the event something is incompatible due to lack of testing (you're not going to be able to test every combo), the manufacturer is going to have to deal with the returns and/or patching/additional testing. 

 

Lets say you have a normal CPU and you want to test it with... 50 combinations of hardware (different motherboard, CPUs and RAM). That means you have to switch hardware 50 times. Now lets say you want to compare the same 50 combinations of hardware with a modular GPU. Lets say you want to test with 2 sets of RAM and 2 GPUs. That's 4 possible combinations of hardware for the GPU, which means 200 tests overall. When you're talking hundreds of hardware combinations and dozens of GPU combinations, with multiple GPU motherboards, you're going to increase the testing required in the realms of over 100x what it currently is. 

That's why compatibility lists exist.

 

And so what? We've been doing it with regular CPU motherboards, why not try it with GPU boards as well?

[Oshino Shinobu]

1 minute ago, H0R53 said:

Not going to do that by being a lazy fuck that doesn't change. I use nVidia cards but I'm starting to seek out alternatives because it's just one powerful GPU compared to the next on a 10-month release schedule. Everything is overhyped and its the same shit they've been feeding consumers for decades - show some innovation for once. Everyone is doing the same thing, shrinking the die to fit more shit on it. The lack of actual improvement in PC components in recent years has plummeted.

That's exactly how they do it. The trend of improvements in PC performance over the last couple of years proves that. Companies do the minimum they can for what people will still buy. Look at Intel for example, they've been putting out CPUs at about 5% performance improvements since AMD stopped being competitive, yet people are still buying them, despite Intel being capable of much more. 

[App4that]

2 minutes ago, H0R53 said:

Not going to do that by being a lazy fuck that doesn't change. I use nVidia cards but I'm starting to seek out alternatives because it's just one powerful GPU compared to the next on a 10-month release schedule. Everything is overhyped and its the same shit they've been feeding consumers for decades - show some innovation for once. Everyone is doing the same thing, shrinking the die to fit more shit on it. The lack of actual improvement in PC components in recent years has plummeted.

No, this is a golden era for PCs. You should have been around when it cost 5x as much to basically have a scientific calculator LOL.

 

There's inovation, you just don't understand it. 

[Aytex]

3 minutes ago, H0R53 said:

Not going to do that by being a lazy fuck that doesn't change. I use nVidia cards but I'm starting to seek out alternatives because it's just one powerful GPU compared to the next on a 10-month release schedule. Everything is overhyped and its the same shit they've been feeding consumers for decades - show some innovation for once. Everyone is doing the same thing, shrinking the die to fit more shit on it. The lack of actual improvement in PC components in recent years has plummeted.

If you're so interested why not you just do it? I'm sure if it becomes possible and profitable you would be rolling in $$

[H0R53]

Just now, App4that said:

No, this is a golden era for PCs. You should have been around when it cost 5x as much to basically have a scientific calculator LOL.

 

There's inovation, you just don't understand it. 

 

[manikyath]

5 minutes ago, H0R53 said:

So? These companies already make tons of money.

if you want to pay $500+ in BOM cost for a card like this? sure.

 

and beyond that: it quite simply inst necessary. between the cooler, the GPU itself, the VRMs, and the VRAM everything is kinda "made to fit together", and adding mix&match to the mix will probably decrease performance by a slight margin (latency, handshaking, etc ), BOM cost will get trough the freaking roof, and it would be more a gimmick rather than actually useful, because you're gonna end up having to swap most of it out in one go either way.

 

and if you want to see how freaking terrible it would be to engineer exchangable VRMs, take a look at these overclockers having a jab at their titan X:

(imagine some linkin park song playing on the background for added effect, youtube muted it because copyright)

[Aytex]

@manikyath is that the same guy who put more storage or something onto a iphone?

[Oshino Shinobu]

1 minute ago, H0R53 said:

That's why compatibility lists exist.

 

And so what? We've been doing it with regular CPU motherboards, why not try it with GPU boards as well?

Because it's taking one already complex and long process to test compatibility and attaching another one to it. It doesn't just add the amount of testing for GPU testing to the motherboard testing, it multiplies it. It's not a practical solution for anyone, even the consumer as it would just result in either much higher prices or complex compatibility lists or just flat out stability issues. 

[App4that]

Just now, H0R53 said:

 

Linus is a salesman, he has no formal education in computer science. He started out selling PC parts, now he sells himself. Take what he says with that grain of salt. 

 

I'm telling you he's wrong a majority of the time. He is entertaining though. 

[manikyath]

Just now, H0R53 said:

 

CPU's isnt all that's been innovating. here's something innovating: dual-cpu has become so common that windows 10 HOME now allows you to have two physical processors, and up to 512GB RAM, we have single GPU's that absolutely cream the rendering datacenters of yesteryear, storage and memory solutions that we couldnt even foresee coming, and the soon to arrive 10 freaking gigabit for home users.

[TheGhzGuy]

2 minutes ago, H0R53 said:

Not going to do that by being a lazy fuck that doesn't change. I use nVidia cards but I'm starting to seek out alternatives because it's just one powerful GPU compared to the next on a 10-month release schedule. Everything is overhyped and its the same shit they've been feeding consumers for decades - show some innovation for once. Everyone is doing the same thing, shrinking the die to fit more shit on it. The lack of actual improvement in PC components in recent years has plummeted.

 

You got AMD and Matrox. What do define as "Actual improvement"

[tom_w141]

10 minutes ago, H0R53 said:

Everything is overhyped and its the same shit they've been feeding consumers for decades - show some innovation for once. Everyone is doing the same thing, shrinking the die to fit more shit on it. The lack of actual improvement in PC components in recent years has plummeted.

 

The topic of the thread is flawed and won't happen so I won't comment there.

 

However what you have said above is very true. The problem is there are Nvidia sheep.

 

The 1050Ti is a piece of shit when compared to the RX470

 

They are the same price (excluding special sales) and the 470 wipes the floor with it in terms of performance

 

However the 1050Ti has had less time on the market yet has DOUBLE the market share of the 470. You/I/We the consumers do this to ourselves and it is our own fault. We don't buy enough of the competitions offering even when they kill Nvidia at the same price point. Therefore Nvidia are like lol just feed em shit they lap it up.

 

EDIT: To expand upon this further: When you don't buy the competitor's card when they are the better choice at the price point then the competitor (in this case AMD) doesn't get enough money for R&D to innovate further and the issue worsens. We do this to ourselves and dig our own graves as consumers that blindly buy Intel and Nvidia without even taking a second to compare. People just go "Right i need a gpu and i've got $150, which nvidia gpu can I get for that? Ah the 1050Ti ok i'll take that one"

[manikyath]

1 minute ago, Aytex said:

@manikyath is that the same guy who put more storage or something onto a iphone?

its the guys that briefly held the speed record for single GPU before getting beaten out by a newer card, they had to actually dremel their titan X in half after the VRMs on the board itself caught fire.