Powercolor adds 3rd-party chips to graphics

GRAPHICS CARD MAKER Powercolor, or TUL Corporation as it is otherwise known, has thrown our way some tasty morsels of what's to be expected at the upcoming Computex tradeshow.

The company will be putting a couple of items on the menu. These did spark our curiosity and will definitely warrant some additional looking-into. The first one goes by the name of HD5770 Sniper, a Juniper RV840 based card that sports not only a GPU but also an onboard NPU, the likes of the ones we see from Bigfoot Networks, that is, Killer Xeno Pro. NPUs give users a slight edge in gaming as they prioritise gaming network packets to reduce possible latency.

The second item presents itself as an even more interesting proposal. Powercolor has bolted a Hydra chip onto its HD5770 design making it possible to do multi-vendor multi-GPU without, what seems to be, the need for a brand new motherboard. Lucidlogix, the maker of the Hydra chips, had laid out this plan way back in late 2008. The original idea was to get the chip running in one of two configurations, the first being integrated into the motherboard as an add-on chip, and the second as an add-in card. Of course, an add-in card for such a small chip would've cost too much and sold too little. The option is then made to strap it onto the graphics card. Thus is born the HD5770 Evolution.

According to Powercolor, the tease, this will allow Tri-GPU configurations with SLI and CrossfireX combinations. We'd like to tell you more about the hardware requirements on these things - say, for example PCIe Gen 2.0 or something - but we'll have to wait for the Computex announcement.

Truth be told the AMD camp has been pretty hush-hush about new hardware developments, biding its time and waiting out the Green Goblin's next move. This of course has forced the partners into customising their kit a bit further than cooling solutions, so adding third-party features and chips to the current stock of cards isn't that much of a stretch. µ