- Saturday, 21 November 2009
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The email of the species is more macho than the femail (Inq Bad Language)
Albatron 9500GT-1X in PCIe X1
WHILE TODAY'S high end GPUs provide plenty of multi-display options, there are still situations where you might need extra monitors on the side that don't interfere load-wise with the main output.
For instance, a multi-screen 3D virtual reality display, plus a simple 2D status monitor with a completely separate GPU so as not to load down the main OpenGL pipe.
Such a GPU will not need much power or bandwidth, but will need to fit into one of those smallish PCIe X1 or X4 slots that are left once the main X16 slots are taken up by the big GPUs. Or, as in servers, a case where there just are no X16 slots available. There are very few such cards. Here is one of them, the Albatron 9500GT-1X 512MB model.
We covered this card earlier in the year for a very different reason, as you can see here.
I put the card into a Tyan Tiger i5000VF dual-CPU entry level server mainboard with dual 2GHz quad core Intel Xeon L5410 CPUs - one that doesn't have a single X16 PCIe slot. So, if one wants anything better than the integrated, ancient 16MB ATI graphics, this is probably the only choice.
The system, with 4GB RAM, ran Windows XP with the standard Detonator 185 drivers. I compared the 3DMark 06 performance versus the Sparkle Calibre P950, an overclocked 9500GT card we tested some time ago, on a similar CPU powered system with one quad core 3.2GHz CPU. The P950 has its GPU and memory running at 600 MHz and 1.8GHz, respectively, compared to the 550MHz and 1.6GHz of the Albatron.
3Dmark06 Calibre Albatron
overall 7216 6482
SM 2.0 2852 2478
SM 3.0 2674 2210
As you can see in this quick run, there is some difference in the GPU portion of the 3Dmark test results, and it is more than just the clock difference. On the other hand, the delta is negligible compared to what the users gain by being able to run full 3D out of a PCIe X1 slot.
In summary, if you need an extra card with decent power for the additional displays independent from your main PC, or even just a PhysX accelerator, or your machine doesn't have the X16 slots for any reason, this is the card for you. µ
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taking into acount that has the same bandwidth as standard PCI.. maybe we could see somet like this in low/mid end laptops?
I'm still waiting for express card GPUs like Asus demonstrated a couple years ago.
You can use a regular x16 card in a x1 slot, provided you aren't afraid to cut away the end of the motherboard connector. It's been done by those Folding@Home cultists.
Cutting the PCI-E connector isn't all that bad, but considering that these 1x cards are going for $80-$100 and you can get a cheap 16x for at least a quarter of that, it's worth the investment.
Plus, if you look on Newegg, there are couple of Atom boards out there with a 1x slot. That's the way to go- 1x Nvidia cards + cheap Atom board = performance and low power.
just to follow up:
not so sure about same bandwidth as
standard PCI.
PCIe x1 gen1 is ~ 250MB/s full duplex,
so 500MB/s when you're firing on all
cylinders.
standard PCI is 133MB/s, and you don't
get to double that for full duplex; you
also share that bandwidth with
everything else PCI on your mobo.
can it decode (h,264/MPEG-4/VC-1), under Linux via VDPAU? I don't need nor want a "Pixel Pusher". Those Days are behind me, I'll just get a Wii or another 360 for that chore. No what I need is a Cheep & Cheerful little 1x PCIe that, can run nVidias' VDPAU Video Acceleration Architecture under Linuxs' X11 Display System.
So can the Albatron 9500GT do that?
Can't remember the last time I heard the name Detonator but it does bring back fun memories of my rockin' GeForce 2 32MB with SD DRAM.
The Quadro NVS290 has been available in 1x format for over a year. The NVS420 even has two GPUs on a 1x slot to drive 4 displays.
Nothing new here.
... consider yourself lucky. A lot of boards have either an XGI chip... or a licensed Matrox G200 core. (NotMakingThatUp)
And yes the 9500GT-1x should still support VDPAU, at least with the latest/next driver. People use it on standard PCI 8400GT's.