Asus creates new GPU future with upgradeable graphics cards

[Decembermouse]

Originally Posted by Tomvill

I wouldnt mind seeing something like this the basic card lasting 2 years or so and you can update the GPU but of coarse every few years you'd need to buy a new board because of newer designs ,added technology and or socket upgrades alot like what you have with motherboards today. Depends all on price really.. how much would all this cost and would the consumer actually go for it.

I agree, eventually we'll be seeing PCI-e 3.0 without the 8b/10b encoding scheme. Or GPUs with different amounts of pins to insert into the slot or what-have-you. Also if it only supports so many watts, or only has a 6-pin power connector, that might not do it for certain future GPUs.

Could you also choose your GDDR3/4/5 to put in it? I'd want the 58nm Qimonda stuff, if they manage to reach 6GHz like Samsung did with their 60nm stuff.

[howdid]

well
It would make sense for manufacters to want to go towards that direction even if the consumers will be buying the GPU Chips directly from ATI or nVidia.
It not like the manufacters make any profit from the GPU chips anyways. the Manufacters now have to buy the chips from ATI of nVIdia anyways, and not make those chips themselves.
So for all i see the manufacters will now only need to make the card components and possibliy the RAm, and can still price the card at a higher price because consumers will most likely willing to pay $50 to $100 more if they are reusable.
Moreoever, this will give the manufactures more independence from GPU makers. Just look at the nVIdia GTX 200 series. If the manufacturers only made the "Card" with out the chips, they would be less affected by the sudden success or failures of the GPU.

Edit: also, this could be good as stated above by some others, since then the video card could be made into some of the high end mother boards. We could see future mobos with a CPU socket, DDR channals, multiple GPU sockets, and GDDR channals.

[Boldeagle]

What a brilliant idea and I agree the 3rd parties may be anxious about being able to only upgrade the GPU and Ram on the card but let's face it, it will force the manufacturers to rapidly evolve the design of the boards to maintain a customer base. In theory you may only keep a motherboard for 1-2 CPU's and then the newer designed MOBO's thermal management, chipsets and many other factors will generally drive the consumer to upgrade the whole lot. In theory the same will happen with the Graphics Cards. Personally, I would love to be able to even get 2-3 upgrades on my existing one before I had to upgrade the whole thing again (recycling parts into the missus PC, her's is better than many of my friends!).

[cegras]

In the future, it'd be interesting to see whether intel or some other company will draw up a spec that makes computers consist of two motherboards - a GPU board and a CPU board.

ah, the possibilities ...