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When the GTX 500 series hit the market they were strong performers, but ran both hot and loud. The Kepler architecture on the other hand didn’t just give Nvidia’s 600 series a performance advantage, they are extremely competitive when it comes to power draw. Thanks to incredible advances in power efficiency however, it may finally be possible to offer single slot design for even the highest end GPU’s. Galaxy is looking to be the first AIB vendor to offer such a solution, and a series of leaked photos shows off what they have in mind.
Both designs are looking to make use of a large single fan design, coupled with copper and aluminum channels to pull heat away from the various components. We’re guessing that the PC Gamer’s with $350-$500 to spend on a graphics card also has a case that can accommodate a double wide GPU, however small form factor PC’s are gaining in popularity and shouldn’t be ignored.
Imagine a day when you can build a Core i7 system with a high end graphics card like this, and have it still be small enough that it could mount to the back of your monitor. We still have no idea when, if ever this card will hit North America, but we’ll keep you in the loop. It’s entirely possible the cards shown in these pictures caught on fire 30 seconds after the photo was taken, and in-fact were nothing more than a pipe dream.
Only time will tell.
Comments are closed on this article
t.y.wan
May 06, 2012 at 10:34pm
Surely with all those technological breakthroughs, it is entirely possible to produce a single slot GTX680, but the cost of doing so and the market? The higher end graphics have a smaller market and it would be not cost efficient enough to throw money into RnD to produce such product. It's pretty, it's fast and it's cool but it is not helping the company to gain profit...
Arlips
May 06, 2012 at 10:31pm
Hm....I wasn't even considering upgrading from a GTX 580 but this is very interesting. My mobo isn't great and double-slot cards are nearly impossible to SLI. Don't wanna change mobos.
A single slot 680 is very enticing in my case, or even a 670 if its performance at least matches my 580. I could see 670 SLI in my foreseeable future in that case :D
cldmstrsn
May 07, 2012 at 6:00am
here is an article I think you might find interesting. http://www.atomicmpc.com.au/News/299711,nvidia8217s-gtx-670-apparently-faster-than-amds-entire-lineup.aspx
cldmstrsn
May 07, 2012 at 5:56am
Arlips my friend I think that that the gtx 670 will be at least as twice as powerful than the 580, even a little more so. I definitely plan to upgrade to this or the 660ti when it is announced. I have been extremely happy with my 560ti sli setup.
biggiebob12345
May 06, 2012 at 5:25pm
"also has a case that can accommodate a double wide GPU"
Wrong. Try to find a mobo in any platform that would handle 3x GTX 680's, a raid card, and a sound card. You go single slot so you get covered up PCI-e slots back.
bartyh5
May 06, 2012 at 5:17pm
When are the half height, single slot cards going to be released?! or am I jumping the gun?
Anyways, it's sad when the most powerful half height card is a GTS 450 (a 6850 in Japan). Let's hope Kepler can change some things in that department
noobstix
May 06, 2012 at 4:57pm
My last single-slot GPU was a Radeon HD 3650. I'm hoping more 3rd-party manufacturers can make more single-slot (and affordable) GPUs in the future. Even though I have a big case, it'd be nice to free up a slot for a little more air circulation at least (I doubt I would put an expansion card next to the GPU).
Swarley330
May 06, 2012 at 4:46pm
@SilverSurferNHS
Nothing says "Secret of Monkey Island" time like $4200 in GPU's haha
SilverSurferNHS
May 06, 2012 at 3:30pm
i'm so curious what it would be like if SLI n CF would run all 7 of the SR2 slots with high end boards - can you imagine two top notch xeons, bricks of ram, towers of HDDs, and every slot filled with a 600 buck card.........*shutters with pleasure*
i wish they would fix or find away around the inherent scaling drawbacks - like mb manufacturers building high speed bridges into the mb that can be combined with the external bridge.... something
Peanut Fox
May 06, 2012 at 7:48pm
As things are today I'd imagine it wouldn't go very well. Quad SLI and Xfire don't scale particularly well and adding more GPUs to the mix would ideally produce more of the same. Folding and some 3d applications could made use of the extra performance but I bet gaming would actually loose frames in a 6 or 7 card configuration.
SilverSurferNHS
May 06, 2012 at 9:54pm
i know - i think i did say imagine, i was just nerdy fantasizing.... it would be awesome if it did scale though - havent you ever imagined a hot computer... and then take its side door off....
Peanut Fox
May 07, 2012 at 8:15am
I seriously can't imagine a machine like that. I'd make one hell of a dream machine though :P
USraging
May 06, 2012 at 3:10pm
cant remember the last time i had a single slot card. but i think it was the agp days, no wait it was the x800gpu that ran straight off of bus power. the days of playing counter strike source all day and the graphics were bad ass:P
Papaspud
May 06, 2012 at 3:35pm
Last one I had was an 8800gt, nice card, but it was noisy as heck when it got hot.
MastaGuy
May 06, 2012 at 1:02pm
These could definitely work well with AIO systems. I'd like to see what Apple and other companies will do.
