Shortly after the GTX 460 launched, we took a look at what a pair of the GPUs could do in SLI, and came away impressed. With 20 per cent better performance than a GTX 480 for the same - now substantially less - money and with lower power requirements, this combo of cards was, and still is, some of the best value you can get with the Fermi architecture.
But in the back of our minds, we were left wondering - what if NVIDIA cobbled two of these cores onto a single PCB to create a super-powerful video-card? Well, if the latest buzz is to be believed, we may not have wonder much longer.
EXPreview has managed to get its hands on a set of photos showing what they are calling a 'GTX 460 X2' from ZOTAC. The beast of a card has a pair of GF104 GPUs connected to an NF200 bridging chip and equipped with 1GB of memory each, for a total of 2GB on the card.
You should notice straight away that the PCB is shaping up to be an absolute giant. Not only does it appear - based on our rough estimates - to be about 12in long, but Zotac has been forced to make the card extra wide to accommodate all of the circuitry.
The backplate is also a full-on affair, with four DVI-ports crammed onto the card and a single HDMI connector nestled to the side. Unfortunately, this means that all of the heat the that GPUs generate won't be ejected out of the back of the case.
The power requirements have understandably been pumped-up too, with the card needing two eight-pin PCIe connectors to fuel the two GPUs. Even though the GF104 is fairly power-efficient, a dual-GPU variant should still require a pretty hefty PSU.
This card could just be an engineering sample or an experiment by ZOTAC, and may never see the light of day, especially since it would perform about on par with the rumoured GTX 580. On the other hand, if it was priced competitively, this monster could put some serious pressure on the best from AMD.
