ASUS Releases Graphics Card That Could Actually Be Great For Open-Source NVIDIA Fans

[skeevy420]

Well, you can get an AMD GPU for less than $50 new and about the same power usage, but unfortunately not with a PCIe x1 connector:

https://geizhals.eu/sapphire-radeon-hd-6450-11190-02-20g-a633332.html?v=l&hloc=at&hloc=de&hloc=eu&hloc=pl&hloc=uk

This one is about $48 (incl. taxes) and just 18W. The GT710 was 19W afaik.

.....driver incompatibilities, dude. We have the choice of low power+Radeon, that card, or performance+AMDGPU, our 580s.

[cb88]

It's alive in the Vulkan and DX12 specification.
Almost no gamer building a PC these days is getting multi-GPU. It is throwing money away since one in thousand games support it. You are better of using that money to get a better SSD, or saving for the next upgrade etc..

I have to agree there, however it is there, and a lot of games do scale... and if the particular games you play scale, and you have a spare Vega or Polaris card lying around... well. Almost all DX12 games have some level of scaling and if and when it becomes relevant they can patch (for games such as those that are adding raytracing support). That said I don't think Mesa has any mGPU support and certainly no SLI/crossfire.

And saving for the next upgrade is exactly what I'm doing... I'm still on 1700x+Vega FE. I think the scaling may become more relevant next gen as two cards will almost certainly ray trace faster than one.

[agd5f]

That said I don't think Mesa has any mGPU support and certainly no SLI/crossfire.

Well, there is nothing really required for mGPU support per se. Unlike OpenGL, Vulkan has device enumeration as part of the API so all applications can see what vulkan capable devices are available on the system.

[phoron]

Wow!. Sounds great. You should be able to get this card and some of those cheap SBC (PinePro64?) with a PCI slot and a USB hub and get 5 data entry operators set up for almost just the price of the displays. Or one programmer with four or five monitors (and compiling remote). Or a video wall as already said. OR so many things... I don't really need a GPU card right now, but I might buy half a dozen just to signal to ASUS it had a good idea. I've wanted something like this so many times before... My regret is I don't like Nvidia stance on free software, but it's cheap enough that I can make believe Nvidia doesn't get much out of it...
I just hope it does not need some x86 code on board run by an assumed x86 BIOS or UEFI. To be really worth it should work with Nouveau in any architecture.

[cb88]

Well, there is nothing really required for mGPU support per se. Unlike OpenGL, Vulkan has device enumeration as part of the API so all applications can see what vulkan capable devices are available on the system.

Yes that is what I was thinking since there isn't much complex about it in the driver compared to SLI/Crossfire but I wasn't sure if that was acutally implemented or if anyone had ever tested it?

[cb88]

Wow!. Sounds great. You should be able to get this card and some of those cheap SBC (PinePro64?) with a PCI slot and a USB hub and get 5 data entry operators set up for almost just the price of the displays. Or one programmer with four or five monitors (and compiling remote). Or a video wall as already said. OR so many things... I don't really need a GPU card right now, but I might buy half a dozen just to signal to ASUS it had a good idea. I've wanted something like this so many times before... My regret is I don't like Nvidia stance on free software, but it's cheap enough that I can make believe Nvidia doesn't get much out of it...
I just hope it does not need some x86 code on board run by an assumed x86 BIOS or UEFI. To be really worth it should work with Nouveau in any architecture.

That's a stupid idea... and you can quote me on that. I've heard of people doing stuff like that it and it just makes your employees hate you. If you have the money to hire someone you should also have the money to buy them a $500 PC at least else you are running a sweat shop.

Remember a Arock A300W + CPU + ram/ssd is about $300... maybe less if you skimp.

[NotMine999]

Beware that when you use more than one HDMI port the card can only output 30 Hz. So this card is useless.

Here's the URL you could have posted to back up your "claim"

https://www.asus.com/Graphics-Cards/GT710-4H-SL-2GD5/specifications/

And copied from that Spec page:

* Detailed digital max. resolution:
3840×2160@60Hz for 1 monitor
3840×2160@30Hz for more than 2 monitors

[imirkin]

Doesn't Kepler only have two CRTCs? The whole reason I'm running a GTX 750 is because the 750 and 750Ti were the first cards to support driving three non-DP-native displays.

Kepler is the first generation that supports 4 CRTC's. You're off by a gen. Fermi (and earlier) 2 CRTC's. Kepler also brought DP 1.2 (aka MST) support. And while the NVIDIA driver allows you to do 4k@60 with YUV 4:2:0, nouveau has no support for this. (It's not entirely obvious how this works, and no one has tried to RE yet.)

[kbios]

I'm using a Ryzen 3 1300X in the NAS, because the G Version doesn't have ECC support.

Got it, thanks.

[ssokolow]

Kepler is the first generation that supports 4 CRTC's. You're off by a gen. Fermi (and earlier) 2 CRTC's. Kepler also brought DP 1.2 (aka MST) support. And while the NVIDIA driver allows you to do 4k@60 with YUV 4:2:0, nouveau has no support for this. (It's not entirely obvious how this works, and no one has tried to RE yet.)

*facepalm* Yeah. I wasn't thinking and got "didn't require signed firmware" and "signed firmware available" mixed up.

When you put it that way, aside from VGA-only LCDs still sometimes turning up at thrift shops for $7, this is actually a pretty good card for the kind of use cases I have. (While I do buy 3D games, I rarely get around to playing anything 3D that's newer than my childhood PSX and N64 games.)

If nVidia hasn't locked out "two heterogeneous non-Quadro cards driving six monitors in a single desktop" in the binary drivers, it's kinda tempting as a way to turn my "three monitors in a row" desktop into a 3x2 grid with my GTX750 still driving the display where I'd game.