NVIDIA GTX Titan Z dual-core card king retreats to the second line? Who will be the next generation of card king?

For a gamer, a good graphics card is essential. For real hardware enthusiasts, the best graphics card now must be a dual-core graphics card. The king of dual-core cards is the artifact that all gamers dream of.

What is a dual-core graphics card?

Single-core graphics cards have one core, while dual-core graphics cards have two cores in one card. They can break through the performance bottleneck by stacking two display cores, but they are expensive. The principle of dual-core graphics cards is the same as that of dual-card SLI and Crossfire, except that dual-core graphics cards use internal communication chips to complete synchronization, while dual-card SLI uses bridges instead of communication chips.

The battle for the best graphics card

In January 2008, HD3870X2 was released. It was AMD's (ATI) first single-card dual-core graphics card. It put two extremely powerful HD3870 cores on a single graphics card, achieving quite outstanding performance, on par with NVIDIA's flagship GeForce 9800GX2 at the time.

Seven years have passed, and the launch of dual-core graphics cards has never stopped. The competition for the best graphics card has become more intense, and the contest between NVIDIA and AMD is still going on.

AMD recently released a dual-core flagship card R9 Fury X2 at the E3 conference. The card is equipped with two Fiji cores and HBM video memory, supporting 4K/60fps. Faced with AMD's bombshell, NVIDIA will definitely not sit idly by. According to the Beyond3D forum, the GP100 core of the Pascal architecture has been successfully taped out at TSMC using a 16nm manufacturing process. The relevant graphics card is expected to be officially released in the first quarter of 2016. The Pascal family will be equipped with the second-generation high-bandwidth video memory HBM2 and equipped with a high video memory capacity of 16GB. It is very likely to become the first single-card (single-core) graphics card that can handle 4K/60fps.

Is dual-card SLI/Crossfire better or dual-core single card?

The question of whether dual-card SLI/Crossfire is better or dual-core single card is better has always been a hot topic. In fact, there is not much difference in performance. It’s just that SLI/Crossfire allows each core to have its own x16 channel, which is a total of 32 PCI-E2.0 channels, while a single card with dual cores is only inserted in one slot, and the two cores share the x16 channel. Even if one x16 is split into two x16s through the NF200 bridge chip, the total bandwidth is still x16, and the total bandwidth is not as good as SLI/Crossfire. Because the single card with dual cores introduces a bridge chip, the data flow has an extra link, which may increase the delay, and the final result is not as good as SLI/Crossfire. Using two dual-core graphics cards to build SLI and Crossfire is another matter. This combination is definitely the strongest, and the power consumption is also the largest.

In the world of dual-core graphics cards, ASUS is a company that has to be mentioned. As the world's third largest graphics card manufacturer, it has products from both NVIDIA and AMD. The top-level dual-core graphics cards are divided into two series, NVIDIA's Mars series and AMD's Ares series. They are sold in limited quantities worldwide and are hailed as the model of dual-core graphics cards.

ASUS ROG Mars760

ASUS ROG Mars760-4GD5 gaming graphics card uses dual GTX760 GPU cores, with a core frequency of up to 1072MHz, equipped with 4G GDDR5 video memory, 6004MHz video memory frequency, 512Bit video memory width, and 2304 CUDA stream processors. The Mars760 gaming graphics card can still guarantee smooth visual game speed and good visual effects at a resolution of 2560×1600, and is perfectly capable of all gaming tasks. At the same time, the card is equipped with 3 DVI interfaces and 1 mini DP interface, which is enough to meet the needs of game enthusiasts. ASUS ROG Mars760-4GD5 gaming graphics card can also achieve HDMI high-definition output through DVI to HDMI.

ASUS ROG Ares III

The ASUS ROG Ares III gaming graphics card is equipped with two Radeon Hawaii XT R9 290X display cores with a core frequency of up to 1030MHz, 8GB GDD5 video memory, 5000MHz memory frequency, and a memory bus width of 1024Bit. Compared with GeForce GTX Titan Z, its 3DMark Fire Strike Extreme score is 15% ahead.

Future Development of Dual-Core Graphics Cards

HBM video memory replaces GDDR5 video memory, and the power supply load will be reduced compared to the previous generation flagship, at least from now on, AMD's graphics cards are like this, and the game between NVIDIA and AMD, the Pascal architecture and the Fiji architecture graphics card war will continue. Next year, AMD will also launch the "Arctic Islands" and "Greenland" cores that also use HBM2 video memory. The strong rise of single-core graphics cards will not affect dual-core graphics cards in the short term. At least in terms of price and style, dual-core graphics cards are still the most noble.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.