GECUBE's Dual GPU Gemini 3

Zitat

Remember the Gemini 3 from GECUBE? If not, let us refresh your memory. The Gemini 3 is the second dual GPU card from GECUBE, the previous one was the Gemini 2 and it was based on a pair of Radeon X1650 XTs. The Gemini 3 features a pair of Radeon HD 2600 XT GPUs and they’re clocked at 800MHz. Each GPU is paired with 256MB of 500MHz DDR2 memory (1GHz effectively).

This might not sound like anything all too remarkable so far, but it seems like GECUBE will beat all the other AMD partners that are working on dual GPU cards, by simply being the first to market. GECUBE is expecting the Gemini 3 to be available in retail some time next month, but we weren’t given an exact launch date or a price for that matter.

[...]The memory chips on the sample board we tested were rated at 2.5ns, but production boards will use 2.0ns chips. This should allow for some overclocking, although we’re still hoping for a version with GDDR3 or GDDR4 in the future. Another thing you’ll notice is that this card doesn’t have any Crossfire connectors like the Sapphire card, so quad Crossfire is a no go with the card. On the upside, it’s only using a single 6-pin PCI Express power connector, so it doesn’t draw all that much power.

[...]As you can see from the results, the Gemini 3 offers some pretty good performance increases in Crossfire mode compared to single GPU mode. It’s not twice the performance, but in Call of Juarez it’s close at 1024x768. It’s not an amazingly fast card but in this case there’s two issues, first of all the CPU we used is not as fast as the one we normally use, and secondly we have a feeling that the DDR2 memory is holding back the full potential of this card, but more on that in the full review.