Whatever happened to Dual Core graphics cards?

[combatcolin]

I was chatting to a tech friend of mine the other day, and he reminded me about a comment i made last year - i reckoned that by 2007 we would start to see Dual Core graphic cards on the market.

So, did i get it totally wrong or will we see a dual core powerhouse from nVidia or ATI sometime?

[PlaceofDis]

i don't think we'll be seeing the need for dual core graphics cards just yet. since they're made for a very specific task, they're highly specialized and i don't think they've reached the point where they have no other way to grow and juice more power out of them yet. i'd say maybe 5-7 years down the line we'd see them.

[Lord Blackadder]

They are still clocking pretty low compared to CPUs, and due to their specialized use they are more efficient. I think they'll stay single-core for some time.

[Eric5h5]

GPUs have always been multi-core...check this (http://www.techreport.com/reviews/2006q4/geforce-8800/index.x?pg=1) out, particularly the diagram at the top. Each of those little green boxes is a processing unit. Yes, all 128 of them. Makes the 8-core Mac Pro seem anemic by comparison, eh? ;) If you mean dual-chip, it's more efficient just to keep adding more processing units to a single chip, though as you can see by the other pics there, the chips are starting to get a bit big. But with heat/energy consumption issues as they are already, I don't see adding additional monster chips like that being feasible.

--Eric