Asus weds graphics card with an M.2 SSD expander card.

Asus Flaunts graphics card with an M.2 SSD expander card.

  • HidingCat@kbin.socialEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    Well, that’s actually pretty interesting, since most GPUs don’t really use all 16 lanes, so having 1-2 M.2 slots is nice. Wonder if it’ll make it to higher tier cards too?

    • Burp@kbin.socialOPEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Right?
      I guess it depends on if the higher tier cards use those pci lanes. I assume they do?
      They also probably need that space for cooling and might not have enough power left over.
      My first impression was direct storage, but it doesn’t look like this gives any kind of advantage.

      • HidingCat@kbin.socialEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        Conventional wisdom is that GPUs rarely saturate the PCI bus to the point that all 16 lanes are used heavily. Think even on the higher end cards it’s about a 2-3% loss, so if you need to run something useful like this the trade off can be worth it.

        Directstorage won’t help because it’s still going through the PCI bus. It’ll take a custom implementation to open a direct lane between the GPU and the SSD, and I doubt anyone’s going to undertake a potentially expensive endeavour like this.