NV Powershift

Quote:

---

Today we managed to sneak an exclusive look at the new NVIDIA PCI-Express based NV45 card which apparently does not use the HSI interface (we are waiting for a 3rd party to confirm this fact.) Apparently NV45 is a new tape out and has NATIVE PCI-E support.

True to their word NVIDIA have dropped the second connector on the card, however something which does raise doubts in our minds is the fact they now have a 3*2 connector on the card instead of a normal 'molex' connector.

This is, in theory forcing consumers to buy a new PSU to feed this - the reason for the power connector change is to give 4 12 volt feeds to the card.

We would like to give more information but at the moment we don't have it. We don't have any photos either, but as we get it we will tell you more.

---

The card was shown working and operated perfectly stable on the Intel 'Grantsdale' platform.

3*2 connector? Does this mean that every psu would come with this connector from now on? Or would they charge alot for a psu with this connector on?

I believe so - I am not sure on bundling situations.

Or an adaptor?

"the reason for the power connector change is to give 4 12 volt feeds to the card."
Wouldnt the reason for putting it through 4 feeds be so that it wouldnt draw so much off one voltage line?If so an adapter wouldnt work?

The adapter is something I dont know about - trying to find out more information now.

yieks, and I thought two molexes was kinda mindblowing.... when will the first comercial 5.25" nuclear power plant be released?

3*2 is stupid. Anyone that can do maths relises 3*2 is 6.
Now understand the limitation and reson for needing more than 1 for the 12v and 1 for the ground is the current will burn out the conductors, if too much is put through it.
So you stick 12v through 4 of the pins, ground through the remaining two, remember current is still there all the way back. It is stupid and they dont know what they are doing.

Connectors do not matter either. ALL the plastic is irrelevant. None of the connectors are a good design either.
Adaptors are useable for this. My psu infact already has a 3*2 connector, abiet (sp/context of this word wrong?) it is a 3x12v 3x ground. edit - acctully mine has a 4*2 not 3*2.

Any adaptor will have to join cables so that none are ever past there rating, this would look like this:

card ----adpator=======psu.

It would be much MUCH better if psu's were simply to use thicker wires where they are needed. Copper costs money though. Using double the cable thihckness instead of double the cables would be nicer imho.

David who are you quoting in the first post? youself or another site/preview?


Considering 2 meters of 15mm copper pipe costs £2.50, Im very annoyed I cant find any copper wire in single core form, of any resonable thickness capable of 20A atleast.
Consider fixed mains cable (the white stuff with thick impossible to cut insulation) is rated for 13A iirc. the diameter of this is 1.325mm according to my vernier, why should it cost so much. All I can find is oxygen free copper (uber expensive) loudspeaker cable. Which itsself is pointless. make it thicker and keep the low percentage of oxygen than normal wire has and you will get a better signal, and it will be cheaper.

[note: I was intending to rewire my psu compleatly with ~1.3mm solid core copper condcutors mostly for neatness resons and to reduce resistance from cables. Solid core keeps its shape, stranded is like a spring.]

Myself....front page post - www.HEXUS.net

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by |SilentDeath|

My psu infact already has a 3*2 connector, abiet (sp/context of this word wrong?) it is a 3x12v 3x ground. edit - acctully mine has a 4*2 not 3*2.

---

I think the correct sp/usage of the word would be; Infact my psu already has a 3*2 connector, albeit a 3x12v 3x ground. :)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by |SilentDeath|

It would be much MUCH better if psu's were simply to use thicker wires where they are needed. Copper costs money though. Using double the cable thihckness instead of double the cables would be nicer imho.

Considering 2 meters of 15mm copper pipe costs £2.50, Im very annoyed I cant find any copper wire in single core form, of any resonable thickness capable of 20A atleast.
Consider fixed mains cable (the white stuff with thick impossible to cut insulation) is rated for 13A iirc. the diameter of this is 1.325mm according to my vernier, why should it cost so much. All I can find is oxygen free copper (uber expensive) loudspeaker cable. Which itsself is pointless. make it thicker and keep the low percentage of oxygen than normal wire has and you will get a better signal, and it will be cheaper.

[note: I was intending to rewire my psu compleatly with ~1.3mm solid core copper condcutors mostly for neatness resons and to reduce resistance from cables. Solid core keeps its shape, stranded is like a spring.]

---

Hmm you should be using the 12/14AWG "silicon wire" stuff used for high power Radio control electric models. It is stranded but very flexible and will take some pretty shocking amount of current 50-80amps :eek:

I would have thought you could use mains cabling if you need single core stuff? Considering you only need short lengths you should be able to pick it up off some skip/building site. I dont think its that expensive is it?

I think dunping the twin molex for the 3*2 connector is kind of stupid. After all most people have two free molex connectors/strands but this way it'll either mean a new psu or some kind of adapter/ rewiring. An adapter would work if you had two molex strands plugging in to it.

And David in your "sneak peak" is that all you saw. Or were there some other juicy bits your not revealing to us ;) .

I can't tell you all yet :)

Ah Ha thought so :devilish:

The power requirements aren't the only reason for having numerous power connections. Hence one of the reasons why CPU's etc have an ever increasing amount of pins, they are not just their for I/O etc but the vast majority of them are power and GND. This is to seperate the power for different areas of the chip/board to reduce the EMC effects.

Also the reason for having numerous 12V lines from the PSU isn't just that all the current may burn out the conductors but also because the resistance of the wire = (resistivity x length)/area, so for thinner conductors you get a higher resistance for a given length, so if only one cable was used by the time you got to the end of the cable there could be quite a voltage drop along the cable and wouldn't see 12V at the end...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by elglg

The power requirements aren't the only reason for having numerous power connections. Hence one of the reasons why CPU's etc have an ever increasing amount of pins, they are not just their for I/O etc but the vast majority of them are power and GND. This is to seperate the power for different areas of the chip/board to reduce the EMC effects.

---

Thats cool ive always wondered exactly why they did that :) .

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by turkster

Thats cool ive always wondered exactly why they did that :) .

---

ditto

On CPU's it also helps to reduce the σL/A effects due to the low currents....

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by elglg

The power requirements aren't the only reason for having numerous power connections. Hence one of the reasons why CPU's etc have an ever increasing amount of pins, they are not just their for I/O etc but the vast majority of them are power and GND. This is to seperate the power for different areas of the chip/board to reduce the EMC effects.

Also the reason for having numerous 12V lines from the PSU isn't just that all the current may burn out the conductors but also because the resistance of the wire = (resistivity x length)/area, so for thinner conductors you get a higher resistance for a given length, so if only one cable was used by the time you got to the end of the cable there could be quite a voltage drop along the cable and wouldn't see 12V at the end...

---

Resistance doesnt matter much, the amount of resistance in cables may lower it by 0.35v at most, thats within tollerance for a 12v line.
As I said before, thicker cable is better than lots of small ones.

Reducing EMC effects? the cables join together at some point. One connector is plenty and there are much better ways to get round EMC. You dont see mobos with 5 ATX headers do you? they have considerably more components, more compleax pcb's and more EMC to worry about.

Yeah but dont Mobos have current conditioners and voltage regulators to keep a hold on various current and voltage fluctuations and reduce problems with EMC?

Looks like nobody has considered that the limiting factor in delivering current is the molex connector itself, not the wires. A typical connector pin can handle 3-6amps, which will be greatly reduced by corrosion and pin-spreading.

A specific example: I had an old 300w PSU with an Abit NF7-S motherboard, which comes with an optional 2x2 12v P4-type connector. When overclocking the cpu, the motherboard power connector literally melted and burned up, right at the location of the 12v pin. Putting in a new PSU with the optional 12v connector tripled the number of 12v pins delivering current.

Its pretty clear to me that this is what Nvidia is thinking of: adding more connector pins, not more wires.

rms