KFA2 Announces Cable-Free Graphics Card
With no need for display cables, this card could enable you to remove the noisy PC from your desk.
You just need to attach the bundled receiver to the back of your chosen screen and you’re done. With a wireless keyboard and mouse, you could place your PC at the other end of the room, letting you crank up those fans without having to listen to the whirring next to you.
The ‘WHDI’ part of the card’s name comes from the fact that it uses Amimon’s wireless technology – WHDI stands for Wireless Home Digital Interface.
The standard uses the 40MHz channel of the unlicensed 5GHz radio frequency band to deliver uncompressed 1080p video at 60Hz wirelessly. The card uses five aerials, which KFA2 says will provide ‘the most robust and highest quality HD wireless connection for in-room and multi-room applications.’
WHDI has a range of 30m (around 100ft for those still working in Imperial), and can work through obstacles and walls. This, says KFA2, provides a ‘hassle-free way to connect sources anywhere within a room or enable multiple connections.’ The WHDI standard supports HDCP 2.0, so it can route protected content (Blu-ray films, for example) without a problem.
Click to enlarge
Aside from having aerials rather than display outputs, the card is a typical GeForce GTX 460 1GB affair. It supports Nvidia’s PhysX and CUDA technologies, and it's DirectX 11-compatible.
At the same time, KFA2 has also announced its single-slot GeFore GTX 460 1GB card, the GTX 460 Razor. This card also boasts the typical clock speeds, despite its single-slot cooler. The GPU runs at 675MHz (with the 336 stream processors operating at twice that rate), while the 1GB of GDDR5 memory runs at 900MHz (3.6GHz effective).
Both cards are due to be on sale soon throughout Europe, and both are backed by a two-year warranty.
Are you intrigued by the possibilities of a clutter-free desk for your gaming kit, or are you just salivating at the thought of squeezing a battery of GTX 460 Razor cards into your folding farm? Let us know in the forums.
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Discuss in the forums Replydunx
Again though, I would need some pretty solid guarantees about the performance before risking the viewing experience on wireless. Does it have a cable backup or is it wireless only?
:o)
Although it would be useful for an HTPC.
I guess the limitation will be the keyboard/mouse range versus the WHDI.
think of the possibilities: desktop gaming PC upstairs, TV downstairs. want to watch something that's on your computer? no problem, tune in to wireless signals of your PC, and use your phone to VNC into your computer to control mouse+keyboard.
it would be a fantastic secondary PhysX card. that have side function of beaming video to your TV.
All they need now is a remote on/off switch for the PC.
Although I'd prefer to see this as a stand alone unit. Also depends on the speccs.
Wow your rooms must be small!
All round, quite interesting!!
Yeah, lag is the only thing I'm worried about here. However, for a HTPC build, this could be perfection in the making. Only gaming would really suffer from lag.
Not at all. It's for anyone who wants to be able to stick their computer case completely out of view or even out of the same room they are working in (say in a closet). Perfect for a HTPC where you don't want the added noise of fans in the same room you are watching a movie in as well. Don't take such a limited view on this idea. It really is much more useful than you think.
It could be useful for people like me that use a long HDMI cable to watch films and play games using my HDTV as second monitor, or to stream movies to another room.
I can try it for my game pc but since my living room is 7x5meters I think its pointless. And a HDMI wire would be more then adequate. And playing games I strongly believe it will lag a few milliseconds. Besides that my Game PC is very quite (Water cooled) So there goes the second use for this card out of the window.
In the end its all gimmick but not actually usefull. For less money you could buy a Xtreamer /playon whatever lowcost mediaplayer for "htpc" use pland 10meters of hdmi cable if you want tay some games.
You may have a room thats 20 meters long but i wonder if the range of the wireless mouse/keyboard would reach that.
Good point! Will there be some built in hardware encryption between the card and receiver?
Wouldn't it just use WPA2 like every other wireless device?
there are long and expensive HDMI cables that claim to be fibre inside, but why buy them if you can go wireless for cheaper?
1920 pixels wide * 1080 pixels high * 60 fps * 24 bit colour = 3Gbit/sec
3Gbit/40MHz = 75 bits/second/Hz
That's an insane spectral efficiency.
Edit: Just a thought - how does this differentiate from having a wireless HDMI transmitter coupled to your graphics card HDMI output, and then the receiver plugged in your screen?
I second that. Does anyone know how many screens can be supported? I assume at least two?
Shamrock.
This is definitely a start and could lead to some cool applications/enhancements in the future.
This would be the biggest problem i think. The card can transmit over miles for all we care. Unless my wireless remote/keyboard or whatever goes that far too, it's uses are a tad limited. Maybe as someone suggested, HTPC here to projector back there.
Unless some company out there makes a wifi keyboard? Keyboard with a ping.. That could get laggy...
It is called "Angel Hair cable (tm)" and its made for audiophile (idiots) with to much money to spend on non factual proven to be better wires.
FIAL= FAIL!
And don't forget that what's a premium feature today becomes standard in a year or so's time*
*assuming the technology works as advertised that is