The return of SLI! Wow. We all remember (well some of us do anyways), the glory days of the Voodoo2's scan line interfacing has a (modified) comeback! Given the right mobo, we can now work a pair of GeForce6800s via a scaleable link interface to double the performance. Note the keyword: scalable.... "2" videocards in tandem is just the tip of the iceberg! :D
The main difference between nVidia's SLI and 3dfx's SLI is that, while the Voodoo2 split the task between the two video cards on a line-by-line basis and interleaved back and and forth between the cards (costing processing power on the "administrative tasks" of managing the two cards), nVidia's approach is just to break the screen into two components (ideally 50% of the line-count however variable depending on the complexity of the image) and letting the two 6800s go at it virtually independent of each other.
The technology is impressive, but I see one drawback here - from what I remember of the Geforce 6800 specs it required 2 power connectors and took up 2 slots. That would meant that you would be using 4 power connectors and taking up 4 of your card slots with a dual configuration.
I remember the 3DFX's SLI. It was good at the time but died quickly after AGP became popular since there was not any dual AGP slot boards.
True however if you put it into context the dual 6800 approach seems "feasible":
1. People who can afford such mobos and two such cards can afford baddass powersupplies
2. The advent of this technology will prompt a new generation of PSUs. Consider the ALX for example, the babe will be shipping with damn fine 800W PSU! So perhaps when the ALX, et al hit the markets a new generation of PSUs will come around (Sorry Nephilim! :P)
The power requirements wasn't my biggest concern, I can always get a bigger power supply. It was the 4 card slots being used. My last motherboard came with 6. By the time I add an Audigy Platinum card that I use with my MIDI setup, modem that I need when the work VPN is down, and other various things that take up a card slot like the speed control on the cooler fan, extra usb connectors, or additional things I may want to add in the future such as a video capture card or firewire card then the additional three card slots are really missed. Of course you can have alternates for most of these; external modem, usb hub instead of other connectors, firewire built into the motherboard, but then you have to make additional hardware purchases.
Oooooooooh i see. Fair nuff. I think the new mobos supporting these dual cuard configs take that into consideration so i guess we'll have to wait and see
It's a cool concept indeed and you can't argue with the sheer brute force this offers! But I'm a pragmatist and I don't like the idea of using up four slots or dedicating that much of my PSU's resources and connectors for a level of performance that I wouldn't even come close to needing. A 9800XT/5959 Ultra draws around 40-50 watts and the next gen cards draw even more so you're conservatively talking 120 watts (and most likely higher) just for the video subsystem.
To my way of thinking just a single 6800 or X800 has a level of horsepower that isn't going to be tapped out gamewise for a good while. By the time we have games that would actually fully realize the capabilities of a dual 6800 SLI setup I'd imagine there will be a single card solution available to give me the performance I want.
I can see it being pretty killer for those who run graphics intensive apps across a multi monitor setup but how would SLI cope with that? Is it purely a single monitor technology or does it support multiple monitors?
It's also interesting to me with the possibility of getting a high level of performance from two cheaper cards though.
And just for Praetor's sake, I wouldn't get it even if it was dual X800's :)
My killer sig came courtesy of bb "El Jefe" mayo.
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