NVIDIA's SLI

[master Blacktop]

The announcement of SLI and the nForce 4 in the middle of 2004 generated a lot of talk in the hardware community. There were the skeptics who thought that it would remain a limited release product and be relegated to a niche solution but when pretty much every single major manufacturer is producing a SLI board it is hard to substantiate that claim. It is apparent that a product is making an impact in the mainstream segment - this past weekend when I walked into a store and overheard guys inquiring about SLI boards and when they can get a pair of video cards to go along with it. For those that are not familiar with SLI (Scalable Link Interface), the one line summary is that with certain PCIe motherboards (with dual x16 slots), a pair of identical GeForce 6 based video cards can be used in tandem to nearly double video performance - a more extensive look at SLI can be found here. This has several advantages - for the uncompromising hardcore enthusiast, this means they can take a performance leap into next-generation levels today. For mild-mannered Clark Kent and those of us that are constrained by a budget, this means that 6 months down the road when we are craving more performance, we do not need to shell out the big bucks for the ultra expensive high end card but can drop in another identical card to double performance.

Here's the link to the original article this extract was 'pinched' from - Catweazle
http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Features/nvslitesting/index.html

[steveneven]

Sounds good, but I think until very recently only the real top end cards could be sli'd

I thought it was a little stupid, it would make more sense to have cards right across their entire range that supported SLI, that way, the people that can only raise maybe £150 at the max, could buy a card, and then like you say in 6 months get another £150 card and get an improment in performance (not sure if it is quite double)

I think that this has now changed, and that they are offering this technology to a wider range of 'purses'

SLI cards (until the Nforce4) have only been available for Intel systems, as they where the only boards that had PCI-e, The Nforce4 chipset isthe first chipset to support PCI-e on AMD boards (am I right there)

Trying to peice together a conversation based on snippets of articles that I can remember from the top of my head.

I think SLI sounds promising, and I wish I hadn't recently purchased a board with the nforce3 chipset, wish I had waited.

But never mind

SE

[master Blacktop]

thanks broham respect