Harvik780
13-12-2007, 07:38 PM
Hey guys; as you know from the rumors around the web, NVIDIA is launching 3-way SLI. And darn, there hardly is a secret for anything released by NVIDIA these days. Over a six weeks ago we started planning our 3-way SLI review, yet due to some very dark circumstances less than 20 hours prior to the launch, we received our boards. So before we even start off with this article, forgive me for the short technical explanations. There's nothing really in-depth or "guru style" today. We'll just focus on the basics of 3-way SLI and what matters the most: benchmarks.
You guys know exactly what SLI & Crossfire is, that doesn't need any profound explanation. But basically you take two graphics cards, place them on a supported mainboard, connect the cards together with an SLI or Crossfire bridge and with any luck, you can double up the 3D rendering performance of your games.
For the last year, if you had a closer look at the 8800 GTX & Ultra, you'd notice there's a second SLI finger (connector) and to date there has been a lot of speculation about that extra connector, to name one, it could have been an extension for physics over a third card. The truth is often to be found in the most simple and logical solution; it was all about SLI from the get go. If you have one of these rather expensive cards you can now link up three cards and enable 3-way SLI.
But now you go ... "Oy Hilbert!, but didn't we have Quad-SLI already". Yes Sir we did, and it miserably failed due to a plethora of factors. In the end Quad SLI was killed off due to a DX9 backbuffer (we called it backbugger) limitation which pretty much hindered games to utilize more than 2 GPUs, and from thereon a lack of driver development. NVIDIA tried to evangelize this with sexy AA modes running over the 3rd and 4th GPU, yet it never took off.
Full review Here (http://www.guru3d.com/article/Videocards/481/)
You guys know exactly what SLI & Crossfire is, that doesn't need any profound explanation. But basically you take two graphics cards, place them on a supported mainboard, connect the cards together with an SLI or Crossfire bridge and with any luck, you can double up the 3D rendering performance of your games.
For the last year, if you had a closer look at the 8800 GTX & Ultra, you'd notice there's a second SLI finger (connector) and to date there has been a lot of speculation about that extra connector, to name one, it could have been an extension for physics over a third card. The truth is often to be found in the most simple and logical solution; it was all about SLI from the get go. If you have one of these rather expensive cards you can now link up three cards and enable 3-way SLI.
But now you go ... "Oy Hilbert!, but didn't we have Quad-SLI already". Yes Sir we did, and it miserably failed due to a plethora of factors. In the end Quad SLI was killed off due to a DX9 backbuffer (we called it backbugger) limitation which pretty much hindered games to utilize more than 2 GPUs, and from thereon a lack of driver development. NVIDIA tried to evangelize this with sexy AA modes running over the 3rd and 4th GPU, yet it never took off.
Full review Here (http://www.guru3d.com/article/Videocards/481/)