SLI: your views?

The_Neon_Cowboy

SLI is step backword it makes far more sence to have a dual core then dual card...

crapman777

Ummm i think your thinking in a very narrow minded sense. Dual GPU has the potential for video editing, also soon it may be possible to actually program graphics cards to process sound, hence one more PCI slot freed up, there are potentially many possibilties with this, nvidia and ati wouldnt jump on to this if it were bound to fail, we just need to wait and see what they may develop...

swimtech

My sentiments exactly. Two chips and the associated PCB real estate - too much work for too little improvement it seems. Two cores would be a much more efficient way to implement the idea I would think...

Not that two GPU's is a bad idea at all - No Style's and Crapman's points are well taken for me. I just don't think that the video card companies have run into the problems that CPU makers have - yet. Surely though, they are doing research on the dual core idea simply because it is cheaper and more efficient, using the experience from SLI production.

Sargentwhitey

Fast, expensive, useful in a small amount of situations. Pretty much what I can think of. Other than heat

Sandok

But it must be sooooo cool to see 2 6800GTs spinning in your PC... The l33tness of it!

The_Neon_Cowboy

I think you have no idea either what we or I'm talking about.... dual core = GAMEING TO THE UBER MAX... there are two kinds of dual core


#1
Dual GPU, is kind of like Dual CPU except unlike dual it uses both cores at the same time so two 500mhz gpu's act like a single 950 mhz one... becouse some is allways lost due to IO overhead.

Cheap then SLI but each GPU gets it own seprate memory yada yada yada


#2
But if you have 1 GPU with 2 x 500mhz cores on it it's the same accept you'd get the full 1000 mhz or dang close....

Would be able to share resoucres such as memory.... or seprate memory for each core


Both 1 and 2= more surface area so it mean beter transfer and cooling is possable with less effort.. duspite exta heat out put....

Both 1 and 2 don't required you to make a single 1GZ gpu wich is far harder then makeing 2 500mhz ones you already have!

Both 1 and 2 , Share the full 16X pcie

Both 1 and 2, use one one board, one set of capoistors parts etc to suppply thier powermeaning the card WILL ONLY COST SLIGTY MORE THEN 1 to make! that price will also show up on a consumer end

Both 1 and 2, are far CHEAPER soultions then SLI up to $700 to $1000 cheaper


SLI requires 2 GPUs, 2 board, 2 of everything part wise, A high WATT quailty PSU, A specail more expensive motherboard, ..... just for each card to have acess to just 8X pcie each

Option1: wich is a batter soultion a setup that does the job for a card that costs $600 and a regular setup

Option2: Or two SLI cards and pay $1000 for cards, extra $50-100 on a PSU, extra 50-100 on a mother board...

Please noite the far cheaper and faster soultion would be #option 1

crapman777

There is a reason why graphic cards have GPUs and not CPUs. Firstly GPUS perform 3d calculations such as the bump mapping, TL, mipmapping, AA, aniso etc etc. Try running 3dmark with a gforce2 and a dual cpu and see if it does any better than a single CPU with a gforce6800, quite simply GPUs are dedicated to graphics intensive programs, CPU's just cannot handle that kind of calculations even with two.
Sorry.

Asmoday

I'm with mkk on this one..

CDsDontBurn

a little OT here, but i think it would be cool to have dual core cards running in SLI....that would be a total of 4 cores in one system !

Now that's overkill

sak28wa

Got it! Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe... a sweet mobo BTW. A few things that need to be addressed with it like the crappy chipset heatsink fan being pron to going tits up. But a shweet thing none the least. Paring it with a AMD64 3500+(winchester) and for now (entill next payday) a single nVidia 6600GT. What can I say but....SHWEEEEET!

qballshalls2002

Too expensive, too many bugs, and not many benefits over a single card solution since I usually game under 12x10.

BWX

Believe me we all know that. I am with NEON too.

CDsDontBurn

if you plan on running two 6600GTs in SLI, you should have just saved up your money for one 6800GT. Truth is, the one 6800GT will out perform the two 6600GTs in SLI. On top of that, since not all games out there support SLI, you'll be forced to run with just one video card sometimes.

Like others have said, SLI is too buggy right now.

bug77

No, it's not! All ititakes is ONE poorly coded game and it will bring even that setup to its knees.

crapman777

Well it isnt as difficult as you might believe, HL2 can quite happily run an SLI setup.

Its up to the hardware manufacturers to make well coded drivers

IamLakota

I have almost all the piecies to put my system together,just waiting on my second 6800GT card to arrive.I would love to see dual core Graphics cards or even quad core graphics cards like the old Voodoo55500/6 6000 cards.

But yes I have to agree that there are a lot of bugs that need to be worked out.