nVidia SLI

[mulpsmebeauty]

I don't have a PCI-e mobo, but I soon hope to have a GF6800U of some description. When you include the upcoming graphics card, I will have spent nearly 1100 quid upgrading my PC (I don't think this will translate into any meaningful dollar amount - things seem to be cheaper in the US). I don't fancy doing this every 2½ years (I have a house to buy at some point), so I like the idea of buying a nice PCI-e mobo for £100 or so in the future and maybe slotting in another GF6800U (for much less than the 400 quid I'm about to shell out for this one), and perhaps a server-strength PSU to power them both.

Does anyone have an educated opinion on whether this is likely to remain a viable upgrade path for long? Certainly, if I was running 2 of my current cards (GF3 Ti500) in parallel, I suspect that my grandmother's mobile phone would significantly outperform them. Are performance advancements in GPUs going to continue making any 2-year old card a load of tat?

I'm wondering if it's likely that new DirectX standards and suchlike will make the whole concept redundant unless you can afford to buy 2 identical cards when they first come out? Obviously I'm asking for speculation, but I'm interested to hear anyone's thoughts.

 

[Lord of Shadows]

It all depends if there are motherboards out to support it in time, maybe more viable with nvidia's next gen cards assuming they keep sli for more than a generation.

 

[^eMpTy^]

very good question.

Given that performance just doubled with the current generation and nvidia cards have shader instructions to spare I would think that SLI will be a very viable upgrade path...the 6800s have all kinds of new features that aren't being used yet so I would think in another 2 years you'd only be marginally behind on the featureset needed to get the most out of the newest games but at the same time you would still have enough raw horsepower to have an awesome gaming experience...as long as the next couple generations of vid cards don't go doubling performance again, SLI will be a great upgrade path...

Personally, I'm totally going to switch over to PCI-E for this purpose later this year...[/

 

[DemonDiablo]

very good question.

Given that performance just doubled with the current generation and nvidia cards have shader instructions to spare I would think that SLI will be a very viable upgrade path...the 6800s have all kinds of new features that aren't being used yet so I would think in another 2 years you'd only be marginally behind on the featureset needed to get the most out of the newest games but at the same time you would still have enough raw horsepower to have an awesome gaming experience...as long as the next couple generations of vid cards don't go doubling performance again, SLI will be a great upgrade path...

Personally, I'm totally going to switch over to PCI-E for this purpose later this year...[/

Amen

I to plan on opting for a SLI configuration in a yr or so after I see some benchmarks with the technology (8xagp twice as fast as 4xagp but no noticable results? same with 8xagp and PCIe, with no noticable results) just to make sure the "theroretical" numbers all add up this time.

However if the numbers add up and SLI nets a 90% gpu boost then this could be an upgrade path that for the first time in along time will last longer than only 2-4months lol. An SLI configuration will do for you what a 9700pro did for many of its buyers...last a few yrs

 

[asmielia]

In some of the preliminary articles about SLI, the fact that nVidia's technology is to split the screen up into unequal amounts in order to balance the load on each card is interesting. It at least leaves open the possibility that you'll be able to run SLI with 2 entirely different nVidia cards, perhaps even mixing generations of cards. While I doubt nVidia will actually allow this, it would be an amazing idea to do so. Assuming that each subsequent new generation of cards is roughly twice as fast as the last gen, even mixing two generations of cards would allow one card to do 2/3 of the work and have the slower one doing 1/3 of the work.

 

[avatar_of_might]

Amen

I to plan on opting for a SLI configuration in a yr or so after I see some benchmarks with the technology (8xagp twice as fast as 4xagp but no noticable results? same with 8xagp and PCIe, with no noticable results) just to make sure the "theroretical" numbers all add up this time.

However if the numbers add up and SLI nets a 90% gpu boost then this could be an upgrade path that for the first time in along time will last longer than only 2-4months lol. An SLI configuration will do for you what a 9700pro did for many of its buyers...last a few yrs

you have to remember that games today dont even use up the agp8x bus so thats why pci-e has not produced ground breaking numbers. until games use up all the agp8x bus then pci-e and SLi wont create "groundbreaking" performance. depends on how the industry scales games.

 

[matic]

Unless I'm severely mistaken, you won't be able to use one AGP and one PCI-E card in SLI. You'll need a PCI-E motherboard with two slots, and TWO PCI-E video cards. I think you've got the right idea for the upgrade path, assuming some new technology doesn't come along and make a feature set imperative to have that the 6800 doesn't do (doubtful), but just keep in mind you'll need to buy two new cards, in PCI-E format instead of AGP.

SLI should be around until the death of PCI-E though. The old SLI was possible because PCI slots (as well as PCI-E) are parallel, while AGP is serial ... I'm not clear on the technical reasons, but SLI isn't really possible with the serial nature of AGP. Now, whether a 3rd-party solution like Alienware's video hub would have worked, I have no idea, but it's kinda moot now.

 

[^eMpTy^]

you have to remember that games today dont even use up the agp8x bus so thats why pci-e has not produced ground breaking numbers. until games use up all the agp8x bus then pci-e and SLi wont create "groundbreaking" performance. depends on how the industry scales games.

...this is what I call FOK...fusion of knowledge...true pci-e itself doesn't make vid cards faster because agp8x has enough bandwidth already...however...SLI is a whole different beast...PCI-E makes SLI possible...that's 2 cards running in parallel...and there is a HUGE performance boost...~90% faster than one card...

 

[DemonDiablo]

you have to remember that games today dont even use up the agp8x bus so thats why pci-e has not produced ground breaking numbers. until games use up all the agp8x bus then pci-e and SLi wont create "groundbreaking" performance. depends on how the industry scales games.

Thats pretty much what I said...I just said a lot more

 

[Tigerblade]

very good question.

Given that performance just doubled with the current generation and nvidia cards have shader instructions to spare I would think that SLI will be a very viable upgrade path...the 6800s have all kinds of new features that aren't being used yet so I would think in another 2 years you'd only be marginally behind on the featureset needed to get the most out of the newest games but at the same time you would still have enough raw horsepower to have an awesome gaming experience...as long as the next couple generations of vid cards don't go doubling performance again, SLI will be a great upgrade path...

Personally, I'm totally going to switch over to PCI-E for this purpose later this year...[/

For once I actually agree with you mate.....the 6800U SLI will be a very tempting prospect.....

 

[Mchart]

As soon as I have the money, ill be upgraded my mobo to a dual PCI-E 16X with dual 6800GT's.