Question about Nvidia SLI and the ATI equivalent...

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Syphon Filter

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Hi guys,

I have a pretty straight forward question. In your opinion does the advent of SLI mean that in the future (ie within a couple of years) we will need dual cards to the play games at a decent resolution (ie in the 1024x768 to 1280x960 bracket) with all the bells and whistles on? I am not really interested in playing games at insane resolutions like 2048 or anything. But if I am going to play something on my PC I do like to run at 1024x768 at least. Preferably at 1280x960/1024 with all the effects and stuff cranked.

Do you believe that game makers will start slapping "SLI recommended" on their productions? Or do you think that SLI will become a "requirement" at any stage?
 
Syphon Filter said:
Hi guys,

I have a pretty straight forward question. In your opinion does the advent of SLI mean that in the future (ie within a couple of years) we will need dual cards to the play games at a decent resolution (ie in the 1024x768 to 1280x960 bracket) with all the bells and whistles on? I am not really interested in playing games at insane resolutions like 2048 or anything. But if I am going to play something on my PC I do like to run at 1024x768 at least. Preferably at 1280x960/1024 with all the effects and stuff cranked.

Do you believe that game makers will start slapping "SLI recommended" on their productions? Or do you think that SLI will become a "requirement" at any stage?
Click to expand...
I was thinking the same thing. If I had to guess, I would say YES. Im sure games developers will pay companies like NVIDIA and ATI say they could put "SLI RECOMMENDED" or "PLAYES BETTER WITH SLI" or something to that nature on the game boxes. Soon, the "GAMING PC" is going to have to be a $5000.00 box, that will lose value quicker than a new car driving off the sales lot :eek: .
 
No

First of all SLI and AMR are a niche market.

Second of all developers wouldnt be able to make such graphically abled games in the timeslots alloted.

Third of all the devs would be shooting themselves in the foot with this, because most peoplearnt going to purchase $1000+ worth of hardware to play one game.

Unless dual cards/cores becomes a standard, it wont happen.
 
Looking at the way things are going at the moment, no
SLI or AMR is and will not be a requirement for at least the next 4-5 years but who can say what the future brings?
 
newls1 said:
I was thinking the same thing. If I had to guess, I would say YES. Im sure games developers will pay companies like NVIDIA and ATI say they could put "SLI RECOMMENDED" or "PLAYES BETTER WITH SLI" or something to that nature on the game boxes. Soon, the "GAMING PC" is going to have to be a $5000.00 box, that will lose value quicker than a new car driving off the sales lot :eek: .
Click to expand...
well ATI next card wil have 32 pipelines and enough bandwidth to push them all... so inturn it might be faster then a SLI setup... on a single card design... and then.. ati might have some sort of SLI set up up theyre sleeve....
so inturn.. im glad i live in this time of great graphics!!!
 
i doubt it..... since like the previous guy said.. SLI is a nitch market.

i would love to get sli... but lets face it.

few can afford 2 400$ graphics cards due to

1. lack of money.
2. They are married (You married guys know what im talking about!!)
3. Bills.

so yea.... granted a LOT of people are going SLI but its really not in the game makers interests to make their games so complex that only a few can play the game.

Regards,
Austin
 
wow guys, these are the exact kind of answers I was looking for.

I agree, if things were to go SLI required then the majority of people would be priced out of the PC gaming market. I guess that in itself is a good enough reason to keep things single card oriented.

I can sit safe in my spot with my single card :D
 
sorry to tell you but this is not the ADVENT of sli...sli came out serveral years ago for use with dual (or more) voodoo series cards of course nvidia bought 3dfx so guess who got the technology...SLI didnt take over back then and it wont take over now
 
cell_491 said:
sorry to tell you but this is not the ADVENT of sli...sli came out serveral years ago for use with dual (or more) voodoo series cards of course nvidia bought 3dfx so guess who got the technology...SLI didnt take over back then and it wont take over now
Click to expand...

I thought the technology back then was different, where you had a regular 2d card and a second card for 3d?
 
i dont believe so...but even if it was the fact remains this is not the first time anyone has linked two video cards to gether and it failed to catch on last time and it will fail to catch on now (at least for the masses)
 
Perhaps not soon, but in the future (5-10 years) it's more than just likely. CPUs are already moving to parallelization (multiple cores running in parallel). It only makes sense that GPUs will eventually follow this path too.

On a sidenote, from what I've heard so far, this future of GPUs will look less like nVidia's current multi-GPU solution and more like ATi's. The latter will namely allow dissimilar cards to work in parallel, with the workload distributed over them depending on their capabilities. This way you don't upgrade to the 'latest, greatest' videocard, but simply add the new card to the existing setup. We really have got to thank the introduction of PCIe for making this possible.

So in summary: no, SLI in its current incarnation will remain a toy for the rich and/or fanatic gamers, but multi-GPU setups, sharing the workload among them, will become a common sight, and perhaps a requirement for truly enjoying the latest eyecandy in around 5 years or more.
 
maybe multi cored gpus but i doubt that there will ever be a requirement for multiple cards in the gaming scene
 
Syphon Filter said:
I thought the technology back then was different, where you had a regular 2d card and a second card for 3d?
Click to expand...

Yup, the Voodoo and VoodooII required a seperate 2D-card to function.

Terra...
 
yea but that wasnt what sli was for...didnt you have to have three cards for sli back then...2 for 3d and one for 2d...frankly i dont remember because i didnt own one because i couldnt afford it just like i cant afford nvidias sli now
 
I dont think so, SLI rules right now, next gen single xards comes and rapes last gen Sli setup :)
 
Elledan said:
Perhaps not soon, but in the future (5-10 years) it's more than just likely. CPUs are already moving to parallelization (multiple cores running in parallel). It only makes sense that GPUs will eventually follow this path too.

On a sidenote, from what I've heard so far, this future of GPUs will look less like nVidia's current multi-GPU solution and more like ATi's. The latter will namely allow dissimilar cards to work in parallel, with the workload distributed over them depending on their capabilities. This way you don't upgrade to the 'latest, greatest' videocard, but simply add the new card to the existing setup. We really have got to thank the introduction of PCIe for making this possible.

So in summary: no, SLI in its current incarnation will remain a toy for the rich and/or fanatic gamers, but multi-GPU setups, sharing the workload among them, will become a common sight, and perhaps a requirement for truly enjoying the latest eyecandy in around 5 years or more.
Click to expand...

That's interesting stuff about the ATI solution, I did not know that.

cell_491 said:
maybe multi cored gpus but i doubt that there will ever be a requirement for multiple cards in the gaming scene
Click to expand...

I hope you are correct, either that or I hope my salary goes up a fair whack!!
 
cell_491 said:
yea but that wasnt what sli was for...didnt you have to have three cards for sli back then...2 for 3d and one for 2d...frankly i dont remember because i didnt own one because i couldnt afford it just like i cant afford nvidias sli now
Click to expand...

I simple stated that you where wrong, when you said you didn't belive that SLI back then also required a third GFX-card(2D)

Terra - I still remember the "Click" sound the Voodoo cards made when you entered 3Dmode :)
 
i didnt say i didnt believe they needed a third card I said they DID need a third card...what i said was that back in the day sli wasnt one 3d card and one 2d card wich is what someone else said. wasnt the one 3d plus one 2d standard for voodoo cards and then to make it sli you had to add a third (second 3d) card
 
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