Are nVidia's SLI Cards Worth the Investment? 98
aendeuryu asks: "So there's a lot of buzz right now about nVidia's SLI architecture, which allows for two video cards to be placed in tandem PCI-express sockets on the same motherboard to share processing. Based on the relatively low price of a PCIx 6600GT, and the promise of it dipping further, it would seem like a good idea to invest in one and an appropriate motherboard, so that one can upgrade later, right? So, for anybody who's actually got the setup at home, have SLI cards shown themselves to be worth the investment?"
"There are two problems with the current state of SLI:
- It's hard to tell what software companies plan to take advantage of the SLI architecture when coding their games -- Doom3 and Several Benchmark software tests show a significant improvement over non-SLI setups, whereas some games like Far Cry actually show a performance hit over single video-card setups.
- At the moment, the upgrade path actually requires two identical cards, so you'd have to choose your initial purchase extra carefully to make sure your model is still around when it's time to upgrade.
Far Cry Performance (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=228
and if you are going to drop $800-1200 on video cards, you are not likely to still be gaming at 1024x768, but your credit card might be weeping.
Re:I think it;s worth it and the idea is great. (Score:5, Informative)
Short Answer: Go with a single 6800GT/Ultra (Score:5, Informative)
A nice article.
imo: absolutely not (Score:2, Informative)
-make a donation to a worthy charity/non-profit
-save/invest if for the future
-treat your s.o. to something nice
-go on a trip
-put it in your kid's college fund
-build a robot
Re:In my opinion? No. (Score:4, Informative)
Correction (Score:4, Informative)
Actually you don't need identical boards, they have to be identical chipsets. You can mix and match vendors, so long as the chips and configs are the same. You can't run a 6600 and a 6600GT in SLI mode, but you COULD (in theory) run them to power 4 DVI displays. I say in theory because everyone is still so hung up on SLI i haven't seen anybody try this yet. The main outline of the spec is that you can run cards from different vendors, they just have to be the same configs. Many of you know that already, but i felt obligated to clarify for those who haven't been keeping up
Personally i'm looking at SLI capable boards for my next mobo upgrade for that reason above, not for the SLI portion, but the fact that i may be able to run dual vid cards and not have one on the slow ass PCI bus. With most integrated mobo periphials moving to PCIe anyway, this isn't so much an issue, but if you have firewire, any kind of hdd access, audio, etc moving on the 133MB/s PCI bus you're going to be hearing pops and skips in your audio, looking for lost packets, and pulling your hair out with IRQ conflicts. I don't want to add video to the mess that already exists. dual PCIe x16 slots seem a VERY nice solution