Nvidia Reintroduces SLI with GeForce 6800 Series

An anonymous reader writes "It's 1998 all over again gamers. A major release from ID software, and an expensive hotrod video card all in one year. However, rather than Quake and the Voodoo2 SLI, it's Doom3 and Nvidia SLI. Hardware Analysis has the scoop, 'Exact performance figures are not yet available, but Nvidia's SLI concept has already been shown behind closed doors by one of the companies working with Nvidia on the SLI implementation. On early driver revisions which only offered non-optimized dynamic load-balancing algorithms their SLI configuration performed 77% faster than a single graphics card. However Nvidia has told us that prospective performance numbers should show a performance increase closer to 90% over that of a single graphics card. There are a few things that need to be taken into account however when you're considering buying an SLI configuration. First off you'll need a workstation motherboard featuring two PCI-E-x16 slots which will also use the more expensive Intel Xeon processors. Secondly you'll need two identical, same brand and type, PCI-E GeForce 6800 graphics cards.'"

Comments

For Rich Folks Only

[Brain Stew]

These cards are expensive enough, now they are suggesting we buy 2!?

I guess if you have a lot of money and want to play with a (marginal) advantage, an SLI setup is for you.

As for myself, I am a poor college student not even able to afford 1 of these cards. A situation I think is similar to a lot of other geeks/gamers.

Which begs the question, who is this aimed at?

Re:For Rich Folks Only

[flsquirrel]

Ok, I'm not too much older than you if you're still in college, but I'm going to play old curmudgeon anyway.

you can put together a decent solution for computing now for around a grand. Kick in another $250 for needing a good workstation board to get the right slots and say $600 ($300x2) for the two cards and you're still just under $2000. THIS IS CHEAP. I'm sorry. I know how many lawns I had to mow as a youngin to buy my first pentium 60. That was $2k for JUST the computer and monitor. That included a baseline 1 meg video card, no cdrom and no sound. The cdrom and sound card cost me another $400 a couple months later.

So cry me a freaking river. Get a weekend job. Stop spending so much money on booz. If this is a priority for you, then you'll find the money. If it's not a priority, then quit your pissing and moaning.

Re:For Rich Folks Only

[Ianoo]

It's not really your fault. Blame the idiots at PCI-SIG for giving PCIe such a similar name to an existing (but totally different) bus technology (PCI-X). PCIe used to be called 3GIO, I've no idea why they decided to change it.

For reference (not just for you), PCI-X is PCI on steroids, a faster, wider (64-bit) edition of the PCI bus which is used in high end servers and the Apple PowerMac G5.

PCIe (aka PCI Express aka 3GIO) is the brand new multi-channel serial expansion bus that will be appearing on consumer-level motherboards in the next few months and will eventually replace both AGP and PCI.

Re:When

[dave420]

So you don't want to hear about the cure for cancer until it's in your pharmacy? News is just that - new stuff. Just because you can't fork over some money for something doesn't mean it's not newsworthy or of interest to the /. community. Are you American? :-P

Just a band aid..

[eddy]

... till we have multi-core and/or multi-GPU consumer cards. (they're already available at the high-end)

Questionmark.

Power Requirements

[Anonymous Coward]

So, One card that requires a 400 Watt power supply + Another card that requires a 400 Watt power supply = The need for an 800 Watt power supply?!

Bah...

[mikis]

Call me when they put two GPUs on one card... Or even better, when they put two cores on one chip. Soon enough motherboard will be an add-on to graphic card.

Plus, many people were upset about power and cooling requirements. This monster would occupy FOUR slots and require, what, a 600W PSU? (ok, just kidding, "only" 460W should be enough)

Re:nvidia is going under!

[Chas]

1: Resort to idiotic 3DFX-like measures to get high performance

Note: A 77% increase in gaming performance isn't "high performance". Considering that the 6800 is ALREADY a massive leap forward over it's predecessor, it's INSANE PERFORMANCE!

How would something like 1600x1200 with maxed FSAA and maxed AF, while never dropping below 60fps, grab you by the short and curlies?

2: Watch company slowly die.

Nobody's suggesting that everyone and their brother run out and get SLI'd GeForces on a Xeon platform. (Those already spending 4-5000 dollars on such a platform aren't necessarily going to shrink from an additional $4-500, especially if it nearly doubles video performance.)

This is going to probably be limited to those who'd normally use Quadro cards (productivity) and the elite few with more money than sense.

Not that everyone won't WANT one...