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SLI Primer
GFXguy writes "If you are looking to catch up on some hardware learning you may want to check out "SL Why?". It is a short article that goes over the basics of SLI graphics. The article goes over some strengths and weaknesses of this technology as well. It looks like one video card is not going to cut it any more, at least for the hardcore gamers out there. "
Anyone else remember doing this with the old 3dfx voodoo cards... seems so long ago.
is RAIVC(Redundany Array of Video Cards) going to come out? I'd like a RAICV10 please.
- I got my free iPod and a free Nintendo DS....why not
SLI is overkill for 99.99% of people out there. In fact, onboard video is fine for probably 80-90% of the PC market.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Doom 3 runs in SFR, not AFR as the article states.
All the serious gamers will have 2 PCs connected in series to their monitor..one just for all the video rendering, and one for everything else.
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
So now we have the addition of parallel graphics cards on top of the already parallel CPUs; we've had parallel keyboards and mice ability for a long time, and parallel fans kinda vaguely came along too. Parallel HDs exist with extra drives, I'm not sure how RAM extensions are accessed but they're probably classable as parallel too. Technology over the past 15 years: pushing an entire computer lab into a single computer. Considering that we'll have computer labs with these computers in...
Browsing with +2 to insightful posts and a higher threshold makes the average post seen seem a lot more ingenious
I think it likely after RTFA that other upgrades would give you more of a boost for your money. For instance, setting up an IDE RAID 5 array with a read/write caching hardware RAID controller would give almost everyone a huge speed increase for all of their applications, not just graphics ones.
Even just adding a second fast hard drive and placing your paging file on that with your OS on your first hard drive would give most users a big bump in speed.
I could go on, but I think on a list of 10 things to do, taking advtange of SLI is probably number 9 or 10.
I'm a big tall mofo.
What about those of us who want to spend a sane amount of money on their computers? Gamers are getting almost as bad as audiophiles these days.
The article claims first that you need a $250 motherboard to run SLI (apparently a $75 premium for SLI), and second that you need to pay a large premium for SLI-compatible cards, which are next to impossible to find.
I'm running a $160 motherboard with two 6800GTs that I picked up for a good price at my local shop. They did not have a single PCIe 6600 or 6800 board there that wasn't SLI compatible.
The first time I ever had a video card upgrade was with an SLI add on card on my old 120mhz intel. There where clouds in mechwarrior after I installed it!
what sig?
What a stupid comment.
Currently, the best video performance out there is a pair of 6800 Ultras in SLI, it's true, but that's also well over $1000 in video hardware alone.
Meanwhile, single-card solutions like the X850XT PE are capable of chewing through anything you can throw at them with admirable performance.
SLI is a lot like the tablet PC: a solution in search of a problem. Sure, it's a cool idea, but in practice, not terribly useful and very much overpriced.
Compare, for instance, a pair of 6600GTs running SLI:
$175 for each card; $350 total. Another $50 for the premium on a SLI mainboard.
Now you've got additional heat, additional power draw, two seperate cards, and the hassle of dealing with SLI drivers when, for $100 less, you could purchase a single X800XL and enjoy superior performance.
SLI may become worthwhile in the future, but for now, it's the exclusive domain of chumps and the e-penis crowd.
I don't understand why anyone except a small group of enthusiasts would still play PC games. Sure, there's a better interface and higher resolution. But, game installation is generally a true pain - install the game, update the drivers, download the patches, fiddle with the game options, rinse, repeat. Then there's the constant need to install new upgraded hardware (like a new $250 video card) to play tne next version of a game.
Contrast with purchasing a console, hooking it up to the TV, popping in the game and playing. New hardware (consoles) appear periodically (like XBox2, PS/3) but upgrade cycle is a lot less frequent than that required for PC games, and hassle factor is much lower. Add to that the fact that most game makers now develop for consoles first, and it's hard to justify the continual upgrade cycle to support PC gaming.
[Insert pithy quote here]
#1) Doom 3 runs in SFR mode, not AFR.
#2) CPU issue is overblown. I'm not even sure if any additional information is truly sent to the processor.
In AFR, the data for each frame is sent to alternating graphics cards. Since the frames would have been processed anyway, there is not any additional load on the CPU than there would be for an identical system with a video card that is twice as powerful as in an SLI system.
In SFR, the same data is sent to two graphics cards. This would be more data, but seemingly require only a smidgen more CPU power. The video cards send the data between each other over a dedicated bridge, and the video cards handle the task of reassembling the image into a single frame.
#3) SLI card cost. 6600GT AGP cards cost more than their PCIe counterpart. 6800 AGP cards cost less. This has more to do with the amount of time in the market than anything else. In 3 months, the prices will be equal.
#4) Stability. "...certain older cards that are said to be SLI compatible have serious stability problems when used with SLI, but, for example, not all 6800 GT cards can be used with SLI". To date, I have not seen a PCIe 6600GT or 6800GT card released which is not SLI compatible. Not all 6800GT cards can be used with SLI, but that has more to do with the fact that many cards are AGP based and older than two months (when the first SLI motherboards were released).
#5) No benefit. "From what I heard, more than a few games realize no FPS gains at all from the addition of a second video card". First, this is rumor. Many games realize no benefit at low resolutions (640x480, some at 800x600) because the games are more CPU bound than video card bound. All the games that are SLI compatible definitely realize solid FPS gains. Moreover, those gains can be "converted" into graphics enhancements (i.e. no need to go from 60fps to 95 fps, but now you can turn on 8xAA or up the screen resolution, etc.)
#6) Dual GPU cards. The author obviously doesn't know what he's talking about here. The Gigabyte dual GPU card is just an SLI solution on a single graphics card. It's (almost) exactly the same as having 2x6600GT cards. It uses the same technology and produces the same results. So what's this viable new technology on the horizon he is talking about?
#7) SLI cannot be forced. Of course it can! The default mode is "no SLI". This can be changed in the configuration options for the card.
I thought SLI stood for Scan Line Interleaving. "Scaleable Link Interface" is completly vauge. Did they change the technology and keep the old name, or is this writer just an idiot?
Upon further investigation it seems that nVidia's SLI stands for "Scaleable Link Interface", but you are correct in noting that it used to stand for "Scan Line Interleaving". They likely wanted to keep the acronym so that people would know what the technology's function was, but Scan Line Interleaving would be non-despcriptive, as their cards don't interleave at all, each renders approximately half of the screen.
same revision, same card almost?
ever tried to add a 2nd CPU to a multi CPU system 18 months later?
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
For some of us, SLI is not a new technology, although the current method is slightly different than the old VooDoo SLI. But after years of gaming, one thing stands out to me. You DON'T need the latest and greatest stuff to run games in most cases. Better to use your hardware budget wisely than to splurge on ultra-swank single components.
I run an AMD 1700, on an ABIT mainboard, with an old ATI9600. Not the pro, but the $79 budget card. I have no exotic cooling, just a nice sink and fan. I added a good copper fan unit to the videocard, which came with passive cooling. I use the features of the Abit MB to run the 1700 at 2.11Ghz, and the video got a 80Mhz bump. I see over 70fps in the CS:Source test, and average around 55-60 online. All for about the cost of one video card.
Only tyrants and oppressors need fear a well armed populace.
Actually I have (It was 2.5 years later). I couldn't find the match, but I was able to find two newer processors that were better *and* cheaper than I paid for the original one =) They weren't top-of-the-line, but acceptable for my needs. Hardware is great like that... the costs are continuously declining.
The same thing might happen with graphics cards. If you can use two mediocre cards instead of one big beefy card, it's possible you might be able to save yourself some money.
I store my recipes online (the way nature intended)
"No, gamers have always been much worse than audiophiles. "
You're kidding, right? Audiophiles are off the deep end. I don't think you have ever seen an *actual* audiophile-- you're mixing them up with people who like stereos. Audiophiles do things like buy $3000 cables. Or put all their components on 200lb. granite blocks or $600-per-component magnetic levitation dampers to ease vibration. Power conditioners. Huge stacks of tube amps. Subwoofers that require special basement rooms to be built to act as the box.
In the worst cases, the quest for perfect audio goes so far as to become pointless. There's an article I wish I could find for you about one particularly off-the-deep-end audiophile who paid so much for the system he used to listen to classical recordings that had he kept the money, he would have had enough to bring the *actual orchestra* to his house to play for him regularly, for years. Say what you want about huge stereos, but if it gets to the point where you can afford to bring the source home with you, you don't need reproduction.
The worst gamers can't hope to touch this. The most expensive rig on the market with a massive hang-on-the-wall plasma or whatever as your huge monitor is still just a drop in the bucket compared to people who will spend $3000 on three feet of speaker cable. And unlike some of the audiophile quackery, at least a fast machine has measurable performance gains. Try convincing a real engineer that your $1000 power cable makes a detectable difference in sound quality.
For your reference, as a guide to the levels this insanity can reach:
$23,000 for a pair of 8-foot speaker cables
$75,000 per speaker
$40 silver-plated electrical outlet (because... ummm... you can't just use any old outlet with the next item:)
$1000 5-foot AC power cable
There's much worse. Try pricing out monoblock tube amps. Keep in mind they're not just going to buy one per channel (the minimum), but probably one per *driver* (as in, three per speaker if you have a woofer, mid, and tweeter).
CompUSA is using the MSRP; you can pick up the ATi-manufactured one there for $300.
Point being, the 6600 GT is the most credible instance of an SLI implimentation. The cost/performance of a pair of 6800 GTs or 6800 Ultras compared to a single X850XT PE is just laughably bad.
For anyone who is interested, Anandtech has posted a round-up of the four SLI boards on the market (DFI, ASUS, MSI & Gigabyte) which includes some conclusions of their own about usability, value and performance.
The technology has changed. While the Voodoo cards used to simply draw every other line on the screen when they were SLI'ed together, today's cards work very differently.
In a nutshell, one SLI'ed card will (attempt) to draw the top half of the screen while the other card draws the bottom half. Now, there are exceptions to this, and this is the biggest change.
If say, the top half of the screen does not have as high a polycount as the bottom half the underperforming card will pick up some of the slack for the over-worked card drawing the bottom half. This results in the cards working together to acheive an optimal frame rate.
For more detailed information than my bland attempt to sound geeky, click here.
For me, that's just it - the interface. Higher resolution helps, as does my pro quality 19" monitor, but it's the interface that's the killer.
:S
Show me a mouse that ships with a keyboard and mouse so console developers can *rely* on them being present, and I might care about console games. Hell, just the mouse would do, though mouse-and-controller would be more than a tad clumsy
As it is, I find most games I care about (RTS, strategy games, and games like Deus Ex and System Shock II) either don't exist for consoles, or are pathetic hollow shells of their former selves. Deus Ex II: Invisible War, anybody?
The upgrade cycle and low starting price would be attractive, but I don't find it too bad with my desktop. Then again, I don't buy top end gear, so I'm usually in the lower middle of the requirements and performance bracket. This is helped by the fact that I often play older games.
When it comes to developers building for consoles first, I'm painfully aware of that. I often fire up a game demo for something really interesting, and it has a bloody console interface or is written with the assumption that the user will be confined by console input devices. Especially in FPS games, this is *incredibly* annoying.
Call me a bigot, but if all I can get is console games, I'll just stop buying games. There are a lot of old, good games out there - and I'm gaming less these days anyway. I play games for fun, and I don't find console UIs fun.
I had that room the following year and used the slate as a plant stand :-)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Have you ever had to print a bunch of color copies on a normal printer? 5-7PPM and you're *lucky*. I'd pay for some way to double my laser printer's speed. In fact, I'd be much more likely to pay for that than this snake oil video card stuff. Sure, it may work well and provide benefits in the future, but right now you might as well stick with one video card. ROI is much greater that way.
http://xkcd.com/386/
I have over 1 million PC's connected together in one large cluster, each responsible one pixel on my display with load balancing just in case a certain pixel is more complex than another.
Now that's serious gaming.
If you complete the referral for me in my link, I'll reciprocate. I got the Xbox and the Ipod free - it really does work and it comes pretty quickly (hardly the 4-6 weeks).
You can email me at mattatbraynarddotcom. Good luck.
Matt
This may be one of the worst SLI articles I have read so far. This guy makes assumptions and passes them off as fact. He also makes some statements that belie his lack of knowledge about systems and speeds of procs as well as potential bottlenecks in the system. While SLI may be a good idea in the long run currently it is just a very expensive toy for certian gamers to brag about. Actual performance increases have been around 30% in most of the tests I have seen so far. That extra $200(6600gt) to 380(6800gt) spent on the 2nd video card combined with the extra $100 you will have to spend on the motherboard is better invested in other places on the system. upgradeing to a almost top amd64 or gasp a p4 will in the end get you better speeds in the majority of games. For sli functionality the driver has to support the game, and so far few games have been selected by nvidia to have the drivers writtin for it.
SLI does have some potential advantages that this writer has not covered. In 3d rendering, real time editing or special effects work this type of setup would be a huge boost to speed and productity. The fact that this generation of cards have programmable shaders, means that in theory these cards can pull some processing functions off of the cpu. Currently people are starting to experiment on how to use these powerfull graphic cards as almost secondary cpu's.
Currently my amd 64 3200 with a 6800gt performs amazingly in doom III and HLII at large resolutions with AA and AF. Ironically esp in HLII the bottleneck is the processor as the game has to compute the large physics calcs demanded by HLII. WIth graphics getting as advanced as they are I think we will be seeing a return to proc based performance gains, and a slow down of video card performance increases. As games will be putting more of a draw on the CPU. The graphics are real, now the environment is getting real.
Personally I feel that SLI is very much like the P4EE an incredibly expensive add-on/upgrade for very very high end gamers that do not care about price, or are easily swayed by marketing. At this point SLI makes no sense. The power is not needed at this point, the price performance ratio is way out of skew, and it's future is in doubt. Nvidia has to supply the drivers for these games, and as far as I know no games are currently being written with SLI in mind. Lets check back in a year and see how it goes and where this tech has gone. And as a parting thought why has nvidia not started using this tech in the commerical sector????
---In a time of Chimpanzees I was a Monkey.