'SLI On A Stick' Reviewed

Bender writes "What would happen if you took NVIDIA's multi-GPU teaming capability, SLI, and stuck it onto a single graphics card? Probably something like the GeForce 7950 GX2, a 'single' video card with dual printed circuit boards, dual graphics processors, dual 512MB memory banks, and nearly twice the performance of any other 'single' video card. Add two of these to a system, and you've got the truly extreme possibility of Quad SLI. We've seen early versions of these things benchmarked before, but the latest revision of this card is smaller, draws less power than a single-GPU Radeon X1900 XTX, and is now selling to the public."

Comments

Re:Wow

[HugePedlar]

DNF?

FINALLY

[Quick Sick Nick]

*Throws away 4 7900 GTXs running in SLI*

If I upgrade, I might be able to go from 200 frames per second in Doom III to.... 205 frames per second!

I can't wait to get rid of my old setup! It was a piece of shit!

Attack of the GFX E-penis argument?

[LordKazan]

I'm probably going to loose even more karma for posting with that title and subject - but i'm on a karma--; roll lately.

Graphics cards innovations for the past several months/year with SLI seem to be me mostly "i have a dual SLI system!", "yeah? well i have a QUAD SLI system!" - soo much performance that is unused it's pointless. Furthermore for the price of one of these brand new cards in the article I can build a decent gaming computer or a HDTV mythTV box.

I would rather spend $600 on much more useful things that would see use right now on pricewatch the video cards at $100 are: radeon x1300 256mb agp, radeon x1600 pro 256mb pci express, radeon x800 pci express 256mb, geforce 6600 gt pci-e 256mb

I predicted dual video cards was a fad

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

Like the original dual Voodoo cards, multiple video cards is just one of those things that keeps going out of style (but like old fads, makes its appearance every decade or two).

The cost to implement and manufacture multiple video cards is ridiculous. Who honestly would spend $1400 just to have two video cards, and then only get at most 20% performance improvement.

With the current trend of multiple cores, I figured it would be just a matter of time for the SLI and Crossfire solutions to switch back to a single video card. Either they would dual core the GPU, or simply put two GPU on the same card.

I just makes sense to keep a video card as a single card. You dont have to duplicate the production costs and all the other components that are wasted in a dual card configuration, you also dont have to duplicate the bus technology on the motherboard in order to implement dual video cards. Overall, this will be a much cheaper configuration that will actually bring high performance video technology into the realm of being practical.

Eventually, 4 way GPU cards will be released, and eventually nVidia and/or ATI will start to dual core their GPUs, those spending money on their expensive dual or even quad based SLI configurations just wasted a bunch of money.

Re:Bleugh

[moonbender]

Remember, the best ride is on the face of the wave.

I'm sorry, you'll have to come up with a car analogy.