Ati Sli

[Raggy]

..This thread makes my head hurt.

[Stoo]

I know what you mean..

[nvening]

wat y?

[Butcher]

and watch ur cpu hold everything back

Main bonus is you can put on lots of AA/AF without slowdown with SLI - they cost no more CPU, but hit the gpu quite hard.

[Timmy!!!]

Would the CPU still hold everything back if you had a dual processor motherboard and two fast CPUs?

[Thorsson]

Yes.

[Butcher]

Games, with very few excpetions (Q3A is the only one that springs to mind) don't use multiple CPUs. You want the fastest single CPU/memory combo you can get really. Also IME dual CPU boards tend to run games slower than single CPU boards (they are targetted at the server market where gpu perf isn't a factor).

[madwelshboy]

Guys guys guys, I think if you look slightly further into the future, you may want to hold back on sli, as dual core gpu cards are on the horizon (as are dual core cpu's), NOW YOUR TALKING BABY !

[Butcher]

By that theory we'd be running 386s, because there's always something better on the horizon.

[madwelshboy]

By that theory we'd be running 386s, because there's always something better on the horizon.

That's true, but it gets addictive tho, a few more fps here, a few more mhz there (as long as it plays the games I want, I couldnt care if it was hitting 35000000 in 3dmark or not!)...................but it would be sweet tho

[Butcher]

I can run any game on the market smooth with max settings and FSAA so I'm happy. ;D

[yamangman]

I can run any game on the market smooth with max settings and FSAA so I'm happy. ;D

I bet you £10,000 you can't.

[DR]

Christ this thread is a bit pathetic, every single system will have a bottle neck somewhere fact. So whatever system specification you have there *could* be problems. However, as long as your system does what you want it to do there is no need to look at other technology such as SLi - unless you need it.

I am finding more and more people on these forums are being judgemental - my X800 card in my rig is quiet - and works for me. I have 6 series cards avaliable for testing and swap out, these are louder but I would not say any of the SLi rigs which I have seen/used kissed goodbye my hearing.

The Gigabyte 3D1 bundle for 320 is a cheap(ish!) way of getting SLi.

Until the driver support is increased for SLi then most people will avoid it apart from the hardcore of you. I personally am very impressed with it and it is top tech - and nice to see it back again.

ATi are of course working on it, and I have seen claims that they said they pioneered it (in interviews) - interesting huh? I thought 3dfx did

ATi R3XX VPUs have been scalable and we have seen specific systems based around these, so clearly it is not hardware more so drivers which are needed.

[Butcher]

I bet you £10,000 you can't.

HL2 runs smooth at max, so that's good enough for me.

[Raggy]

Sli I is great tech, but it’s PCI-e only. Ironic because the bus speed of the PCI-e cards hasn’t even really been pushed yet, if SLi is needed any where it’s AGP, but of coarse furthering old tech is redundant and the industry wants to make this change. Specifically companies like NVIDIA that produce chipsets for the new tech. There is still a lot of room for improvement on single cards (and its cooperation with the rest of the PC). SLi is a bit of a nitch market so until it becomes mainstream driver support that needs higher priority may not be able to get it. At least this is my understanding of the situation.

[DR]

SLi will never hit mainstream....