To SLi or not to SLi

[ed^chigliak]

I can't see any point to SLI unless it's a pair of 7800GTX just for the hell of it. It's far simpler to sell your old card and replace it with a newer one. Two older cards will be more expensive, more heat, more noise, less compatible. Why would anyone want that. I prefer to stay up to date and not add old hardware which will be harder to sell further down the line. It will take a long time for the 6800GT to reach bargain prices for a cheap SLI upgrade and then you probably won't find an identical card.

[[GSV]Trig]

X700 Cards..

Do I go for the
X700 256Mb DDR2
or
X700Pro 128Mb GDDR3...

I'd of thought the 256Mb card personally....

Not gonna bother with SLI, like a few ppl have said u'll need cards that are the same which in 6-8 months time aint gonna happen really...

So, which board, but thats another thread

[noah]

neither, at that price your gonna want a 6600gt, its beats the x700pros in everything iirc

[[GSV]Trig]

Apart from price....

[noah]

apologies, i hadnt realised prices had dropped on the x700pro so much. personally id spend the extra £30 odd it seems to be, but if price is a concern i see your point. tbh performance wise tho its gonna be very similar to you 9800pro, but then you did call it a 'sidegrade'

[iggy]

i was going to go for an x700 also, but on performance, and the added shader features, id go for the 6600gt. if you look around they can be picked up for not that much more than the x700's

[[GSV]Trig]

Well like I said, its a sidegrade more than anything, I dont fancy sticking up the £200+ for a decent card like I have been doing the last few times (GF256DDR £220, R8500 £200, 9800Pro £200+) but where I'm at atm the x700 has similar performance to the 9800 so thats my aim point as I dont really need the extra gfx power atm as the only thing I seem to be playing is BF2 and the system runs that as it is fine, just really wanting the extra ram and the PCI-E and this is the cheapest way to get me to that point, then when I get round to ebaying all the old junk I have then we'll go a bit higher card wise...

[nichomach]

Well, what you COULD do is look at whether ATi's Crossfire might be an option - OK, you need a Crossfire motherboard, which limits you to ATi's chipset, but that would let you stick in an ATi card now and then add a dissimilar ATi one later. Also, apparently, unlike SLI, the benefits of the dual cards don't require specific profiles to be created for each game.

[Nein]

SLI is NVidia only right?

No... ATI version is Crossfire, utilizing DVI which is a "Scalable Link Interface", while nVIDIA is using a built-in "bridge" (MIO) which is a "Scalable Link Interface".

Both of them required PCI-Express which is ofcourse also a "Scalable Link Interface".

[Butcher]

Strictly SLI is nvidia only as it's a trademark of nvidia corporation. ATI's crossfire is essentially the same thing though.

[Nein]

Strictly SLI is nvidia only as it's a trademark of nvidia corporation. ATI's crossfire is essentially the same thing though.

The same thing with half the bandwidth throughput, the "bridge" performance spec is far better than DVI as inter-processor transport medium. MIO is about as good as AMD's HyperTransport (Scalable Link Interface) inter-processor links.

[Butcher]

SLI works without the bridge you know (albiet slowly).

[Nein]

Flexibility and adaptibility are inherent to "Scalable Link Interface". "Scalable Link Interface" hardware tended to be very scalable for any situation - bridging, tunneling, sizing, etc...

[Butcher]

Are you even talking about the same thing I am?

[Nein]

Are you even talking about the same thing I am?

Yes, "Scalable Link Interface" originated with Distributed Processing, inherently is NUMA, non-uniform or uniform access, "Scalable Link Interface" pathways can be many and needed not exactly always be a fixed, single, identical, uniform-access type as in Symmetric Processing.

"Media Acess" is a common term which needed not be defined-media pathway. nVIDIA can still add DVI links as the 3rd inter-processor pathway as extra besides the MIO bridge and PCI-e.

[rajagra]

Remember that there are plans to make SLI work between non-identical cards. If you get an SLI board you could put in a 6600GT, or a 6800Ultra, whatever takes your fancy right now, then later on when prices drop add a 7800GTX.