Arrrrg .............. I had a big long reply and it got zapped
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Anyway , I'll try again :
deception`` ................... touche` . I agree that I was more discussing trust rather than faith since " faith is the evidence of things not seen the substance of things hoped for " . I cannot really see myself putting faith in any company , if you can do that then it is a matter for you . I cannot put faith in men .
Sentential .....................
1/ I don't mean risky in the sense that it would bork your hardware or anything like that. Neither is it a bad thing of itself but it has 2 drawbacks :
a/ While you or I may like being able to edit our own profiles , it does give us Nvidia's job . If the game isn't yet supported and we bought it and want to play it well then it is a good feature , but it can also be looked at from the opposite direction as something which we would ideally not like to have to do .
b/ The real risk here is that there is a very real chance that many games won't work no matter who profiles them . Several people over at Beyond3d have shown that some of the more common 3d game techniques are incompatible with Nvidia's current way of doing SLI . Meaning that if a game uses such , it really doesn't matter if you or I or Nv ter to write a profile , it just wouldn't work . Therefore buying a SLI-setup in the hope/belief that there will be user made or NV made profiiles for the majority of games or importantly the majority of games that you/I would like to play is quite risky unless NV adds to or changes their methods for SLI drivers .
Where user profiles could really work is where Game A uses engine X and has good SLI support . Then Game B is released months later using engine X as well but Nvidia didn't have time to test or profile it , so you the user try .............and presto , it works . But of course that is the best case scenario .
So I hope you guys understand what I mean by risky , that is that user made profiles may not be a cure for all .
3/ The SLi issue is the fact that SLI-capable titles are quite sparse at present and while there is room for improvement , I don't think that it is a good buy as yet . Mind you nothing is wrong with buying one board and waiting . Secondly I don't think I need to get into the numerous times that ATI dropped the ball with availability , this was especially bad since last year they promised retail availability for their products 1 month after press launch . What we ended up with is a late and super rare XTPE , a cancelled X700XT and it appears that the X850 line may be late as well . Nvidia hasn't been blameless, although ATI has certainly out done them in this regard , the 6800U was very rare as well for quite some time and the 6800 Ultra extreme is as rare as hen's teeth . I wasn't really talking about the PCI-E Nvidia availability .
4/ If I or any of us need to have or have directly experienced a product or situation in order to comment on the documented experience of others , then we could as well close down this site and stop reading reviews . But with that aside, from what I have read Nvidia promised hardware acceleration across the 6800 line at launch , not just filtering . This acceleration is totally broken on most early 6800u and 6800 GT apparently some people in some Beyond3d threads found a few early 6800 series cards which while not functioning with the ideal CPU use did better than most , who were still gettting very high ( relative ) cpu utilisation even with all of the patches and software . If the software has done the job for you , then that's good . Unless things have changed in the last month or so that is not the case for the majority .
5/ I agree that everthing has kinks ,well at least most things . But I reserve the right to decide what kinks/bugs I can live with . For now the kinks in Nvidia's current ( emphasis on current ) SLI soloutions are the type that would keep me away . But admittedly that is my opinion , other people consider it teething problems etc etc , and maybe they are teething problems . But I'd rather wait and see them fixed or at least the most of them ironed out before I spend my $$$ .
7/ Ahhh , I never said that I trust any company in that way .In fact in this thread I already said that I don't , and to be wary of what any company promises . What other companies are guilty of , don't really have any bearing on this particular discussion . For the record I have already posted in another thread that if ATI's attempt at SLI is similar to Nvidia's in support and use of ATI-only motherboards that I will avoid them too . Simple as that . I am pro-good product , that is why I have no problem recommending Nvidia made 6800Ultras and 6800 GTs as I did in this thread already .