nVidia rereleases SLI video ? Voodoo again?

[Dragonprince]

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NjMzLDE=

Looks great everwhere except the wallet

 

[Nightingale]

so if I buy a pci-e card now I can use it with sli later? Anyhow I thing by the time the motherboards are out that have dual pci-e the prices of the current cards will be around the prices of the 9800pros now. This is a great move by Nvidia to sell more cards and it gives the Nvidia cards a little more longevity since taking two old cards with sli technology and puting them together will give a huge perfomance boost. I can't wait to start seeing motherboards (wishing for a duallie board with dual pci-e slots now hehe)

 

[dicecca112]

looks nice, gonna be a big hit on the wallet.

 

[slyfury]

owesome find!
it makes it even harder to decide wich card to buy...x800 or 6800?

 

[hkh]

This is cool if i had alot of money laying around then I would buy this but I dont and I dont see this as somthing that will catch on for a while also they have to be close togther this could give problem for other cooling. I am not going to buy a 600 doller card X 2 it is just not enough of a performace boost.

 

[slyfury]

doom 3 aa/af maxed out at 1600

performance boost?

 

[JigPu]

Alienware's Dual Video + SLI + 4 PCI Express x16 slots to hold all the cards = ^10

JigPu

 

[Nightingale]

Not only the cost of buying an extra card but the cost of the sli adaptor and the cost of a specialized motherboard. Another thing is if I buy a PCI-E card now can I use it with this sli technology later when it comes out probably sometime next year?

 

[Nandro]

The article on toms hardware says that is one of the main advantages.
"Hypothetically, you would shell out $499 for a GeForce 6800 Ultra or spend an extra $100 and get two standard 6800 processors with SLI. Of course, you could just as well buy only the motherboard and one standard 6800, and then buy a second card later after your credit card is no longer maxed out."

Sounds pretty spiffy. I do think ATI will partner up with alienware on this to counter attack. Can only be good for us in the end.

 

[Cowboy X]

Sweet . It was a matter of time before someone did it . I figured it would happen as soon as the vcard market got tight enough that someone would resort to SLI again . ATI I think has no choice but to follow suit .

It means that you can buy a highend card and upgrade it with another like it when it hits midrange prices .............. good for me .

 

[Nightingale]

Yeah thats what I was thinking. Buy one card now and use it and when it starts getting slow slap another one in and boost performance.

 

[HiProfile]

There are quite a few problems with the "buy one now, then later for a bost" idea. Don't get me wrong, its an awsome idea - I'm all for it - its just that its VERY early in the game for "gen-2" SLI's.

The main problem - price & depreciation. By the time you decide to get a second card, chances are for the price of a dual 16x PCIe moboard *AND* the 2nd vid card you could just get the even-next-gen 'x880 pro' or '6900 ultra' versions (tentative titles ). FYI the only dual 16x PCIe moboards are server boards, not quasi-server FX or EE boards.

[Option A: moboard $ + 2nd 'slightly outdated' gpu $]
[Option B: next step in vid card lineup]

I'm willing to bet that 'tomorrow's lineup' of cards will net you ~40% more FPS than today's & possibly more features in some way - all for about the same price for a mobo+old gpu. The main difference will be the fact you can sell your 'yesterday's gpu' on ebay for ~1/4 your 'tomorrow's gpu' purchase price.


If you see it as balls-to-the-wall today and get 2x cards... First off, no game can really stress ONE of these cards enough to warrant a 2nd. If you have close to $700+ for vid cards alone, chances are you're also running an FX/EE and don't even need that much gpu power. Chances are this same person will also have the money to update for the next revision of cards, which totally shoots the sails out from their "I need the power for *future* games" argument for these people.

IMO, the only people this can really benifit are individual users who don't have $1300 for Quadrios atm but need them. And last I heard, MS was working hard to get some distributed PC OS working soon, which would become the better option for this user.

From the Voodoo2 reviews I read long ago, the only normal user that will benifit will be Mac users...although new card models now migrate to Mac much faster than they did in the 90's.


edit: forgot to mention - in the past, the Voodoo 3's had virtually the same performance as dual Voodoo 2's, but for less...at the time the market saw the scaling in GPU power so great that dual card setups weren't viable.

 

[Cowboy X]

Good points but lets look at it now . Imagine if it could be done with ATI's cards for example . Someone who bought a 9800 pro on release could now slap in another for under $200 . Especially if they were to buy a suitable 9800SE and mod it to a 9800 pro for even less $$$ and then run both at identical clocks . That should give some nextgen cards a run for their $$ .

 

[micamica1217]

Good points but lets look at it now . Imagine if it could be done with ATI's cards for example . Someone who bought a 9800 pro on release could now slap in another for under $200 . Especially if they were to buy a suitable 9800SE and mod it to a 9800 pro for even less $$$ and then run both at identical clocks . That should give some nextgen cards a run for their $$ .

yet your still forgetting the high end "RARE" mobo, and ultra $$$ CPU that is needed for this...
it could be great if we could get abit to make us this type of mobo for $150.00 and slap a normal price CPU in it for us to OC with.
(now that's a plan I'd like to see happen)

mica

 

[Nandro]

That and the cards need the connection for that bridge piece which I doubt will show up on any last generation card if I am not mistaken. ATI may well team up with alienware on this although their stuff is usually expensive (not that NV's wouldnt be) But most of the people on these forums like to do our own stuff as opposed to buying an alien.

 

[Lunatic_Freak]

yet your still forgetting the high end "RARE" mobo, and ultra $$$ CPU that is needed for this...
it could be great if we could get abit to make us this type of mobo for $150.00 and slap a normal price CPU in it for us to OC with.
(now that's a plan I'd like to see happen)

mica

Nvidia is saying the Nforce4 chipset will support dual PCI-E 16 slots and all K8 chips, 754,939,940.
I think we will have lots of options when this hits the market.