SLI Technology

    Nvidia is working on a new technology for graphic cards calling it "SLI".

    SLI is the new way to comunicate for 2 graphics card together.

    SLI stands for "Scan Link Interface". It means that 2 cards are better then one graphics card, and it gives more power for your games. But it costs more to have 2 cards instead of one. And if you choose to buy 2 cards you will get a better performance and you will be able to run in higher resolutions. Not so long time ago there was a graphiccards company called 3dfx, they were discovering if there was a new way to put 2 cards together to work. But now half ofthe enginners from 3DFx are working for Nvidia worldwide company. Now you know that next time you want maybye a Pc with higher performance you can buy SLI-craphics card and montain them to your motherboard what needs to be SLI compatiable too. It is not so hard to understand why Nvidia loves SLI, because they can sell 2 times more graphic cards at the same time. And it is good for the processordevelopers - 2 cars needs strong processor power to use from the new technology. The only one who dont like SLI is your money pocket, 2 cards can cost from 500 $ to 1000$ dollars.

    But thats what it does today.

    [Blocked Image: http://www.benchmark.pl/obrazki/6_2004/sli-2-card-b.jpg]

    Thanks /Nexus

    Quote from Nz-Nexus

    Nvidia is working on a new technology for graphic cards calling it "SLI".

    I hate to break it to you, but they are not "working" on it, and it is already out. It has been out for nearly 8 months now (or over a year if you get to test Nvidia stuff).

    Also, SLI technology is not specifically designed for Nvidia hardware. Take a look at the X series of Radeon cards; they are all SLI cards.

    There is no need right now to rush out and buy a new mobo JUST for the SLI technology. Currently, AGP 8x is just as fast (with any graphics card, pretty much) as a SLI 16x card. Reason for this, is that graphic cards have a huge processing bottleneck that is inhibiting most of them to utilize the newer SLI technology. Point being, you do not need to drop everything and get a SLI board before tomorrow.

    As for running in higher resolutions... Not true. You can only run as high as your monitor will let you, and for the most part, most newer AGP cards will run as high, if not higher, than your monitor will support. The main advantage of having two linked SLI cards is to boost your frame rate. This happens by essentially cutting the screen in half (top and bottom) in which one card renders the bottom half, and the other renders the top half.

    As I said before; this is not a Nvidia only endeavor. Radeon cards work just as well on a SLI bus, so ATI likes SLI too (for the money bit).

    Chip makers really don't care, either. All it requires is a faster northbridge, and that is about it. The northbridge can, in some cases, completely bypass your CPU and shunt all video data right out the video ports. Point of this one being, is that your CPU has little to no say on the performance of your SLI bus.

    Now... Have you been reading an issue of Tom's Hardware Guide from last year? Honestly here... You'd think that with the game addicts we all are, that we would've heard about this... oh I dunno... maybe when it came out? Plz. Also get some of your facts straight. Grm.

    Yup, but it was done in an entirely different way. Hell, you could do it with the entire Voodoo line of cards, and some Riva TNT cards.

    Quote from DUFFY

    didnt read any of the posts but im pretty sure its scalable link interface, not scan

    It was called Scan-Line Interface back in 3dfx days, but now Nvidia is calling it Scaleable Link Interface.

    There is nothing innovative with SLI, it was engineered by the brilliant minds behind all 3Dfx technology several years ago, there is nothing innovative in nVidia all together, without the 3Dfx engineers they would have bankrubted.

    Quote from Kosmo

    There is nothing innovative with SLI, it was engineered by the brilliant minds behind all 3Dfx technology several years ago, there is nothing innovative in nVidia all together, without the 3Dfx engineers they would have bankrubted.

    Btw, both cards need to run the same BIOS. So if you run games with sli support like doom3 and cs source, you maybye get x.15 faster fps. With anti aliasing it slows down to x1.3.

    And dont say anything about old voodoo cards, Right now there is only 2 SLI supported cards only 6800 Ultra and GT and 6600 GT supporting SLI, and you need a SLI motherboard, so there is no idea to run SLI on less then 1600x1200 pixels.

    Well old Voodoo cards were way better than the new nVidia cards, other than that, everything is the same.

    But if you are so mezmerized by SLI you should take a look at Gainwards 3D1 that employs the SLI technology on one card, it has two cores running on SLI, but the benefits are prettymuch same as normal SLI setups and the PCI-E is still only 8x not 16x as it should be with one card setup.

    The popularity of SLI is bringing market more and more motherboards with two PCI-E slots for SLI use, espacially since nVidias own nForce4 chipset supports this as a standard.

    Quote from Backslider

    Two graphics cards in one system. Now that's just crazy, whats next 64 bit processing or two CPU cores in one chip.


    --sarcasm

    Rofl.

    You are crazy two cpu in one motherboard!

    Spellbinder.

    --evenmore

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