NVIDIA's GeForce 6 SLI: Demolishing Performance Barriers
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 23, 2004 10:23 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Final Words
From a performance standpoint, SLI is just about as good as it gets. If you have the budget for it, a pair of GeForce 6800GTs will let you run at 1600 x 1200 with 2X or 4X AA enabled in the latest games while still maintaining a very smooth gaming experience – something that no single card is able to do.
The GeForce 6600GT seemed to scale reasonably well, with a pair of 6600GTs outperforming a single 6800 Ultra in Doom 3 and Half Life 2. It doesn’t make too much sense to buy a pair of 6600GTs today however, as you’d be much better off getting a single 6800GT and upgrading to a second one down the road, which brings us to our next point, the upgrade value of SLI.
If NVIDIA is able to get their SLI certification program successful enough and if motherboard manufacturers are able to get SLI boards cheap enough, then the upgrade value of SLI is significant. We’ve already seen that going from a single $200 GeForce 6600GT to a pair of them offers performance greater than that of a single $400 GeForce 6800GT. Take into account that the price of these cards goes down over time and you’re looking at a pretty decent upgrade path for the future, requiring minimal investment today.
The upgrade path for 6800GT owners is even more enticing; if you’ve only got $400 to spend on a card today you can’t beat the 6800GT as a single card solution. Then, as the price of the 6800GT drops, it may become more attractive for you to upgrade to a second card rather than buying a next generation GPU. As long as we’re between DirectX cycles, SLI enables you to have the fastest most robust graphics setup out there without missing out on much.
While companies like ASUS, Gigabyte and MSI are working to get their boards out before the end of the year, it looks like the majority of manufacturers won’t have product on the streets until the first few months of 2005. We’d anticipate that by the middle of 2005, you’ll be able to purchase SLI motherboards for near mainstream Socket-939 prices, which should definitely drive for higher adoption and lower prices on SLI products (not to mention wider availability of NVIDIA certified SLI products).
The power requirements as well as the lack of NVIDIA certified SLI products out on the market today does trouble us a bit, but we’ll have to keep an eye out over the coming weeks to see how things change to better accommodate the introduction of SLI. At the same time, should SLI catch on, it has yet to be seen how NVIDIA and their partners will change pricing/availability strategies of older cards.
ATI will also have their own SLI chipsets and graphics cards in 2005, which should lend further credibility to SLI as a viable upgrade option.
The main thing to keep in mind that SLI is an option for those who want it; and whenever we have an option that offers a 40 – 70% performance increase where it counts, we welcome it with open arms (and wallets).
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kongming - Wednesday, November 24, 2004 - link
What I would like to see is the SLI performance increase of the ASUS V9999 6800GT with only 128MB of memory compared with a stock 6800GT with 256MB. If this card gets a particularly good boost from SLI, That would make it an even better deal.coldpower27 - Tuesday, November 23, 2004 - link
Well there's also the rumored that next generation cards will not be double performance, as it's likely were going to see 6 quad solutions from NV and ATI next year, 8 quad is just too much, for even the 90nm process to handle. THough I would be pleasantly surprised if it's not.Drayvn - Tuesday, November 23, 2004 - link
What im wondering is what happens if its something like the 9800pro then a year later we got the X800XT-PE or UltraIt was twice as fast, and in terms of technology we have SM3 also which we now have in 1 game.
9800Pro's performance was doubled by the PE and Ultra. So what would happen when lets say if SLI came out then.
Why would anyone want to buy another 9800Pro? Since u could get the PE with a few added features which are being used now...?
IT doubles the performance and with the extra features it further expands that performance gap. So is buying 2 9800pros worth it. Especially when they are still really expensive
Of course this is all hypothetical, and i love SLI but what im getting at, is it now time that nVidia and ATi will slow down their product life cycles?
Will they now have no refresh cards anymore, since when they bring out their next gen cards, 6 months down the road there is no need to buy a refresh as that only adds little performance and everyone can just buy another card for the same price and get double?
ceefka - Tuesday, November 23, 2004 - link
PCI-E, SLI, it´s all graphics so far. Can this technology also be used for soundcards? Can we have 24 channels of 192KHz/32bit someday on PCI-e SLI? If so then the whole bunch should be reconfigurable meaning that you can spread capacity equally over all slots or place emphasis where needed. If that's where we're heading, we're in for some exciting computing.R3MF - Tuesday, November 23, 2004 - link
#30 is correct, SLI for the Geforce 6 generation makes a lot of sense if your pockets are deep enough.SLI for Geforce 7 will be a different proposition, the imminent move to 0.9u and DX10 will create a generational leap when Geforce 8 arrives, so running two Geforce 7's won't be so clever.
bob661 - Tuesday, November 23, 2004 - link
I think SLI is worth the money and the present games can use it. But damn is it expensive. I'll still get it though. :-)KAM04m - Tuesday, November 23, 2004 - link
I personally think SLI is not worth it for the money. Plus i dont run the game at 1600x1200 only 1024x768. SLI setup prices will drop in the future and thats when the newer games will really need the extra bandwith! Until then AGP is still my bud for another year.sophus - Tuesday, November 23, 2004 - link
cpu limited...? anyone care to theorize if dualies would help increase performance? or what is the limiting factor (bandwidth)?sophus - Tuesday, November 23, 2004 - link
Filibuster - Tuesday, November 23, 2004 - link
#33 you can find a few XFX 6800GT PCie cards on pricewatch but they want like $550 for them.(I just looked and they are not there anymore though)
There was a reference card on ebay the other day for $400 though...
They are basically impossible to get without paying a rediculous amount for.