Morphing nForce4 Ultra into nForce4 SLI
by Wesley Fink on January 18, 2005 7:30 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Half Life 2: x16 vs. x16/x2 vs. x8/x8 (nVidia SLI)
As seen in past SLI reviews, performance with SLI improves more as resolution and "eye-candy" increases. The range of performance improvement was from a small 6% at 1280 with no AA or AF to a significant 61.0% in 1600x1200 with 4xAA and 8xAF. Performance improvements are even greater when going from a 6600 GT, 6800, or 6800GT to a dual card SLI mode. So consider this to be the smallest performance increase that you will see since we are using the top-line video cards.
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Dmitheon - Tuesday, January 18, 2005 - link
Kudos to Wesley and the rest of Anandtech for finding this neat little hack. I wish nVidia simply didn't have the Ultra line of boards, and let the economy of scale bring the SLI board down. I'd love to see the amount of money that went into taking SLI down a notch so they could market a less expensive chipset that costs nearly the same to produce. Personally, I'll end up buying an SLI board as more hit the market and competition brings the price down from it's current $190s (just checked pricewatch.com). Why spend extra? The piece of mind that comes from knowing that nVidia is not trying to take a feature I want, away from me. To paraphrase a hookey old public service announcement: "SLi, it's not a right, it's a privledge" ;)bersl2 - Tuesday, January 18, 2005 - link
I'd rather that more nforce4 boards actually *get* to retail in the first place. Some of us don't want an SLI board (yet)...Jahara - Tuesday, January 18, 2005 - link
I'm confused. Doesn't the SLI crossover chip only come with SLI enabled motherboards?Crassus - Tuesday, January 18, 2005 - link
Does that mean that you could use any Ultra-mainboard with only one PCIe slot and run the Gigabyte 2-chip-6600GT in there with that mod?Neo_Geo - Tuesday, January 18, 2005 - link
Yep, reminds me of the GeForce/Quadro hacking possibilities.Hopefully, nvidia will just eventually merge the Ultra and SLI into one product.
In the case of the GeForce/Quadro, they came out with some updated drivers to discourage hacking. Then, when that was figured out, they went a little deeper and physically changed the cores. Now, a software hack is not totally possible on GeForce (I say not totally, because the hack does partially work and gives a geforce most quadro features, but not all).
Wesley Fink - Tuesday, January 18, 2005 - link
#16 -The DFI LANParty UT (Ultra chipset) will sell for about $140 and it can be modded to SLI. The full DFI SLI-DR will sell for about $200. There are Ultra chipset boards that sell for even less than $140, but we don't know yet if they can work as modded SLI yet - and most don't have dual video slots. There are also some very high end SLI baords that sell in the $250 to $300 range.
PetesEscapade - Tuesday, January 18, 2005 - link
Helps to put something in.....I love it. Regardless of nVIDIA's motives, or lack thereof, it is great to see people digging, tweaking, and passing the info along to the rest of us to do with what we will.
NEVER STOP ASKING QUESTIONS!!!
NEVER STOP SEARCHING FOR ANSWERS!!!
Why did man climb Mount Everest? Because it's there. Why try to turn a nForce4 Ultra into a nForce4 SLI? Because it's there!
PetesEscapade - Tuesday, January 18, 2005 - link
bupkus - Tuesday, January 18, 2005 - link
Of course ATI is rushing SLI solution video cards for the nForce4 SLI and now Ultra chipsets. My guess would be their drivers will attempt to exploit the Ultra hack, unless legal advises not. nVidia understanding this and seeing their dilemma of more chipsets vs. more video cards will choose both and rush an nForce4 Ultra version 1.1. If not, ATI's SLIs will force nVidia to allow the hack in their drivers. Could an ATI chipset with a cheaper ATI SLI design open the door for ATI's chipsets?Hehe, lets wait and see.
skunkbuster - Tuesday, January 18, 2005 - link
i wouldn't call $229 cheap. still pretty expensive to me