Half Life 2: x16 vs. x16/x2 vs. x8/x8 (nVidia SLI)


Half-Life 2 - Guru3D Demo 5

Half-Life 2 - Guru3D Demo 5

Half-Life 2 - Guru3D Demo 5

Half-Life 2 - Guru3D Demo 5

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.

Performance: x16 vs. x16/x2 vs. x8/x8 (SLI) Doom3: x16 vs. x16/x2 vs. x8/x8 (nVidia SLI)
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  • Fluff - Tuesday, January 18, 2005 - link

    Pencil trick to make a Quadro 4000 i would like to see!!!
  • cosmotic - Tuesday, January 18, 2005 - link

    (oh wait)
  • cosmotic - Tuesday, January 18, 2005 - link

    Nice comment Dranzerk!
  • Fluff - Tuesday, January 18, 2005 - link

    Oh come on guys. This sort of thing is nice to know. But would you seriously splash out on 2 graphics cards and scrimp on the motherboard?

  • Dranzerk - Tuesday, January 18, 2005 - link

    Our Take forgot to add...

    Getting SLI at anytime counts are you being a moron for spending so much money regardless of a mod that saves you a few bucks. SLI = Worst nvidia ploy ever.

    I mean come on nvidia, think up something original than what everyone else has did.

  • Filibuster - Tuesday, January 18, 2005 - link

    This reminds me of the Promise Ultra100 to Fasttrak100 mod.

    "Nvidia.... that greedy money hogging .... trying to milk us customers for all our worth."
    Lol...they _are_ a semiconductor company, what did you expext? Last I noticed none of these guys are not for profit agencies...the fun is in outsmarting them (unlock and overclock, unlocking pipelines, turning on sli).
  • Wesley Fink - Tuesday, January 18, 2005 - link

    ALL -
    We apologize for the posting confusion with this article. It was scheduled to go live this morning, but was accidentally auto-posted around midnight by our document engine. We immediately pulled it down and posted this morning as originally planned. That is why some of the comments have odd times for a 7:30AM post.

    We think you will find the information worth waiting for.
  • PseudoKnight - Tuesday, January 18, 2005 - link

    Don't get me wrong. I think this was great investigative work. I just hope it proves fruitful at the retail level.
  • Jii - Tuesday, January 18, 2005 - link

    I knew something like this had to be lurking underneath and here we were again.

    It's great to see that there are people who have the time and imagination to start even looking this opportunity and bring this to public.

    The only drawback is that now Nvidia knows that we know the thing, that they didn't want us to know, that we now know (you know) ;-).

    But seriously: As the modding possibility came to public view, my best guess is that Nvidia will, instead of tweaking their drivers, start modifying the chip structure in a way, that such modifications will become harder to accomplish, completely impossible or will make no difference.
  • Aquila76 - Tuesday, January 18, 2005 - link

    >>As you will see in our upcoming reviews, it is also one of the most enthusiast-friendly boards to land on the market since the DFI Socket 754 motherboard.<<

    BRING ON THE REVIEWS!!!
    Do you have an ETA for the nForce4 roundup? I have a $3K tax return coming and am building an Uber-AMD64 SLI dual-Ultra rig and want to know which is the best SLI for the buck.

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