Hardware First Look: Nvidia 3-way SLI on nForce 680i

Because we can!

I ROFLed at work when I saw the title....

Don't ever quote it without proper context!

 

they look cool but I don't think I'll be getting tri-sli anytime soon

 

Be nice to have... Would finally give me the ability to view games the way they're meant to be on a 30"...

 

Tim S, is there any chance you could upload the timedemo you used to test Crysis?

I'd very much like to run my own tests to compare

thank you

 

And finally, we see our graphics subsystem take up more physical space that the motherboard in terms of PCB space and heatsinks! We have a winner! This looks so awesome and I only wish I had the money to procure it

 

a little extra? i would say that support for 45nm cpus is a bloody big thing.

looks like im not the only person thinking about sound cards lol

is there any reason why we dont have multi core gpus

 

You could almost think of current GPUs as being multi-cored if you count each shader unit as a core, but the main reason we don't have true multi-core GPUs right now would most certainly have to be yields. As massive as these chips are, getting two on the same piece of silicon functioning perfectly would certainly be a chore.

Another good reason would be thermals.

 

When I built my old rig, about a year and a half ago, I was 'admittedly going to get another card down the road'. But the industry changed, my setup was completely out dated and getting another card was virtually impossible (and would be outdone with a card that would cost the same as an addition card for a SLI setup I would've used)

I think SLI is a bit overrated really. People constantly want to have the best. Its near madness. I built my 'new rig' just this past sept. Stepped up to a 8800gtx (thanks evga) and now the 9xxx series cards will be launching in Feb. New gfx, new cpu, new ram.... new computer altogether! ddr2? NA! Now its ddr3! All faster and what not! I'll prolly never SLI, it just seems to be a gimmick now to sell additional gpu's that will be useless in less then a year.

I love PC gaming, but dang... there is some economical sense to consoles....

 

For every 10 games I buy on PC I can buy a 8800GT, console games are way too expensive! That is here in South Africa though don't know how the prises are in other countries.

 

We'll look back on this in a few years time and laugh... I hope!

 

As much as I would love to share my timedemo with you, I don't distribute my timedemos because they can get into the wrong hands - i.e. ATI/Nvidia's driver optimisation team. The result would be potentially inflated performance in the exact portion (and camera position) of the game that I am testing, which doesn't tell you guys anything. I will tell you where it was recorded though... the Harbor level.

 

i sure hope this is the case, since 3 graphics cards what can power a room's radiators is just ridiculous.

remember when SLi the 7950Gx2 and yet it still gets beaten by 8800GTX?

 

Its still only 2560*1600

1680*1050 with 2x AA enabled is theoretically drawing its edges bases on an image 3360*2100 for instance, 6720*4200 with 4x AA enabled etc. So while AA may not be as good as actually having that resolution, I'm pretty sure you'd still notice the difference

Also from my understanding at least, when doing AA the card doesn't render a lot of the scene, so it might be the case that you could run a lower res with AA and get notable improvement in jaggies, while not performing worse (outside of the lower res image would of course look worse if you stretched it across a much larger screen..)

Now as to SLI itself, I still have fond memories of the Voodoo days, when spending another £20 for a second, second-hand voodoo2 got you gaming performance as good as people that went out to shops and got there computers upgraded with a voodoo3 for a £100+, but so far the modern nvidia SLI hasn't presented many oportunities since the cards have so far been far outstripped (and not had time to drop in value enough either) because of the rapid development cycle. (And the change to DX10 hasn't helped too much either)

 

My pants got tighter.



I can has one Soon???

 

Good to see other south african members on bit-tech

 

Sheeesh, what next? I guess we'll see the release of the 2000W PSU to help run this beast of a setup, I thought the current upgrade merry-go-round was bad enough but now.....

 

I just don't want to see pictures of a 4 way crossfire or 3way SLI

 

We're gonna need a direct feed to the main line.

 

I love it and this is what will come in the Extreme Lian Li II

 

Nobody mentioned the heat and noise that such a setup will cause :?