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

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2007/12/13/nvidia_3-way_sli_on_nforce_680i_preview/1

Nvidia is announcing availability of a driver that enables 3-way SLI on its nForce 680i SLI motherboards. This isn't something for everyone and Nvidia doesn't hide away from this fact, but are the gremlins of Quad-SLI about to be washed down the drain? Let's take a look...



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Those cards must me absalutly boiling with so little air-space between them...

SOrry, but I still think 2 cards is over the top.

 

If they ever release a 8800 gt with two connectors.
I'm getting this.
Seriously. When i get back from my trip to the lovely army, if I see that this is still kicking major ass, I'm getting three of 8800 gt equivalents, and getting myself triple f*cking sli.
YES!

 

yep. if not only the GTX and Ultra have this capabilities, the number of people that would have this will definitely increase. one can easily buy the board, get 1 card... then when he has the extra cash, he'd get another one. voila. SLI. fast forward a year or two... rather than overhauling a whole upgrade, u just get a 3rd card. thats neat.

 

So you need 3x8800 ultras to stop cryisis crapping all over your computer

 

haha, yes, it's true

I can run some tests if you want... Nvidia's TDP rating (which is a maximum) for an 8800 Ultra is around 175-180W afaik.

 

tbh, within a year, there'll be a card on sale for about a third of the price of those three that is just as powerful, if not more so.

 

Of course, and you could say the same about SLI/CrossFire too.

 

Hopefully the newer G92 versions will be able to triple sli and they will have lower power requirements than the old models due to smaller manufacturing scale.

 

Thats pretty impressive having 3 cards, how novel, kinda works with AMD's new tri-core cpu, lmao.
Watercooling would be suitible to keep 3 Ultras cool i think, or phase cooling, or a fridge freezer (freezer for the pc)
Do you think we could see a 8950GX2 for quad gpu goodness?

Sam

 

Ooh, tri-sex cards! Kinky

 

just have to wiat to see how 780i holds up with a 9450 now!!

 

Shame that there's officially no G92 support for this atm

 

Okay, great in concept here, but that's just insane. Maybe I'm tainted from a rather less-than-fantastic SLI experience back some time ago (they still don't let you use multiple displays when SLI is enabled, right?), but spending that much on games now still seems insane.

I suppose if you've got the cash to burn... but yeah - that's crazy.

 

I was sure the early reports were indicating that this would only be possible on the 780i.

This is interesting since a simple driver will enable it, that begs the question then "why bother with the 780i" since it really brings little extra to the table, and at what cost?

Nice article for something which has potential, still lacking some optimization since the performance should still be much better. It's early but I cant see this getting much better with time, why would Nvidia pour extra resources into optimizing something that fewer than 1% of the market can afford? They wont and will release a single card in 6 months that can outperform this :=)

 

I'm anxious to see some in-depth IQ assessment. NVIDIA manages to achieve almost perfect scaling at times and I'm just a bit skeptical of that.

 

i would love to have this setup but after a year or so they still would be 'old' and people like us always want to have the latest so theres really no point in spending so much money for this as long as you dont have a lot of $$ to waste

 

Atleast it looks so ballsy it's easily worth paying 2000 € or so (not enough maybe?) for the mobo + cards + CPU.

 

When I saw the title of the article I was jumping for joy,as I allready have a striker exteme and really wanted to go with 3 gpus,but then reading further I couldn't help but get depressed, how can Nvidia not allow the 8800gt to go 3-way,its a budget card that just about everybody can afford in a 3 card setup,why shoot them selfs in the foot and decrease there target market by allmost 90%, ATI/AMD is probably laugh thing at this piont,as they just released there 4 card solution and 4x 3870s will probably work out to 1/2 as expensive as 3x 8800 ultras ,not that I would use a 4 card amd/ati setup though...

Allso if I'm not mistaken wasn't the 3rd pci-e slot meant for a 3rd smaller nvidia graphics card to render physics ?

 

it really is crazy, just better to wait for nextgen cards