Quad SLI Under the Microscope
Posted by: Newsfactory on: 10/13/2006 04:18 PM [ Print | 1 comment(s) ] · 1228 views
Over the past few years, we've seen an incredible number of extreme hardware solutions marketed to PC gamers: graphics cards that cost over five hundred bucks, thousand-dollar "Extreme Edition" CPUs, motherboards with more ports than Dubai, custom physics processors, and now even a "killer" NIC. Without a doubt, though, the most extreme of all of these offerings has to be Nvidia's vaunted Quad SLI. The concept of running four GPUs together for insane gaming goodness is more extreme than snowboarding down some wicked moguls into a vat of Mountain Dew at the X Games.
But does Quad SLI live up to its practically built-in hype? Can running four GPUs in tandem catapult you into a zone of pure extremeness, where new frames flow like water, object edges are feathery smooth, and textures are so perfectly mapped to surfaces that you're utterly convinced they're real?
I dunno. I'm just making this stuff up as I go along. But we have tested Quad SLI in order to see what it's like to play games on a quad-GPU system. We've also popped open the metaphorical hood on Quad SLI to see how it works. Along the way, we found a few unexpected things, as well.
The TechReport
But does Quad SLI live up to its practically built-in hype? Can running four GPUs in tandem catapult you into a zone of pure extremeness, where new frames flow like water, object edges are feathery smooth, and textures are so perfectly mapped to surfaces that you're utterly convinced they're real?
I dunno. I'm just making this stuff up as I go along. But we have tested Quad SLI in order to see what it's like to play games on a quad-GPU system. We've also popped open the metaphorical hood on Quad SLI to see how it works. Along the way, we found a few unexpected things, as well.
The TechReport
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Comment
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Domingo Unregistered |
#65345 Posted on: 10/13/2006 07:03 PM
Right now Quad SLI is expensive and unneccessary for 99.9% of gamers. Unless you're gaming at some crazy resolution (and playing something like FEAR, Oblivion, or COH) you're just not going to get the proper benefits for it. In fact, short of 1600X1200 you might not see ANY. If you really have a lot of money to spend, you're better off waiting 4 months and getting 2 G80's or 2 of whatever ATI's DX10 cards will be. |
