NVIDIA's GeForce 6 SLI: Demolishing Performance Barriers
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 23, 2004 10:23 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory Performance
We included Wolfenstein: ET in our test suite for SLI for one reason and one reason alone, to look at an older game to show SLI’s impact on a title that ran very well even on a 6600GT.
You can see by the resolution scaling graph that we are completely CPU bound at all resolutions here, much like what we saw from UT2004. Only the 6600GT actually benefits from SLI, bringing it up to 6800GT speeds thanks to a 31% performance improvement.
With the 6800GT and Ultra, even at 1600 x 1200 with AA/AF enabled the performance gains from SLI are nothing major. The 6600GT continues to provide impressive performance gains, bringing it up to the level of a 6800GT thanks to SLI.
The important thing to take away from these numbers is that on today’s high end cards, SLI is very much a technology that is suited for the latest games as well as tomorrow’s titles. But for midrange cards SLI can definitely enable higher resolution and/or AA gaming.
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bob661 - Tuesday, November 23, 2004 - link
#33I found one here.
http://www.sharbor.com/products/EVGN5300004.html
I don't know if they actually have one in stock though.
jshuck3 - Tuesday, November 23, 2004 - link
Where are they getting the 6800GT PCI Express cards? I can't find them anywhere...are they even out yet or are these just review boards?L1FE - Tuesday, November 23, 2004 - link
#28 If the nextgen video cards are also SLI capable, then SLI offers even more performance for a new GPU launch. If you don't want SLI that's your choice, but SLI offers consumers a wider range of choices just because cominations now make it that much more complicated. Whether that's a good or bad thing is yet to be seen, but I like how it makes things exciting between new GPU releases.T8000 - Tuesday, November 23, 2004 - link
Altrough it is nice to see Nvidia take PC gaming quality one step further, these solutions are more expensive than ever before.But where does this money come from, you ask. Well, since CPU's are stuck at around 3 Ghz (or almost equal) for some time now, people look for other upgrades to buy.
And SLI is an easy way to explain that a top-end GPU solution now costs $1000 instead of $500, because it now contains two $500 cards.
But since SLI is much cheaper than pre-overclocked (Falcon/Alienware) solutions, it is currently worth its premium for a lot of users.
It also creates an interesting problem for ATI, to sell technology that is way behind for lowewr prices or to copy the SLI concept, hoping that their users are willing to wait.
miketheidiot - Tuesday, November 23, 2004 - link
#28 the next gen of both nVidia and ATI will be only a tiny jump over the current generation. We won't see another big jump until DX10 has been out for a while. The next jump will be a 9700 to 9800 style jump, if that.http://www.anandtech.com/news/shownews.aspx?i=2340...
VIAN - Tuesday, November 23, 2004 - link
Yeah, where is 8xAA/16xAF. I want that tested. I mean with all that power, who wouldn't want to see the results of the fabulous 8xAA IQ.FICo - Tuesday, November 23, 2004 - link
So does Nvidia now want everyone to buy 2 of their cards? I really hope its not popular. They should just design faster GPUs rather then relying on such a sledgehammer approach. Nvidia seem to bring out new GPUs once a year, and updates 6 months into a products life. So the new "Geforce 7" chip will be out end of spring time next year. Of course the performance of a single card "GeFroce 7 Ultra" will be a big jump as usual, and will most likely out perform todays PCs with dual 6800 Ultras. Nvidia's SLI technology is certainly interesting, shame its such poor value for money. Surely a dual core approach would be cheaper for the public to buy, yet still offering extra performance.Filibuster - Tuesday, November 23, 2004 - link
Dual Voodoo2 cards is what, 200Mpixel/s? :)Jeff7181 - Tuesday, November 23, 2004 - link
Thinking about it more, I think I'd rather just see some 32 pipeline GPU's with 512 MB of RAM and it's very own nuclear reactor to power it :)Souka - Tuesday, November 23, 2004 - link
Anyone want SLI cheap? don't even have to upgrade your moherboard.....For sale.... two 8mb 3dFx Voodoo2 boards wih SLI cable...PCI interface of course..... it rocked in the 90's....why not now?
:)