NVIDIA's GeForce 6 SLI: Demolishing Performance Barriers
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 23, 2004 10:23 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Half Life 2: AT_coast_05
In our at_coast_05 benchmark we see a fairly similar situation, with all of the GPUs being CPU bound at resolutions below 1600 x 1200. At 1600 x 1200 the 6600GT begins to drop off, but toss on a second card and it delivers performance slightly faster than that of a single 6800 Ultra.
With AA/AF enabled, the 6600GT actually does a lot better in our second demo, using SLI it manages to offer performance equal to that of a single 6800GT. The 6800GT and Ultra don’t need SLI too badly, even with AA/AF enabled, in this demo, only at 1600 x 1200 with AA/AF enabled does the 6800GT see a real performance gain from SLI.
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JClimbs - Tuesday, November 23, 2004 - link
A few things glossed over in the 'upgrade path' argument:costly up-front mobo purchase. These boards will go down in price, but unless they're a total flop they won't drop nearly as much as a non-SLI board's price slope.
power supply. Lets face it, when you get around to running two cards, you will need to purchase a more robust PS than those sold with most cases. If you've already spent the cash on a high-quality PS, fine; but upgrade paths are generally not pointed at folks who spend big bucks on a PS.
Fans. Two GPUs under the hood will almost certainly want more cooling. Admittedly, they're cheap. Good thing...
Electric Bill. The power draw of today's Graphics Cards is already breathtaking. With two of 'em chugging away under the hood, that drain looks absolutely scary.
Ecmaster76 - Tuesday, November 23, 2004 - link
Anyone want to bet that the two GPU's are using a hypertransport or derived interconnect. The bandwidth quoted is in the same neighborhood as an Athlon's, but probably a little faster since the trace lengths are short and straight.ChronoReverse - Tuesday, November 23, 2004 - link
Pretty nice speed bumps, but the 6600GT sli is disappointing in how it seems to always lag behind even the 6800GT with high-resolutions and AA+AF enabled.ariafrost - Tuesday, November 23, 2004 - link
SLI has a lot of potential, that's for sure... :D