Gigabyte Dual GPU: nForce4, Intel, and the 3D1 Single Card SLI Tested
by Derek Wilson on January 6, 2005 4:12 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Far Cry v1.3 Performance
With Far Cry v1.3, we basically see the same thing that we had seen under Doom 3 with no AA and AF. Performance is just about equal to normal SLI with stock 6600 GT cards except for a small percentage gain that is likely due to the memory boost of the Gigabyte solution. Again, the Intel solution starts off slow, putting in numbers that just barely best the single 6600 GT.
This time around, the 3D1, 2 x 6600 GT, and 6600 GT on the AMD system are all stuck at about the same performance point. However, the Intel SLI system makes a surprise showing and posts numbers which show that the second GPU doesn't actually need to remain useless. It just goes to show that there is some potential lying dormant in this hardware, which NVIDIA needs to unleash by flipping the switch in their drivers to allow multi-GPU on non-SLI motherboards.
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sprockkets - Friday, January 7, 2005 - link
Thanks for the clarification. But also some were using the Server Intel chipset cause it had 2 16x slots, instead of the desktop chipset to use SLI. Like the article said though, the latest drivers only like the nvidia sli chipet.ChineseDemocracyGNR - Friday, January 7, 2005 - link
#29,The 6800GT PCI-E is probably going to use a different chip (native PCI-E) than the broken AGP version.
One big problem with nVidia's SLI that I don't see enough people talking about is this:
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=99&type=e...
Jeff7181 - Friday, January 7, 2005 - link
Why is everyone thinking dual core CPU's and dual GPU video cards is so far fetched? Give it 6-12 months and you'll see it.RocketChild - Friday, January 7, 2005 - link
I seem to recall ATi was frantically working on a solution like this to bypass Nvidia's SLI solution and I am not reading anything about their progress. From the position the article points to BIOS hurdles, does it look like we are going to have to wait for ATi to release their first chipset to support a multi-GPU ATi card? Anyone here have any information or speculations?LoneWolf15 - Friday, January 7, 2005 - link
25, the reason you'd want to buy two 6600GT's instead of one 6800GT is that PureVideo functions work completely on the 6600GT, whereas they are partially broken on the 6800GT. If this solution didn't work in only Gigabyte boards, I'd certainly consider it myself.skiboysteve - Friday, January 7, 2005 - link
Im confused as to why anyone would buy this card at all. Your paying the same price as a 6800GT and getting the same performance with all the issues that go with Gigabyte SLI. thats retarded.ceefka - Friday, January 7, 2005 - link
Are there any cards available for the remaining PCI-E slots?Ivo - Friday, January 7, 2005 - link
Obviously, the future belongs to the matrix CPU/GPU (IGP?) solutions with optimized performance/power consumption ratios. But there is still a relatively long way (2 years?) to go. The recent NVIDIA's NF4-SLI game is more marketing, then technical in nature. They are simply checking the market, concurrence, and … enthusiastic IT society :-) The response is moderate, as the challenge is. But the excitements are predetermined.Happy New Year 2005!
PrinceGaz - Friday, January 7, 2005 - link
I don't understand why anyone would want to buy a dual-core 6600GT rather than a similarly priced 6800GT.DerekWilson - Friday, January 7, 2005 - link
I appologize for the omission of pictures from the article on publication.We have updated the article with images of the 3D1 and the K8NXP-SLI for your viewing pleasure.
Thanks,
Derek Wilson