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Several weeks after the release of the GeForce 6 series, NVIDIA announced the rebirth of SLI. For the uninitiated, the moniker stands for Scalable Link Interface (and not Scan Line Interleaving from the ol' 3dfx days). The concept of SLI is pretty simple - instead of using a single card, you use two cards to render one screen by dividing the screen into two parts. If that's not possible, the two cards can take turns rendering the screen, ie. the first card renders all odd frames and the second card renders even frames. An intriguing idea and early test does show some promise. However, as most reviewers found out (later), SLI was anything but simple.
Now, more than a year after it's introduction, SLI has garnered more and more attention, mostly from gamers who want to play graphics rich games such as F.E.A.R, Quake 4 and Call of Duty at the highest settings. Of course, the engineers and developers at NVIDIA haven't been sitting idle during that time. With every driver version, NVIDIA strive to make SLI easier and more compatible with games. With the promise of faster performance (and better visuals), SLI was fast becoming the choice of many games, it certainly was the choice for many Futuremark's 3DMark ORB users. Even NVIDIA's archrivals, ATI who scoffed SLI at it's launch, have followed NVIDIA's footsteps with Crossfire.
The arrival of Crossfire can be considered a boon for SLI users. Newer Forceware drivers allows you to mix cards from different manufacturers or even different series of cards, ie. a GeForce 7800GTX from ASUS and a GeForce 7800GTX from Gigabyte or any GeForce 7800GTX and a 7800GT. NVIDIA have even certified Intel's latest chipset - the 955 series - as SLI capable chipset. No such luck for AMD users, more likely because AMD does not make chipsets for their processors..
So, after a year, is SLI ready for more 'maintream' use? Granted, installation and use are easier than before, even requiring less hassle than ATI's Crossfire. What interest us more is whether or not SLI is a viable option, both from a performance and quality standpoint for gamers. Let us elaborate.
Several weeks after the release of the GeForce 6 series, NVIDIA announced the rebirth of SLI. For the uninitiated, the moniker stands for Scalable Link Interface (and not Scan Line Interleaving from the ol' 3dfx days). The concept of SLI is pretty simple - instead of using a single card, you use two cards to render one screen by dividing the screen into two parts. If that's not possible, the two cards can take turns rendering the screen, ie. the first card renders all odd frames and the second card renders even frames. An intriguing idea and early test does show some promise. However, as most reviewers found out (later), SLI was anything but simple.
Now, more than a year after it's introduction, SLI has garnered more and more attention, mostly from gamers who want to play graphics rich games such as F.E.A.R, Quake 4 and Call of Duty at the highest settings. Of course, the engineers and developers at NVIDIA haven't been sitting idle during that time. With every driver version, NVIDIA strive to make SLI easier and more compatible with games. With the promise of faster performance (and better visuals), SLI was fast becoming the choice of many games, it certainly was the choice for many Futuremark's 3DMark ORB users. Even NVIDIA's archrivals, ATI who scoffed SLI at it's launch, have followed NVIDIA's footsteps with Crossfire.
The arrival of Crossfire can be considered a boon for SLI users. Newer Forceware drivers allows you to mix cards from different manufacturers or even different series of cards, ie. a GeForce 7800GTX from ASUS and a GeForce 7800GTX from Gigabyte or any GeForce 7800GTX and a 7800GT. NVIDIA have even certified Intel's latest chipset - the 955 series - as SLI capable chipset. No such luck for AMD users, more likely because AMD does not make chipsets for their processors..
So, after a year, is SLI ready for more 'maintream' use? Granted, installation and use are easier than before, even requiring less hassle than ATI's Crossfire. What interest us more is whether or not SLI is a viable option, both from a performance and quality standpoint for gamers. Let us elaborate.
