Nvidia Corporation not only plans to refresh its lineup of performance graphics accelerators this year, but also intends to introduce its 3-way SLI multi-GPU technology, which is apparently Nvidia’s new “ultimate gaming platform”. Initially Nvidia plans to enable triple SLI support for the top-of-the-range GeForce 8800 GTX and Ultra graphics cards, but eventually it may support 3-way configurations of other GPUs as well. Systems with three graphics cores will be powered by Nvidia nForce 680i as well as nForce 780i platforms with the former supporting PCI Express 1.1/1.0a, whereas the latter featuring PCI Express 2.0 along with a special “BR04” switch for more efficient multi-GPU operation.
The exact feature set of 3-way SLI platforms as well as performance boosts over single- or dual-GPU configurations will mostly depend on driver support. Back in 2006, when Nvidia unveiled its 4-way SLI technology, actual systems featuring four GPUs could not offer leading performance in all games due to poor drivers. Currently quad SLI technology is not supported for Windows Vista and customers who paid over $1000 for graphics cards alone have to take advantage of only two GPUs instead of four.
News source: Xbit Laboratories
The exact feature set of 3-way SLI platforms as well as performance boosts over single- or dual-GPU configurations will mostly depend on driver support. Back in 2006, when Nvidia unveiled its 4-way SLI technology, actual systems featuring four GPUs could not offer leading performance in all games due to poor drivers. Currently quad SLI technology is not supported for Windows Vista and customers who paid over $1000 for graphics cards alone have to take advantage of only two GPUs instead of four.
News source: Xbit Laboratories
.... But that's an ultimate farce?
Make that 2 years time
And then imagine how many weeks most of us would have to go without food to buy it
I guess if I went out and bought that tommorow, it would be a low-end PC within 5 years.
The GeForce FX was just set to replace the GeForce 4, 80 GB drives were normal, and 512 MB on board memory.
5 years later, we're 3 revisions further in NVIDIA's series, new drives are often at least 4x the size, and we commonly have 4x as much RAM.
Extrapolating that into the future would mean 8 GB RAM computers in 2012, several generations ahead in graphics, nearly 2 TB drives, and something like at least quad core CPU's being the mainstream, eight core for the high end.
I don't think he's that optimistic to be honest.
.. and the price cuts that follow.
Last edited by toadeater on 01 Oct 2007 - 07:03
Examples include:
WOW with all the tool bars dedicated to one screen and game play to the other
C&C or the like with defensive base on one screen and offensive attacks on the other
etc and so on.
So does DX 9. Just not in SLI (and no, DX10 SLI does not support more than one monitor either.)
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