Thursday, December 13th 2007

3-Way NVIDIA SLI Takes Extreme Gaming To A Whole New Level

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malware
 Discuss (86 Comments)
Extreme gaming just got a whole lot better. NVIDIA Corporation has extended its SLI technology, which enables the use of multiple graphics processing units (GPUs) on a single computer, allowing up to three GeForce graphics cards to be used in a single machine. Now hot, new, graphics-intensive titles, such as Call of Duty 4, Company of Heroes Opposing Fronts, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, and Unreal Tournament 3, can be played at the highest resolution possible, with all the graphics settings cranked to the max, and antialiasing applied for the first time.

NVIDIA's new 3-way SLI delivers up to a 2.8x performance increase over a single GPU system, giving high-end gamers 60 frames per second at resolutions as high as 2560x1600 and with 8x antialiasing. 3-way SLI technology means you no longer have to dial back the image quality settings on the newest PC games. For example, gamers with 3-way SLI can play Crysis at high resolutions such as 1920x1200 with all the advanced DirectX 10 effects such as motion blur, ambient occlusion, and soft shadows turned on.

"The new crop of PC games offers stunning visuals. And for truly immersive game play with all the eye candy you need to play on a PC with a lot of graphics horse power," said Ujesh Desai, general manager of GeForce desktop GPUs at NVIDIA. "3-way SLI produces stunning visuals, pristine image quality, and a truly awesome gaming experience."

"Alienware delivers the most advanced technology with the highest performing metrics on our award-winning systems," says Marc Diana, product marketing manager for Alienware. "We are very excited to offer 3-way NVIDIA SLI as a way for our customers to fully experience the rich, life-like environments of today's next-generation games at their top settings."

The heart of a 3-way SLI system is an NVIDIA nForce 680 SLI MCP motherboard and three GeForce 8800 GTX or GeForce 8800 Ultra graphics cards. With 3-way SLI, gamers can harness the power of 384 stream processors, a 110+ gigatexel per second texture fill rate, and over two gigabytes of graphics memory for no-compromise gaming performance.

3-way SLI gives gamers the flexibility to scale their graphics processing power with one, two, or three GeForce GPUs, depending on their desired price and system configuration. 3-way SLI systems are available from leading gaming PC system builders and the components needed to build your own 3-way SLI system are available from leading retailers. For a list of system builders or to see a complete list of NVIDIA 3-way SLI certified components, please visit www.slizone.com. For further information on NVIDIA SLI technology, nForce MCPs or the GeForce 8 Series GPUs, please visit www.nvidia.com.
Source: NVIDIA

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86 Comments on 3-Way NVIDIA SLI Takes Extreme Gaming To A Whole New Level

#26
Sent1nel
Easy Rhinowith consoles the game developers actually work on improving game coding rather than just rely on the consumer to shell out 300 bucks for a new gpu every 1.5 years.
Yea you got that one right. However even with more optimised code for consoles, the PC with its updated hardware will be a lot less limited as to what can be done in the game giving coders the ability to explore further unique graphical effects and game concepts.

The PC is great for gaming on but due to heavy over bearing operating systems and a needless over protective system kernal (which is designed to protect the hardware from poor codeing or code that is designed to access older hardware) games on the PC will never run as well as they do on a console simply becuase most PC setups are different.
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#27
Easy Rhino
Linux Advocate
Sent1nelYea you got that one right. However even with more optimised code for consoles, the PC with its updated hardware will be a lot less limited as to what can be done in the game giving coders the ability to explore further unique graphical effects and game concepts.

The PC is great for gaming on but due to heavy over bearing operating systems and a needless over protective system kernal (which is designed to protect the hardware from poor codeing or code that is designed to access older hardware) games on the PC will never run as well as they do on a console simply becuase most PC setups are different.
exactly! which is why i stopped gaming on the PC. that, and im tired of upgrading every 6 months.
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#28
DarkMatter
Easy Rhinoi dont know who told you that but the 8800gt on a quad core system will not come close to ps3 graphics and performance. id also like to add that you will be replacing the 8800 gt in a year when you realize all the games in late 2008 will cripple it and you will be playing it at barely 30 fps at 1024x768 and maybe 2x AA. with consoles the game developers actually work on improving game coding rather than just rely on the consumer to shell out 300 bucks for a new gpu every 1.5 years.
I don't need anyone to tell me how powerful consoles are. I know a lot better than you it seems. I just need to look at their specs to know (because me and many here know something about hardware, something that is clear you don't) that the PS3 has a 7900M GTX as GPU with integrated northbridge in it and XB360's Xenos is nothing else than something similar to R600 with 48 SPs instead of 64 and running at 500Mhz instead of 743Mhz. A Core2 Duo 6400 is clearly more powerful than XB360 CPU (Xenon or it was the other way round? Can't remember who's who) and don't make me start to talk about Cell.
The bottom line is: A quad core with 8800GT is like 2-3 times more powerfull than consoles.

And what I will do on 2008 only the time will tell. Maybe upgrade, maybe not and play on lower (but still better than consoles) settings, maybe I don't care anymore about games (j/k). But I will have the chance to decide and 300 bucks left (500-200), instead being condemned to play on a crappy console that is miles away from what PCs can offer.
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#29
DarkMatter
DarkMatterI don't need anyone to tell me how powerful consoles are. I know a lot better than you it seems. I just need to look at their specs to know (because me and many here know something about hardware, something that is clear you don't) that the PS3 has a 7900M GTX as GPU with integrated northbridge in it and XB360's Xenos is nothing else than something similar to R600 with 48 SPs instead of 64 and running at 500Mhz instead of 743Mhz. A Core2 Duo 6400 is clearly more powerful than XB360 CPU (Xenon or it was the other way round? Can't remember who's who) and don't make me start to talk about Cell.
The bottom line is: A quad core with 8800GT is like 2-3 times more powerfull than consoles.

And what I will do on 2008 only the time will tell. Maybe upgrade, maybe not and play on lower (but still better than consoles) settings, maybe I don't care anymore about games (j/k). But I will have the chance to decide and 300 bucks left (500-200), instead being condemned to play on a crappy console that is miles away from what PCs can offer.
EDIT: I forgot about your last sentence. You don't need to upgrade every 1.5 years and by no means you need to spend 300 bucks. And as I said if you want PS3 level graphics you don't need nothing more than a HD3850. That card will ensure better graphics than "next gen" consoles, now and in 2011.

EDIT2: Ups! I clicked on quote instead of edit. Sorry
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#30
InitialG
jydieI do not own a PS3 or XBOX 360, but I doubt they run games at a resolution above 1024 x 768 (1280 x 720 for widescreen).
both actually run 1080p at max, which is 1920x1080

they don't need near as much power since games are optimized for exactly the same hardware
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#31
DarkMatter
InitialGboth actually run 1080p at max, which is 1920x1080

they don't need near as much power since games are optimized for exactly the same hardware
Most games run at 720p. And most of the ones that run at 1080p are rendered at much lower resolutions and then upconverted to 1080p.

The second sentence was true back when consoles didn't use PC hardware and sofware to run games. Today most games on PC are as optimized as console ones, at least the good ones.
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#33
Easy Rhino
Linux Advocate
DarkMatterI don't need anyone to tell me how powerful consoles are. I know a lot better than you it seems. I just need to look at their specs to know (because me and many here know something about hardware, something that is clear you don't) that the PS3 has a 7900M GTX as GPU with integrated northbridge in it and XB360's Xenos is nothing else than something similar to R600 with 48 SPs instead of 64 and running at 500Mhz instead of 743Mhz. A Core2 Duo 6400 is clearly more powerful than XB360 CPU (Xenon or it was the other way round? Can't remember who's who) and don't make me start to talk about Cell.
The bottom line is: A quad core with 8800GT is like 2-3 times more powerfull than consoles.

And what I will do on 2008 only the time will tell. Maybe upgrade, maybe not and play on lower (but still better than consoles) settings, maybe I don't care anymore about games (j/k). But I will have the chance to decide and 300 bucks left (500-200), instead being condemned to play on a crappy console that is miles away from what PCs can offer.
you clearly do not know as much about hardware as you think you do. you simply can't compare a ps3 to a pc by comparing the hardware, silly. you see, you need the windows operating system if you want to play your PC games. that in itself dramatically reduces the power of your components. then you have the games for PC that are generally terribly coded and make the cpu and gpu work extra hard to process information. these are 2 basic things. the console is designed for games. coders write specifically for the hardware. there is no bloated OS to cripple the processor.
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#34
DarkMatter
Easy Rhinoyou clearly do not know as much about hardware as you think you do. you simply can't compare a ps3 to a pc by comparing the hardware, silly. you see, you need the windows operating system if you want to play your PC games. that in itself dramatically reduces the power of your components. then you have the games for PC that are generally terribly coded and make the cpu and gpu work extra hard to process information. these are 2 basic things. the console is designed for games. coders write specifically for the hardware. there is no bloated OS to cripple the processor.
It's clear that I know a LOT MORE than you. I'm not saying consoles are not better optimized, Isay that the performance loss that happens because of the software implementation is not as big as tha power difference. I say PCs have evolved that much since consoles came out, that now you can buy for 150$ a card which is more powerful than consoles, when the performance loss of software has been taken out. Let me put it simple. Look at my specs. My graphics card 7900GTX it's the same as the PS3 one, same core. The difference is that mine runs at 700MHz and in PS3 runs at 500Mhz. That's a 40% difference, that gets mitigated by the software, so they come closer. Still I play COD4, Bioshock, UT3, GOW, Jericho and many other new titles at max setting (that are higher than on consoles, specially textures) at 1280x960 8X aniso, and I get 30+ fps all the time. Not really bad for a 2 years old card, isn't it?
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#35
Easy Rhino
Linux Advocate
DarkMatterIt's clear that I know a LOT MORE than you. I'm not saying consoles are not better optimized, Isay that the performance loss that happens because of the software implementation is not as big as tha power difference. I say PCs have evolved that much since consoles came out, that now you can buy for 150$ a card which is more powerful than consoles, when the performance loss of software has been taken out. Let me put it simple. Look at my specs. My graphics card 7900GTX it's the same as the PS3 one, same core. The difference is that mine runs at 700MHz and in PS3 runs at 500Mhz. That's a 40% difference, that gets mitigated by the software, so they come closer. Still I play COD4, Bioshock, UT3, GOW, Jericho and many other new titles at max setting (that are higher than on consoles, specially textures) at 1280x960 8X aniso, and I get 30+ fps all the time. Not really bad for a 2 years old card, isn't it?
yea, but your pc isnt optimized to run games like the ps3. so i dont see your point. the ps3 simply is not comparable to a pc. the architecture of the cell processor, the board components and engineering of the circuits to pass info from the gpu. it is all built to work as one. the pc needs to load a bloated operating system and then it needs to use power to strip away useless code just to get a game running at 30 fps. again, stop trying to compare the 2.
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#36
DarkMatter
Easy Rhinoyea, but your pc isnt optimized to run games like the ps3. so i dont see your point. the ps3 simply is not comparable to a pc. the architecture of the cell processor, the board components and engineering of the circuits to pass info from the gpu. it is all built to work as one. the pc needs to load a bloated operating system and then it needs to use power to strip away useless code just to get a game running at 30 fps. again, stop trying to compare the 2.
I would say again. Look at my specs. If consoles are so much better runing on the same hardware level and PS3 is so better than my computer (you said that when you said it's better than Quads and 8800GT ---> Core2 Q6600 = 2X-3X my CPU, 8800GT = 2X my GPU), then why I am able to play the newer games at much higher settings than on consoles? The answer is simple, and since you know that much about software you should guess it. The "consoles are way better optimized than PCs" thing died with heavy use of Shaders that came with DX9.0c and last OpenGL. With SM 3.0 the requisites became more tight, so pretty much all the hardware does everything in the same way, it just does faster or slower. So you don't have to program for lots of different hardware, you just have to make it to scalable. All new game engines are scalable, and BTW multiplatform, which means that the same engine is used in PC, PS3 and XB360, and some are even making them run on Wii. So that has changed, the way you program games is the same, it's when applying details when you have to take into account the performance of the platform you are programing for. And with DX10, when well implemented, this is going to get even better.

EDIT: I have just read again your post above and noticed your first sentence. When I first read the post I didn't take that into account, but it's really funny, indeed. The Cell and PS3 by extension is really bad optimized or constructed to run games. It excels at streaming media or calculating molecules in Folding@Home, but is really crappy when it comes to games. In order to take some advantage of Cell a lot (and when I say alot I mean 10x normal CPUs) of resource management, code optimizations and tweaking and still the CPU is not as good as Quads for gaming. The reason is simple, the Cell's SPEs can't make conditional or branching instructions, they are only good at crunching numbers. That makes the Cell really weak, even 3x weaker than XB360 in AI programing and gameplay oriented physics (which is the same reason for game developers not widely supporting Ageia). If especifically programmed for that, Cell could run some shaders to simulate leaves on the trees move with the wind, for example. But you can't make those leaves interact with the player as in Crysis. For that you need branching power which Cell lacks bad.
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#37
Easy Rhino
Linux Advocate
lets see. compare the ps2 when it came out 6 years ago with a pc that is 6 years old. you cant play todays low end games on 6 year old pc but they are still coding games for the ps2 which look way better than a 6 year old pc, hell a 2 year old pc. the same thing will happen with the ps3.
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#38
effmaster
Easy Rhinowith consoles the game developers actually work on improving game coding rather than just rely on the consumer to shell out 300 bucks for a new gpu every 1.5 years.
Couldnt have said it better myself:toast:
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#39
niko084
So curious now whats better.... 3x 8800 Ultra's for an insane price or 4x HD3870's for quite a bit cheaper?

Ati is winning this who "can" go faster game, but these designs are practically useless, most people don't even go with two cards, let alone three or four.

Lets get back to reality here graphics card manufacturer's and make something that works well, draws less power, and doesn't require 2-3-4 of them.
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#40
DarkMatter
Easy Rhinolets see. compare the ps2 when it came out 6 years ago with a pc that is 6 years old. you cant play todays low end games on 6 year old pc but they are still coding games for the ps2 which look way better than a 6 year old pc, hell a 2 year old pc. the same thing will happen with the ps3.
6 years old PC can't, 4 years old can. 2 Years old PC is mine, and it can play everything at Max except Crysis. Back in 2004, almost 4 years ago, with a 6 years old PC (bought in May 2002 for 900€) I could run Farcry, Doom3 on medium/high and HalfLife2 at Max. Farcry/HalfLife2/Doom3 PC on medium >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Any PS2 game. What's your point?

And you are right the same will happen with the PS3. :D
2008 PC games will demostrate this. Crysis demostrates this now.

EDIT: Anyway, it's funny how you went from "console hardware is better" to developers optimize better on lesser hardware on consoles" to "they continue making games on legacy hardware" (even if they are not offering nothing new and are crap compared to next gen).
Posted on Reply
#41
ktr
Aren't CPUs meant for number crunching? Isn't AI and physic the result of numbers which yields a certain output depending on the software?
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#42
DarkMatter
ktrAren't CPUs meant for number crunching? Isn't AI and physic the result of numbers which yields a certain output depending on the software?
No. There's a lot more than number crunching in computing. I don't have the time (nor the will) to explain this further.

EDIT: Ok I have some spare time now (and some will I suppose):D. I'm assisting my father in remodeling my home.

Modern CPUs rely on SIMD instructions to output heavy crunching numbers. Simple Instruction Multiple Data, means you can give the instruction of Multiply and then give 20 numer pairs to multiply. Instead of MUL, numbers, MUL, numbers, MUL... you get it.
General purpose CPUs have also similar (in the way it works) branching capabilities. That means that for one "if a < b" (hope you know some programing) many operations are made, but you only need to address one instruction. Cell SPEs lack this, so even if possible, given the fact that would need to address all the operations, you would saturate caches and bandwidth, in addition to go into madness in the complexity of the program you would need to make.
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#43
tkpenalty
Nvidia really need to fix up the ultra's cooler, the one in the middle will fry!
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#44
niko084
tkpenaltyNvidia really need to fix up the ultra's cooler, the one in the middle will fry!
Guess they will have to get water cooling or TEC..
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#45
effmaster
niko084Guess they will have to get water cooling or TEC..
Or how about they come up with a Graphics card with the exact same specs but with a lower power requirement. An 800 watt PSU should be the max rerquirement for any dual graphics card setup no matter what. Anything further and they can count me out because then the electric bill gets too high for me.
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#46
newconroer
It's not hard to imagine that releasing the GT and GTS at this time was as planned, to give us an idea of where the architecture of their GPUs is heading. At the same time, by doing so, they've degraded the value of the GTX/ULTRA. They then inform us that the TRI-SLI project will only be available through the GTX/ULTRA, which gives that product line a last foot hold in the market.


That being said, it doesn't seem like TRI-SLI's glory will be achieved by the current 'flagship' GTX/ULTRA. Rather that they're introducing it to us now, to keep the GTX/ULTRA in rotation, and we'll see better examples of "TRI-SLI" when the newer cards are launched.


And yes, this kind of stuff might seem like overkill, but if you want the best money can buy...



Besides, without stuff like this, we wouldn't be able to keep making useless threads about Shamino and other L2N or nitrogen overclockers, because they wouldn't have the newest top end hardware!

Oh the horror....
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#47
ccleorina
Wow... Nvidia did try to rocks games....:rockout::rockout:
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#49
Fitseries3
Eleet Hardware Junkie
where do i sign up to get a tri-sli bridge for my 680i?
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