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

[malware]

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 http://www.slizone.com. For further information on NVIDIA SLI technology, nForce MCPs or the GeForce 8 Series GPUs, please visit http://www.nvidia.com.

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[mascaras]

only 8800GTX or Ultra work in tri-SLi (8800GT dont work)

3x 8800GTX = 1500€

and a minimum of 1200W PSU its required ( ~270€)

total = ~1800€ (only for PSU and VGAs)


in my opinion the ideia of Tri-Sli its not for High end-cards


regards

 

[craigwhiteside]

they said sli was going to give twice the performance and we all know how that turned out lol

 

[jocksteeluk]

the funny thing is you can play a console based on old gpu technology looking just as good for a third of the price and a third of the energy, on plus point though a 2.8 of 3 cards efficiency is very impressive.

 

[bcracer220]

i guess if ur running at some insane resolution like 2560 by 1600 it may be worth it, dont see it being of use anywhere else =P

 

[DaMulta]

It won't look just as good....

 

[cdawall]

yea how long before someone mods the drivers for the 8800GT to work in tri?

 

[intel igent]

only 8800GTX or Ultra work in tri-SLi (8800GT dont work)

3x 8800GTX = 1500€

and a minimum of 1200W PSU its required ( ~270€)

total = ~1800€ (only for PSU and VGAs)

a waste of money if you ask me

 

[craigwhiteside]

ya, wouldnt suprise me since 8800gt are just one of the 9000 series cards in disguise , and they are supposed to support tri-sli

 

[snuif09]

why just spend time in creating a gpu that can do that stuff alone
now you dont have any room a soundblaster or a physx card.

i must say pc's are big and mostly ugly look at an xbox 360 it has nice graphics(not as nice as a pc tough)but its still looking good and its small.(that most pc's dont look good is'nt actully my problem and i have a thermaltake armor soon)

 

[Easy Rhino]

wow...all that money. or you could spend 500 bucks on a ps3 and never have to upgrade until 2011

 

[0elemental0]

better yet....im sure there would be no cpu bottleneck at all

 

[Batou1986]

better yet....im sure there would be no cpu bottleneck at all

hence the 2.8x performance cause we all know 1+1=3

 

[Scrizz]

the price for being on top, eh?

 

[Deleted member 24505]

Ya reckon its 3x the performance then?

Waste of money.

 

[crow1001]

Just plain stupid of Nvidia this, i could understand them pushing it with the cheaper cards but this is just a dumb gimmick which will die on its ass.

 

[panchoman]

better off with quad x-firing 3870's, i bet this setup will have overheating problems, 3 dual slot cards which run preety hot sucking in hot air from the next to cool itself, and the bottom one be sucking very limited air from the floor of the case. whereas the hd3x series runs very cool and single slot coolers allow the coolers to breathe.

 

[Grimskull]

how are you supposed to connect anything to the motherboard...those cards are huge and hang over it..... covering all of the conenction ports.

Anyone remember my thread about the nuclear power plants been shipped with AMD/ATI Spyder platforms???????. you gonna need one for that!!!! if not two powerplants to power it up!

 

[DarkMatter]

wow...all that money. or you could spend 500 bucks on a ps3 and never have to upgrade until 2011

Or you could buy something like HD3850 or 8800GT 256 for 180, have way better graphics than PS3/XB360 and never NEED to upgrade until 2011... That is, if you want to stay on a fixed graphical level, you can do it just on PC too. Of course you won't be able to play the newest games at highest settings, but you know what? They will still be better than on consoles. Remember that new game engines are multiplatform, new PC games could contain the console version (in terms of graphical features, texture quality, detail...), so even if PC is way better and needs a lot of horsepower, there could always be the posibility to play at PS3/XB360 if developers want to. So start asking them in this regards. Personally I like the idea of evolution so I don't care about upgrades. On the other hand IMHO Tri SLI and Quad XFire is a stupid idea. Even SLI/Crossfire is stupid from a performance/price standpoint, by the time SLI is really needed, the new generation of cards is out. Until then you can always overclock. Nowadays take Crysis out of the ecuation and even HD3850 and 8800GT are overkill, specially if what you want to do is playing at 720p with low AA and AF settings.

 

[JrRacinFan]

Supposedly the 8800GT's will have software interconnects. Like some of the HD2600/2400's in crossfire.

 

[panchoman]

how are you supposed to connect anything to the motherboard...those cards are huge and hang over it..... covering all of the conenction ports.

Anyone remember my thread about the nuclear power plants been shipped with AMD/ATI Spyder platforms???????. you gonna need one for that!!!! if not two powerplants to power it up!

spider is actually preety damn energy efficent. hd3x are easily run passive and require very little cooling, infact, the card runs passive on stock cooling when its idling, and then fan kicks in at like 30% at full load. 790fx is also a very energy efficent chip, correct me if im wrong, but its got a nice small die (55nm?) and requires little voltage. phenoms are also built for energy efficency (instead of performance it seems), and cool n quiet 2 and stuff really makes phenoms very very energy efficent, much more then penryn i believe. so spider is a very efficent platform, and you shouldn't have a problem with quad fire on it, but you might have trouble tri-sliing

edit: http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2007/10/11/amd-790fx-eats-8w

 

[steelkane]

I agree to many cards in one system, I'm sure sometime in the future, One card will do the work of 3. I guess from that you could either love it or hate it,, & just wait & see. If we live that long.

 

[W1zzard]

dont forget added cost for 680i chipset motherboard to be able to run 3 cards. anyone actually want to use a non-intel chipset for their high-performance system?

 

[jydie]

I honestly think that SLI and Crossfire are overkill for a majority of the PC users. That being said, I feel that this would be something only the extreme PC users will be interested in. As for people saying how wonderful the PS3 and XBOX 360 look... they are running at much lower resolutions then current video cards are capable of running. So, you are not really comparing on equal terms. I 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). I am sure that my ATI 2600 XT can do better then that... and I put my system together for less then $400. PC gaming is never going to pass up the consoles because people think they need to spend $1000+ on a gaming PC that will compare to the PS3 or XBOX 360. We need to have one of the big PC makers to introduce a decent gaming PC with a $500-$600 price tag. With the new ATI 3850 and Nvidia 8800GT (256MB model) this is within reach.

One big negative aspect about PC gaming on a new system... Windows Vista.

 

[panchoman]

dont forget added cost for 680i chipset motherboard to be able to run 3 cards. anyone actually want to use a non-intel chipset for their high-performance system?

well 790fx for the amd platform... but yeah, on intel platform im with intel chipsets. 780 seems like crap, rumor is the southbridge to the 780 is a 680 and the 780 boards will be using an ati chip on there for cfx and all kinds of crap. i dont even know what the hell the 780 chip is anymore