Nvidia went SLI because they can't compete?

[ondaedg]

Don't forget how important it is to have that top benchmark score. It's not about selling that product, but the whole range of associated products. Overclocking is deemed to be trickery, but running two cards in parallel can help you score the outlandish frame rates that are necessary to sell your product.

Yes, we know that having the top benchmark score has always been of paramount importance to nV, don't we?.... It's far more important than routine gaming performance with appropriate levels of IQ--at least to nV.

Looking at nV SLI in terms of cost per frame-rate gained, however, produces a much lower "benchmark score" in that regard. nV SLI is great for nV, no doubt, but not so hot for the SLI consumer in terms of price-performance...

When you say "connection with the product," which "product" are you referring to--the *pair* of 3d-cards required, the dual-slot motherboard, the increased power supply and the other thermal-reduction products necessary--which "product" of all of those required for "SLI" do you mean, I wonder?...


Frankly, I will be surprised if nV is doing SLI for very long in any capacity worth noting. It seems like a stop-gap, short-term measure designed to shore up the company's bottom line on a temporary basis. It is so cost ineffective that I cannot believe it is here to stay

Considering that no 3d-gaming API on earth supports nV SLI in any way, shape, or form, I think you can rest easy on that score as there is nothing there to worry about... Rather, I think the worry is for nV SLI purchasers that nV will do custom driver support for all of their present games of the type necessary for nV SLI to function. That's what I'd worry about if I was one of them.

API support is not required Walt. You are expected to know that. Who cares if Nvidia does custom driver support? ATI will do it as well. This has been covered countless times...

Do you think a Hummer H2 is a cost effective driving solution? I don't, yet there were waiting lists for people to buy them just so they can drive up and down a fully paved road. SLI is no different.

My roommate has a 6800GT and I have a Radeon 9700. I see no visible difference in image quality. They both do a great job. Review after review that I have read has given both Radeon and Geforce cards excellent ratings for image quality. Yet you pull out an iq statement. Care to show some proof? I for one would love to see some.

I can see that you will never get it. I have seen some change in others on this forum recently. You on the otherhand, just haven't caught on yet...

All I can say is: How dare a video card vendor produce a product that allows me to play the games I like to play with all the eye candy on, 4xAA, 16xAF, and at the highest resolutions! The nerve!

 

[digitalwanderer]

My roommate has a 6800GT and I have a Radeon 9700. I see no visible difference in image quality. They both do a great job. Review after review that I have read has given both Radeon and Geforce cards excellent ratings for image quality. Yet you pull out an iq statement. Care to show some proof? I for one would love to see some.

There is still some image quality differences in AA for sure, and ATi still has the lead.
(Well, 'cept if you can get away with 8xS and then nVidia wins for best AA....but 8xS only works with older games. )

 

[Pete]

nV SLI is great for nV, no doubt, but not so hot for the SLI consumer in terms of price-performance...

I wonder if you have the same criticism for those $700-800 Platinum Editions floating around. Nah, we couldn't expect fair criticism from you, could we?

$700-800 is still less then the $1000+ required for SLi. Of course, you can find X850s for under $500 if you look hard enough.

Eh? Chumbo.com has been advertising a BFG 6800GT SLI package (dual 6800GTs and a 530W PSU) for $850 for some time.

 

[Sxotty]

DW I read somewhere there is a way to get gamma corrected AA from nvidia boards now too, but I cannot remember where.

 

[PatrickL]

nV SLI is great for nV, no doubt, but not so hot for the SLI consumer in terms of price-performance...

I wonder if you have the same criticism for those $700-800 Platinum Editions floating around. Nah, we couldn't expect fair criticism from you, could we?

$700-800 is still less then the $1000+ required for SLi. Of course, you can find X850s for under $500 if you look hard enough.

Eh? Chumbo.com has been advertising a BFG 6800GT SLI package (dual 6800GTs and a 530W PSU) for $850 for some time.

Your package is missing the cost of a SLI Mobo

 

[digitalwanderer]

DW I read somewhere there is a way to get gamma corrected AA from nvidia boards now too, but I cannot remember where.

I had just started playing around with an nVidia board again yesterday to check out the 75.90 drivers everyone is raving about and see how they are, when I had to take my wife to the emergency room and my plans all went bye-bye.

She's ok and home now, I'll play with it a little later after I do my morning steam cleaning. (Puppies, I steam clean 3 bloody times a day now! )

All I know for sure right now is the original SoF looks/plays absolutely freaking GORGEOUS at 1024x768 8xS 16xAF!

 

[WaltC]

I wonder if you have the same criticism for those $700-800 Platinum Editions floating around. Nah, we couldn't expect fair criticism from you, could we?

Probably because I paid $485 for mine, most likely... As well, I did not require a dual-slot motherboard for it, and didn't have to consider a PSU that could power two x800 xt's (my x800 xt is also Vivo and clocks to xt pe levels with hardly a spike in operating temps), and I don't have to worry about temps from *two* cards properly dissipated inside my case, etc. Additionally, I only had to buy 256megs of ram on the xt to actually get the benefit of 256megs of ram--whereas if I had two xt's in SLI I'd have to buy 512mbs of ram to get the benefit of 256. Then as well I don't have to pay for 2 separate 2d cores just to be able to use one 2d core, and so on...

Seriously, what's unfair about such criticism? Isn't it just accurate? It's just my own personal view, after all.

 

[WaltC]

Question for all the peeps decrying SLI's cost - if you were given a free SLI mobo and two 6800 Ultra's - would you still take a PE over that setup? If you would, why?

Hey, gosh--if nVidia wants to *give me an SLI setup*--hey, I'll take it, certainly... Is nVidia giving them away now--is that what you're saying?

Seriously, isn't the proper question what you have to pay for an SLI system versus a single-card system--I mean, since nVidia isn't giving them away to my knowledge? Isn't a cost-benefits analysis the proper way to look at it? It's primarily on the basis of such an analysis that I don't find nV SLI interesting, after all.

 

[WaltC]

people here bashing sli are ridiculous. who cares if it doesnt have a good fps to cost ratio. it doesnt hurt you or the industry in any way. its available for those who have the money and want the highest performance available now and probably until wgf launches. r520 will not perform better than sli nv40s in a game that supports them.

It's called "a personal opinion," and I plead guilty to having one on the subject of nV SLI. Sorry... Since when is a legitimate criticism of a concept's price-performance profile considered "bashing"? That's a new one on me...

As well, I have seen already in several published reviews around the Internet examples where not only does a single ATi 3d card whip nV SLI in terms of frame-rate performance, but also examples of single nV 3d cards whipping two of the same nV3d cards in SLI in games in terms of frame rate. In this vein, I have also read of numerous bugs in running certain games through nV SLI as well, bugs that do not manifest running the game on one nV 3d card with the same drivers--so from what I've seen the picture is nowhere near as black & white as you paint it--and that's not even looking at price-performance.

 

[WaltC]

API support is not required Walt. You are expected to know that. Who cares if Nvidia does custom driver support? ATI will do it as well. This has been covered countless times...

Let me put it like this, then...API support for an x800 xt or a 6800U is not required, either, right? But if you can find a single 3d game shipping anywhere which says on the box: "x800 xt or GF6800U required" as a minimum standard for running the game I'll not only eat my hat, but yours, too...

So if the top-end single 3d cards available, which outsell SLI systems by a wide margin, are not required by game developers, then what are the odds SLI systems will ever be required? Zero, seems to me. That's what I was talking about. Before we'd ever see "SLI required" on a game box, we'd see "x800 xt or GF6800U required" first, I have no doubt. And I don't think we may ever see that...at least not in the next few years (and where will SLI as a concept be then, I wonder? An historical footnote?)

Do you think a Hummer H2 is a cost effective driving solution? I don't, yet there were waiting lists for people to buy them just so they can drive up and down a fully paved road. SLI is no different.

Let me put it to you this way...if people had to buy *two* Hummers just to get the functionality of one of them, how many Hummers do you think might sell?... I really have to say that I don't think a "Hummer SLI" ad campaign would get very far in terms of results...

The issue isn't strictly about cost by any means--it's about *what you get* for the cost you pay--which is what a price-performance profile is meant to impart.

My roommate has a 6800GT and I have a Radeon 9700. I see no visible difference in image quality. They both do a great job. Review after review that I have read has given both Radeon and Geforce cards excellent ratings for image quality. Yet you pull out an iq statement. Care to show some proof? I for one would love to see some.

What IQ statement is that? You mean the one where I talked about *benchmarks*...??? Gosh, I would hope at this date that we don't need to rehash what nVidia did with benchmarks and IQ for all of 2003 and most of 2004 (and may still be doing with benchmarks--for all I know.)

Yes, I know that the 6800GT catches up to the R9700 in terms of IQ when playing games. I should hope that it would, seeing as how I bought an R9700P in Sept. 2002, and it was many, many moons after that before nV shipped the nV40 and its subsequent variations such as the 6800GT. Glad to see they've caught up to what ATi shipped 2.5 years ago... But I can't see how your comments actually speak to mine here, though.

I can see that you will never get it. I have seen some change in others on this forum recently. You on the otherhand, just haven't caught on yet...

You are exactly right! Let me state it again for the record...

"I'll never get nV SLI." D)

All I can say is: How dare a video card vendor produce a product that allows me to play the games I like to play with all the eye candy on, 4xAA, 16xAF, and at the highest resolutions! The nerve!

Actually, I'm pretty glad that ATi did that already and that I'm doing that with my x800 xt... BTW, I've ready many posts from owners of *single* high-end nV 3d cards who feel the same way.

 

[digitalwanderer]

<sigh>

Honestly the biggest difference I see between nVidia and ATi this round are the physical dimensions of the cards. ATi's are a lot easier to install, with the nVidia ones I have to REALLY squeeze it in there and make sure my memory locking tabs, drives, and cables are all out of the way and it just barely makes it.

Once they're in though they're great cards, it is really hard to go wrong either way this generation.

 

[WaltC]

<sigh>

Honestly the biggest difference I see between nVidia and ATi this round are the physical dimensions of the cards. ATi's are a lot easier to install, with the nVidia ones I have to REALLY squeeze it in there and make sure my memory locking tabs, drives, and cables are all out of the way and it just barely makes it.

Once they're in though they're great cards, it is really hard to go wrong either way this generation.

I would not necessarily disagree with anything you've said here, dig. I'm just not sure what these comments have to do with nV SLI, though, which is something I consider an entirely different subject as contrasted to a comparison between single nV and ATi 3d cards, and nV SLI as a concept is what I had presumed was the topic of this thread... Anyway, the concept of nV SLI is what I've been talking about as opposed to merely contrasting ATi to nV in general in terms of stand-alone products. I think there's as big a difference between a single nV 3d card and nV SLI as I see between a single ATi 3d card and nV SLI--the very same "gotcha's" exist in either case.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Nothing to do with SLI whatsoever, it just felt like it was dissintegrating into an ATi/nVidia pissing match and I figured I'd do my bit to put out the fire by dousing it with a good, healthy dose of gasoline.


Ignore me, I'm in too good a mood....I'll behave and go away. *oops*

 

[WaltC]

Nothing to do with SLI whatsoever, it just felt like it was dissintegrating into an ATi/nVidia pissing match and I figured I'd do my bit to put out the fire by dousing it with a good, healthy dose of gasoline.


Ignore me, I'm in too good a mood....I'll behave and go away. *oops*

But you do raise a good point which I think for the purposes of the thread should be underscored: an attack or criticism of nV SLI is *not* the same thing as an attack or criticism of nV generally. nV SLI is in itself a concept which needs to be examined apart from anything else nV as a company markets, imo. Such an examination is not an ad-hoc attack on nV by any means. (Should ATi ever emulate nV here my opinions would not change. OTOH, should ATi come up with a fairly different approach we'd have to examine it on its own merits at that time.)

Personally, what I'd like to see, maybe, is some kind of single-card SLI--much like what 3dfx did with two VSA-100's on the V5 5.5k. That sort of approach would interest me a lot as it would bypass many of the criticisms I feel need to be made of nV SLI presently. I think it's somewhat ironic to consider that at the time 3dfx went under it had *already* abandoned V2 SLI-type deployments as a viable commercial concept for the retail 3d-card market in favor of single-card SLI as we saw it in the V5.5k.

 

[digitalwanderer]

HEXUS has picts of a 6800 ultra SLI with the coolers, and JEEBUS are they monsters!

I agree about the not liking SLI shouldn't imply not liking nVidia, and pointing out disadvantages of SLI ain't knocking nVidia's 6800 at all.

 

[DegustatoR]

My main "gripe" with nVidia's solution is how limiting it is...given that you need a "SLI supporting" chipset. That's the main reason why I don't consider it a particularly "hot" solution.

Since when does NV's SLI need a "SLI supporting" chipset?

 

[Joe DeFuria]

My main "gripe" with nVidia's solution is how limiting it is...given that you need a "SLI supporting" chipset. That's the main reason why I don't consider it a particularly "hot" solution.

Since when does NV's SLI need a "SLI supporting" chipset?

Isn't it, since forever?

 

[digitalwanderer]

My main "gripe" with nVidia's solution is how limiting it is...given that you need a "SLI supporting" chipset. That's the main reason why I don't consider it a particularly "hot" solution.

Since when does NV's SLI need a "SLI supporting" chipset?

I believe since its inception. :?

 

[ANova]

Eh? Chumbo.com has been advertising a BFG 6800GT SLI package (dual 6800GTs and a 530W PSU) for $850 for some time.

I was merely humoring DemoCoder. X850s are actually quite plentiful in the sub $500 bracket now. As well, two 6800 GTs will perform less then two 6800Us and get trounched on by the X850 in the games that do not support SLi or have problems running SLi. Not to mention it's still $350+ more expensive.

Let me put it to you this way...if people had to buy *two* Hummers just to get the functionality of one of them, how many Hummers do you think might sell?... I really have to say that I don't think a "Hummer SLI" ad campaign would get very far in terms of results...

The issue isn't strictly about cost by any means--it's about *what you get* for the cost you pay--which is what a price-performance profile is meant to impart.

I think that summed it up nicely.

I actually find it amazing that so many of you think it's wrong to question and analyse something beyond just peformance.

 

[DemoCoder]

X850's or X850 XT PE? My comment was about the Platinum Edition cards ANova. Can I buy an X850 XT PE for <$500? I find the majority of them are over $700 on Pricewatch. So please, tell me how this card is worth the money? Where is your disdain for these cards? That was my point.