Will ATi jump on the SLI bandwagon?

[Lecram25]

Are we going to see something similar to 6x on the NV50? Or do you mean that 8x will provide higher performance than the current FSAA/MSAA mix?

That would be a "SSAA/MSAA mix".

I thought that SSAA is a synonym for FSAA in its purest form? Wasn't FSAA=SSAA in the earlies?

Nope.

Supersampling Anti-Aliasing. Just because the consumer market were not using any other forms of AA does not mean they didn't exist (oh the grammar!).

 

[Lecram25]

What are you talking about Nvidia specifically attacked 3dfx's dual board SLI as inefficent(true) and cumbersome, and basically said 'we'll give you better performance with one chip as they give you with 2 boards' and with the TnT2 they did.

Your memory certainly works in mysterious ways

. Voodoo3 competed with TNT2 resonably well (though it's lack of features was already very apparent). It took NVIDIA one more year to make a card which was better all around (except for FSAA) than 3dfx's Voodoo5, which was _dual-chip board_, and not a card with SLI capabilities.

Basically dual-chip board is a way of improving performance when you're failed to make a competitive single chip. Look for Voodoo5, Volari and so on for examples. SLI is a way of offering your customers a great single-chip solution with an added feature which allows you... blah-blah-blah... i'm sure you know how to finish this phrase correctly.

So while there are NO dual-chip _boards_ from NV in the same prices as single-chip boards from ATI, there really aren't any reasons for what you're suggesting.

[edit] stupid spelling errors

Dual chip designs are failure but SLI is genius. From an engineering standpoint thats simply not correct. There are more efficencies from a dual chip design, not even factoring in the physical impractacilities(heat, space, noise, power) of SLI.

No. You people need to understand SLI before you throw it around like you know it. The Voodoo 5 5500 was a SLI board, i.e. two chips in SLI mode. No it did not support SLI between two boards, but the two chips were in SLI.

SLI is not two boards/chips "joined"* together, but the way they interact, iirc.


*(c) baumman

 

[Fox5]

I think voodoo5 was intended to be released around the time of the geforce 1 anyhow, so rather than working on a chip to be released around the time of the geforce to compete with the geforce, they figured they could modify existing technology, put two chips together, and get something to blow the geforce away.(would have been interesting to see a shrunk down voodoo3 at like 250mhz though...well not really, it'd merely be faster)

 

[Megadrive1988]

mmmm my new flight simulator rig

 

[DegustatoR]

No. You people need to understand SLI before you throw it around like you know it. The Voodoo 5 5500 was a SLI board, i.e. two chips in SLI mode. No it did not support SLI between two boards, but the two chips were in SLI.

SLI is not two boards/chips "joined"* together, but the way they interact, iirc.

*(c) baumman

I know all this. My point was that two boards design is more flexible than two chips on one board especially if one chip board is already fast enough by itself.

Voodoo 5 was multichip/one board more b/c of an AGP limitations than some "smart" engineering decision. NV40/43 SLI BTW shows very high efficiency, up to 92% "according to my sources"