Thursday, December 13th 2007
3-Way NVIDIA SLI Takes Extreme Gaming To A Whole New Level
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
"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.
86 Comments on 3-Way NVIDIA SLI Takes Extreme Gaming To A Whole New Level
its for teh very rich.
Say I start my build with (1) 8800gtx. In a year, when the price for 8800gtx is down by 1/2-1/3 the current price, I buy a second, and put them in SLI. This brings my graphics up to 1.7x what it was before, for less than half the price of a new card. Then in 2 years, I buy a third 8800gtx for 1/4 of the original price or less, and have 2.8x my original graphics capability.
That is, instead of buying a brand new video card for the same original price each year that gives me about 1.5x-2x my previous graphics. $875/3years vs $1500/3years; almost half the $.
I think people are missing the logical possibility for upgrade.
It's still stupid that it would take up all your PCI slots, and all the room in your Case. I had a hard enough time as it is fitting my firewire, usb, and audio header cables around my 8800gtx w/ Thermalright Hr-03+ =/
As far as cooling, very impractical. They should create an air cooler designed for cooling 3x cards. I'm sure Thermalright's thinking something up right now for it, and it'll have 20 heat pipes haha.
And as far as Nvidia goes, they're really smart in doing this, because what did it cost them: Creation, No MODification of an existing sli driver, and the production of a Triple Connector (vs the current double connector). This was SUPER cheap for them to do, took very little of their design/programming/marketing time, so why not for them? Gains>Cost.
Practicality for the consumer, little.
The others, just as me, have 3 PCs that are subsequentialy upgraded, when I upgrade the main PC the part replaced goes to the second one that is used to play older online games like CSS. The third one is at town where we go some weekends. The one replaced in this one is for non gamer friends or family, that pay me the gift with many things money can't buy.
You must be totally blind if you tell me Metal Gear Solid 3 has better graphics than DOOM3, Farcry, HL2 or FEAR for example. I played those at mostly everything high with the PC purchased in 2002 for 900€:
P4 2.5Ghz, GF4800, 1024MB DDR. Hell even RTCWolfenstein or No One Lives Forever >>>>>>>>>>MGS3. And played them on Athlon TBird 1Ghz, Voodoo3, 512MB ddr.
That and the fact that PS2 games didn't improve to my eyes in the last 4 years.
Another one, consoles at 60FPS????? :roll::roll::roll::roll::roll::roll::roll::roll: Look them ROFLing.
And bad coding on PC vs superb in consoles? In which world do you live my friend? Last time I checked most next gen console games have needed a patch to work propperly, just as PC ones.
And if you tell me PS3 and XB360 do HD...:roll: Well, I suppose I've been doing HD gaming since 1997 on PC. :rockout:
If you had 3, the cooler would cover up the last PCI slot.
And the last thing about $2000 PC, as I said like 100 times. I have been playing games at max with PCs a lot less pricey. Indeed in my whole gaming history 1993-2007 I have spent ~$4000
and that's because I wanted to play at much better games than consoles. If had go mainstream instead of performance, it have been ~$2000.I've been playing 1024x768 --> 768p since 1997. 1280x960 --> 960p since 2002. As I said most games on consoles run at 720p, most of the ones at 1080p are upconverted from a lower res. So it's been needed 10 years for consoles to catch up in here. That's funny.
Give up. You are not convincing anyone on this forum. PCs are way superior 90% of the time, being the console somehow superior the first 6 months, when the PC components that are better than the ones on the consoles are still expensive. The rest of the lifetime PCs are waaaaaay superior. They are more expensive? Of course dude, Ferraris are better, so they are priced acordingly. But unless Ferraris, Pc components get really cheap in a year. Any PC today is superior to PS3 if you put in it a HD3850 or better graphics card. That is the truth, live with it.
But by Q1 2008, this will be confirmed for sure:
3x 8800 GTX >> 4x HD3870
my current rig not that much later on in tech terms but it plays ALL of todays games!
This is one of those things, 1 guy from 1 group will do to set a record, or to show off 100fps maxed in crysis.... Whoopty do you can dump $5000 worth of parts into a computer and make it useful to play games and in reality overkill to play games...
Lets be realistic here, I'm already considering dumping my 2nd 3870, sick of the heat and everything runs so great on one...