Uh, ATI's not gonna have GOOD SLI for a while. I hate to break it to you, but nvidia' been designing SLI for use in its GPUs ever since it acquired 3DFX several years ago. This new project by ATI is just a knee jerk reaction. I'm sure they'll get it working eventually, but it'll be a long while. It's not expected until R520 at the earliest, and since R480 won't likely be anything more than a paper launch before the end of the year, I find it hard to believe that R520 is gonna miraculously come out next quarter, like a month after R480. As for the SLI compatibility, nvidia's solution is an open spec, all the mobo makers have reference to it, including ATI, so if ATI wants to make it compatible, they can. Sure, SLI requires nvidia cards currently because they are THE ONLY ONES WHO HAVE SLI CARDS!!!!! And what do you mean that ATI tried to bring PCIe unlike nvidia? As I recall, nvidia was on PCI-sig first, and I remember seeing info on nvidia's website regarding their plans for PCIe well before anything from ATI was discussed. Also, nvidia's HSI bridge chip has been so successful that ATI is trying frantically to develop one, now that they've learned that their "pure" PCIe method isn't much of an advantage, but rather a source of added costs. It is what has allowed nvidia to bring an AGP 6600GT to market, while ATI is stuck doing battle with the 9800 Pro because it can't afford to re-spin an X700 on AGP.
Look, I'm not an nvidia fanboy, if you would have asked me for video card any time from the hit of the 9700/9500 to up until just before the current hardware generation, I would have without doubt recommended a radeon. However, there is a difference between having a preference and just making crap up about "the other team." I think that lately, ATI has focused their efforts, both on the video card and motherboard fronts, way too intensely on just raw speed, while forgetting to bring new features that are useful to market. They seem to be like intel just trying to pass up AMD, and now ATI's caught in the awkward position of having no clear advantage in speed and a severe deficit in features.
