intel plus sli in a notebook?

[Alt]

So im in the market , im basicly looking for something with high end graphics and noticed that alienware has a sale running on a pretty crappy looking (imho), but totally powerfull sli enabled 17" notebook. Then I found a review. http://www.techspot.com/review/9-alienware-aurora-m9700-laptop/

Basicly the findings are that a single core turion is a bottleneck when gameing.

I have yet to see an intel based laptop with sli. Do they exist? Are there at least rumors? How about a turionx2 version?

Im thinking about just ordering a clevo m570u , and upgradeing to a meron in a few months, then crossing my fingers when ut2k7 comes out...

 

[fbrdphreak]

Intel can do Centrino SLI whenever they want it appears, but I wouldn't hold my breath:
http://www.laptoplogic.com/news/detail.php?id=1195

 

[Alt]

"Now it appears as though NVIDIA has licensed its SLI technology for Intel's notebooks as well, starting with the 945 "Napa" platform. While the 945 chipset does not support dual x16 or x8 PCI Express connections, it does support an x16 + x4 configuration. "

Thats not SLI thats a viao SZ .

Anyone seen any turionx2 sli notebooks around?

Rumors?

 

[fbrdphreak]

What are you taking about? "not SLI thats a vaio SZ"

T64 X2 honestly just isn't very common right now outside of mainstream machines.

 

[Alt]

The intel platform SLI is not functoning in tandem. one is 16x and the other is 4x. So in effect it will oporate just like the vaio SZ, one powerfull card and one slower one. I thought the quote from the article you posted made that plain to see... Or maybe I am mis reading...

 

[fbrdphreak]

Originally posted by: Alt
The intel platform SLI is not functoning in tandem. one is 16x and the other is 4x. So in effect it will oporate just like the vaio SZ, one powerfull card and one slower one. I thought the quote from the article you posted made that plain to see... Or maybe I am mis reading...

You're not mis-reading, you're mis-understanding. Despite the disparity in PCI-E lane performance, even a 4x PCI-E lane should be more than enough bandwidth for a single GPU. It will still be SLI, it is just that the current potential implementation on the 945 platform limits it to 16x & 4x, instead of dual 8x or dual 16x. Look for that on the next mobile 965 platform

 

[Alt]

You are correct I must be misunderstanding . I just dont see how two cards with differant bandwith can render two parts of a screen at the same time... It may not be apparent if you are getting 100fps with one card and 60 with the other, but in future games where im getting 40 fps on the 16x card I would think that the other half of the screen would be stuttering...

It could be that I just dont understand how sli works...

 

[fbrdphreak]

Originally posted by: Alt
You are correct I must be misunderstanding . I just dont see how two cards with differant bandwith can render two parts of a screen at the same time... It may not be apparent if you are getting 100fps with one card and 60 with the other, but in future games where im getting 40 fps on the 16x card I would think that the other half of the screen would be stuttering...

It could be that I just dont understand how sli works...

It is a matter of the fact that PCI-E has more than enough bandwidth for even modern GPU's. Hell, I don't think we ever saturated the AGP bus. Don't think of PCI-E lane speed as a limitation. To my knowledge, a 4x PCI-E connection has more than enough bandwidth to run a 7900GTX at full clock.