Originally posted by: Rollo
I don't think you need to worry about the evaporation of R&D or the "middle" market, supply and demand will keep both alive.
As you say, at the high end, SLI is "the only game in town", but it's also a slim piece of the market pie. It would be business suicide to program a game that could only run on the fastest rigs.
That's very true, but ... it's been done before. That exact scenario is credited as one of the things that eventually led to the demise of LookingGlass studios and Origin. (Ultima Underworld 1 & 2's hardware requirements, and some other jet combat game, Strike Fighter I think.) Then again, that tends to disprove my point - that rather than force customers to buy a level of hardware support that they don't feel the need to purchase, the customers will simply not purchase the game instead. Most people bought X800s and 6600/6800-series cards, specifically for Doom3 and HL2. Those that didn't, probably didn't buy those games at all, either. (I didn't. No, I didn't pirate it either. I played the demos on my rig, and .. it wouldn't be worthwhile to get them, until I upgrade anyways.)
Originally posted by: Rollo
SLI where I'm at, 6600GTs, has two probable markets IMO:
1. People who are satisfied with 6600GT level performance, want to buy one now, then another at the end of the year when that will get them back to 6600GT level performance.
2. Guys like me that like to play with hardware, know this isn't their rig for the next nine years, and want what it has to offer a. very fast 16X12 0X ?X performance b. not generic "card A wins every benchmark at setting B by 4-8fps, this is the obvious choice" decision c. WMV9 hardware decode has meaning to you.
Neither of these markets is likely to replace the single card market in my opinion, V2 SLI didn't, MAXX didn't, V5 didn't.
That's a very good point too. Unfortunately, it also may have contributed to the demise of an otherwise technologically-advanced GPU maker, 3Dfx. (Hmm, does that mean that I secretly don't want NV to fail as a company because of this solution? Nah, I don't think that it will materially hurt them if SLI doesn't do all that well in the market, but if it succeeds, I'm sure that it's going to make them more money in the long run.)
Originally posted by: Rollo
I can't understand why you/anyone is counterpointing this at all, to be honest. We're all better off with more choices, and crunching the numbers and saying "this card has a 5% advantage in price/performance, must buy it to not waste a a single precious penny" is a crappy way to live, IMO.
Well, yeah. I guess I am just whining a bit. :| Guess I've spent too much time in the Hot Deals forum, always evaluating the value metric of everything. Perhaps I percieve the P/P (value) metric of something, in a similarly sub-concious competitive way to how some of you consider the performance metric of the hardware. I am somewhat of a "value overclocker" at heart, that might explain it partially as well. I think my fearful hypothesis was based around a scenario in which, because of the requirements and demands of the software, would cause the market for the lower-end hardware to become less, thus making supply/availability of the mid-range / more budget-oriented hardware less, and thus the "prime budget overclocking" parts would dry up. Kind of like, if Windows XP required at minimum a 3.0Ghz-equivalent CPU to run, then AMD stopped producing Athlon XP CPUs below 3000+ speeds, and thus there were no more "cheap and easy overclocker" XP1800/2000 CPUs left to buy. For those that have no problem dropping the $$$ on the highest-end hardware available, that isn't going to affect them at all, but for some of us that try to take mediocre hardware and push it as far as possible, it does. In a way, it's the same sort of motivation in terms of overclocking, but being pushed in different directions. Some people buy whatever the fastest hardware that they can afford, and then push it as fast as they can, and other people (like me), decide what performance level is acceptable to them, and then try to push the cost down as far as possible, and yet overclock in order to obtain that desired level of performance. "Value overclocking", rather than "performance overclocking".
Interestingly, now that I think about it, I actually am sort of in a similar market segment, that might well try to SLI two (overclocked) 6600GT cards, in an attempt to try to get better performance than single higher-end card, but for cheap. So perhaps my somewhat anti-SLI rant was a bit unjustified, when I look at it that way. In either case, I do appreciate this thread, and you taking the time to "play with the hardware" to see what it can do.
Originally posted by: Rollo
This is a hobby, do you think guys that hunt only have guns that are evaluated "the indisputable best buy"? (we don't, you buy for character, beauty, and utility)
Do you think in my 12 fishing rods I use in the summer I evaluated the "ultimate p/p ratio" on all? ( I didn't)
Do you think guys that collect cars only buy the best performers?
I wouldn't have owned a Rage Fury, MAXX, or 8500 at all if I used some of the strange bargain logic in this thread, but this stuff is supposed to be FUN? Not some actuaries evaluation?
Yeah, point taken. I guess instead of evaluting the P/P ratio of my rig, I should actually use it to game and have fun every once in a while, huh?
Originally posted by: Rollo
The fate of the world doesn't hang on whether you can run your favorite game at 12X10 2X8X instead of 12X10 4X8X, no matter what these numbers based reviews have taught you.
<steps off soapbox>
But that's a different consideration, than those that can or can't afford to be able to play those games
at all. In other words, if there's no way to take a mid-range card and overclock it to reach the same performance level need to play the game acceptably, when the bare-minimum hardware required *starts* with an SLI'ed system rig, then that means that there's no way to "value overclock" across the hardware SLI barrier. (Well, actually, the DFI NF4-Ultra boards could indeed be modded, but NV complained, because that would undercut their "SLI tax" on chipsets, and thus DFI is going to lock them down and block that ability now. :| ) But by the same token, if that "SLI tax" drops down to a negligible additional cost, then I guess I wouldn't have a problem with it.
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