SLI has a future

[lifeblood]

I have heard how SLI is a waste, yet I believe SLI will become more important. I and a number of my coworkers have multiple monitors hooked to our PC?s both at work and home. Current consumer grade video cards only handle two outputs. I have 3 monitors. My center high end display is driven by my high end PCIe card; my two flanking low end displays are run by a low end PCI video card.

For games, only one display can be used for the game but the other two can be used to display maps, etc. For work, 3 displays are priceless. I can be monitoring network resources on one monitor, writing a proposal on the main monitor, and pulling information for my proposal from a web site on the third monitor. This works particularly well with older monitors. My center unit is an 18? LCD while the flanking units are 15? CRTs.

Unfortunately, PCI video cards are disappearing. So for any future upgrades I will need two PCIe video cards. They will not be in SLI mode, but they will both need to be plugged into 16x slots (I haven?t seen a video card that will fit into a 1x slot).

So while SLI may be a waste, SLI motherboards are not. They allow for flexibility, especially if you can use a second video card for something else; for example, a physics processor.

 

[Capt Caveman]

SLI is not a waste. For someone who has been on the board since 2004, you should know this

 

[Soccerman06]

Originally posted by: Capt Caveman
SLI is not a waste. For someone who has been on the board since 2004, you should know this

Financially, its a waste.

 

[JackBurton]

Originally posted by: Soccerman06

Originally posted by: Capt Caveman
SLI is not a waste. For someone who has been on the board since 2004, you should know this

Financially, its a waste.

Financially, buying a single $400 video card is a waste.

 

[deadseasquirrel]

Originally posted by: Soccerman06

Originally posted by: Capt Caveman
SLI is not a waste. For someone who has been on the board since 2004, you should know this

Financially, its a waste.

Says the guy with a 512mb 6800U in his sig.

 

[Corporate Thug]

Originally posted by: deadseasquirrel

Originally posted by: Soccerman06

Originally posted by: Capt Caveman
SLI is not a waste. For someone who has been on the board since 2004, you should know this

Financially, its a waste.

Says the guy with a 512mb 6800U in his sig.

:laugh:

 

[SpeedZealot369]

Originally posted by: deadseasquirrel

Originally posted by: Soccerman06

Originally posted by: Capt Caveman
SLI is not a waste. For someone who has been on the board since 2004, you should know this

Financially, its a waste.

Says the guy with a 512mb 6800U in his sig.

lol what a waste of money that card was/is, unbelievable

 

[n7]

Originally posted by: deadseasquirrel

Originally posted by: Soccerman06

Originally posted by: Capt Caveman
SLI is not a waste. For someone who has been on the board since 2004, you should know this

Financially, its a waste.

Says the guy with a 512mb 6800U in his sig.

:laugh: Pwned!

 

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by: deadseasquirrel

Originally posted by: Soccerman06

Originally posted by: Capt Caveman
SLI is not a waste. For someone who has been on the board since 2004, you should know this

Financially, its a waste.

Says the guy with a 512mb 6800U in his sig.

That is so owned, i cant even fathom it.

 

[otispunkmeyer]

Originally posted by: Acanthus

Originally posted by: deadseasquirrel

Originally posted by: Soccerman06

Originally posted by: Capt Caveman
SLI is not a waste. For someone who has been on the board since 2004, you should know this

Financially, its a waste.

Says the guy with a 512mb 6800U in his sig.

That is so owned, i cant even fathom it.

that was one hell of an expensive pointless card, the 6800 was pretty poor past 1600x1200 (design limitation ?) so it wouldnt of even been able to use it very well lol

 

[alkemyst]

Originally posted by: Acanthus

Originally posted by: deadseasquirrel

Originally posted by: Soccerman06

Originally posted by: Capt Caveman
SLI is not a waste. For someone who has been on the board since 2004, you should know this

Financially, its a waste.

Says the guy with a 512mb 6800U in his sig.

That is so owned, i cant even fathom it.

Until you read further "Custom dry ice system cooling cpu and gpu"

 

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by: alkemyst

Originally posted by: Acanthus

Originally posted by: deadseasquirrel

Originally posted by: Soccerman06

Originally posted by: Capt Caveman
SLI is not a waste. For someone who has been on the board since 2004, you should know this

Financially, its a waste.

Says the guy with a 512mb 6800U in his sig.

That is so owned, i cant even fathom it.

Until you read further "Custom dry ice system cooling cpu and gpu"

That makes it worse not better

 

[Joe Pineapples]

Matrox sell a PCI-E 1x Graphics card with dual output.

Matrox G550 PCIe 1x

 

[deadseasquirrel]

Originally posted by: Acanthus

Originally posted by: alkemyst

Originally posted by: Acanthus

Originally posted by: deadseasquirrel

Originally posted by: Soccerman06

Originally posted by: Capt Caveman
SLI is not a waste. For someone who has been on the board since 2004, you should know this

Financially, its a waste.

Says the guy with a 512mb 6800U in his sig.

That is so owned, i cant even fathom it.

Until you read further "Custom dry ice system cooling cpu and gpu"

That makes it worse not better

Seriously, I'm not trying to be a dick or anything. I just think it's ignorant to make blanket statements like "SLI is a waste" without anything to back it up. If he had said that SLI is a waste on someone with a 14" monitor who plays at 800x600, I'd definitely agree. But he's obviously someone who has spent a good deal of money on his components (i.e. 4000+ when a 3000+ would've sufficed, etc).

If you're building a plain ol' gaming rig, SLI (and Crossfire) is most certainly not a waste, provided you have a good display. No other component in your system will give you as much of a performance boost as a 2nd card. Try going from a 3000+ Winchester to an FX-57 (what's that?? another $600 or so?) and tell me how many more frames you get in FEAR at 1280x1024 with 4xAA. You know how much? 0. That's right-- ZERO. Now slap a 2nd card in there and tell me. Almost double (around 80%).

No doubt, dual-card solutions aren't right for everybody, and Soccerman is likely one of those. But to call something a waste without facts to back it up is just ignorant. Right now, there really isn't a perfect dual-card solution for bang-for-buck. The 7800GTs had it for a good while, but with the arrival of the 19xt, that's gone-- unless you can get them VERY cheap. Maybe the 7900GT will be the next good bfb SLI solution.

 

[Crescent13]

Originally posted by: Acanthus

Originally posted by: deadseasquirrel

Originally posted by: Soccerman06

Originally posted by: Capt Caveman
SLI is not a waste. For someone who has been on the board since 2004, you should know this

Financially, its a waste.

Says the guy with a 512mb 6800U in his sig.

That is so owned, i cant even fathom it.

I nominate for Ownage Of The Year!!

 

[n7]

Such great pwnage i added it to my sig for everyone to see for a while

Now that being said, i do actually believe that in a lot of cases, SLI is a waste.
However, for very high end systems, why not

 

[Matt2]

I like my SLI.

7800GTs, however, is the only SLI that I dont think is wasteful.

 

[Madwand1]

Originally posted by: lifeblood
Unfortunately, PCI video cards are disappearing. So for any future upgrades I will need two PCIe video cards.

What evidence do you have? Maybe there are lot of old-style / inexpensive buyers around, but I see a number of PCI cards available. None that any "serious gamers" would use, but probably tons that can be used for multi-monitor work, and if you only need it to do that, you don't need a ton of choice, just enough to fill your desired slots.

Especially with the (versions of) AGP to PCIe transition, I see some need for plain-jane will work in anything PCI cards.

No?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLi...TTR14=&ATTR15=&ATTR16=&ATTR17=&ATTR18=

 

[lifeblood]

If you notice, all the PCI cards use older video chips. None use current GPU's. Eventually the video card manufacturers will quit making them. However, hope is in the air. As one responder pointed out, Matrox does in fact have a PCIe 1x video card.

BTW, I didn't mean to start an SLI war. SLI, like most things, has a time and a place. If I won the lottery and had money out my ears, I would most certainly have a high end SLI setup.

 

[Creig]

You don't need an SLI board for multiple displays. Any combination of PCI-E/AGP/PCI will do quite nicely. In fact, you can easily use all three at one time to drive SIX displays simultaneously on an inexpensive ASRock S939Dual-SATA2 motherboard.

http://www.hkepc.com/hwdb/m1695-uli-3.htm