Why did SLI fall out of grace for so many years?

[Texashiker]

SLI was first introduced in 1998 by 3dfx with the VooDoo 2 line of video cards. In late 1998 I had a VooDoo 2 and another video card in SLI.

After nvidia bought 3dfx, it seemed that SLI faded away for several years. Now it seems that we are having to play catch up.

Do you think Nvidia not promoting SLI in the early 2000s slowed down technological advances in the video card market?

 

[ShintaiDK]

You would notice the original 3Dfx SLI and the current SLI is very different. Basicly scissors vs AFR. AFR is also the main issue of all Crossfire/SLI issues. But Scissors dont even bring near the same performance benefit due to the game setups today.

 

[monkeh624]

SLI couldn't be done while cards used the AGP interface. Once PCIe was introduced, SLI made a comeback.

/thread

 

[ShintaiDK]

SLI couldn't be done while cards used the AGP interface. Once PCIe was introduced, SLI made a comeback.

/thread

Thats not entirely true...

Or ATIs solution.

 

[Texashiker]

SLI couldn't be done while cards used the AGP interface. Once PCIe was introduced, SLI made a comeback.

Were you into computer gaming before 1999?

SLI did work with AGP, I was using it in 1998 and 1999.

I was using a VooDoo 2 AGP with a Diamond Stealth 3D PCI in SLI.

 

[monkeh624]

Were you into computer gaming before 1999?

SLI did work with AGP, I was using it in 1998 and 1999.

Interesting. I was not aware it was possible with AGP. And yes, I was gaming well before 1999, old man. Tell us again how long you've been using steam, lol.

Just kidding of course, but you don't need to insinuate that someone is young and therefore naive every time you post

Edit: Although I will make a quick edit to admit that I was indeed naive on this particular topic, so thanks for the info

 

[Texashiker]

Tell us again how long you've been using steam, lol.

I joined steam the day half-life 2 was released, November 2004.

Just kidding of course, but you don't need to insinuate that someone is young and therefore naive every time you post

No insult intended. People new to PC gaming will never know what it was like to 32 megs of ram, and 4 meg video card. While posting in a forum, you never know the other persons level of experience.

When the VooDoo 2 came out, it was like a giant leap in video technology.

It seems that SLI technology faded away for a few years, then made a comeback.

Where would we be today if Nvidia had taken the VooDoo 2 and ran with it?

 

[TemjinGold]

Dang you had 32 megs? I remember paying $100 to upgrade my 768k to 1 meg using SRAM on my 286...

 

[monkeh624]

Dang you had 32 megs? I remember paying $100 to upgrade my 768k to 1 meg using SRAM on my 286...

Wow, I'm not that old, luckily (j/k )

I think the first PC upgrade I ever did was to upgrade from 4Mb of RAM to 8Mb. Of course I was far too young to buy it myself, so I had to beg my parents for weeks on end. I was probably around 14. I broke their will in the end

 

[Texashiker]

Dang you had 32 megs? I remember paying $100 to upgrade my 768k to 1 meg using SRAM on my 286...

Wow, I'm not that old, luckily (j/k )

I think the first PC upgrade I ever did was to upgrade from 4Mb of RAM to 8Mb. Of course I was far too young to buy it myself, so I had to beg my parents for weeks on end. I was probably around 14. I broke their will in the end

My first computer was a packard bell, it was running windows 3.11 and had 8 megs of memory. My wife and I bought it new from Best Buy sometime before the release of windows 95. I think we paid something like $1,200 for it, and that was on sale.

 

[Denithor]

Does anyone else remember the Monster 3D pass-through video card? Basically was supposed to 'boost' your performance with some kind of post-processing or something.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_Multimedia#Monster3D

I remember how much money I spent on gaming computers in those days. Ouch. When a 4MB GPU cost almost $400...

 

[Gordon Freemen]

SLI and CF are scaling very well for the most part now in days we are seeing close to or 100% scaling in some games. That being said I think the onus is on the game developers to code games better for the PC hardware than it is an AMD or Nvidia thing.

 

[Magic Carpet]

Does anyone else remember the Monster 3D pass-through video card? Basically was supposed to 'boost' your performance with some kind of post-processing or something.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_Multimedia#Monster3D

Oh yeah, I paid circa $250 for this gem. I had to, in order, to play GLQuake and Glide games. Need for Speed 2 SE was something else, along with Unreal engine games :thumbsup:

Later, I snagged a Diamond Monster 3D II MEGA Monster bundle for twice as much. Diamond Multimedia was "King" of that day.

I remember how much money I spent on gaming computers in those days. Ouch. When a 4MB GPU cost almost $400...

I paid way over $500 for a Diamond Stealth 64 Video 3400 (4MB VRAM). It played 'the 11th Hour' so smoothly in 24 bit color :biggrin:

 

[Destiny]

Back in the days I thought Power MACs had the best graphics for gaming... I actually saved all my lunch and lawn mowing money at age 16 to buy a Power MAC 6100 just for the FPS "Marathon" so I can have a lan fest with my only other friend with a Power MAC...

 

[imaheadcase]

The main difference is cards got so powerful for a time that it was simply not worth it to get games that needed SLI. Remember, it used to be a handful of games that everyone played in the world. For the longest time it was simply Quake, UT, Doom and some other basic games i'm to tired to think of.

 

[JohnnyChuttz]

Ah, cards with VGA out only, that takes me back. First card was a Voodoo Banshee for my Packard Bell that I had recently upgraded the ram from 4megs to 8 and the processor from a 486-sx-25mhz to a blistering 50mhz!

 

[Trizzay]

I remember I had a Monster card. I want to say it was 4 MB, and when I installed that thing I couldn't believe how much more beautiful Quake II looked .

Weren't the Monster cards a competitor to the Voodoo's?

Edit: Never mind, just looked it up. The Monster 3D cards were produced by Diamond, and based on the Voodoo chipset from 3dfx.

 

[Lonbjerg]

I remember I had a Monster card. I want to say it was 4 MB, and when I installed that thing I couldn't believe how much more beautiful Quake II looked .

Weren't the Monster cards a competitor to the Voodoo's?

Edit: Never mind, just looked it up. The Monster 3D cards were produced by Diamond, and based on the Voodoo chipset from 3dfx.

Yup...here in DK it wasn't the "Monsteer" cards that sold well though.
It was cards from Orchid Righteous 3D VooDoo card that were the shizzle.

I must add that I go way back before PC.

C64
C128
Amiga 500
Amiga 1200 + GVP 68040 Co-CPU + 8 MB FAST MEM
***********
Crossover to PC land...could se the Amiga (sadly) was stagnating and dying off.
***********
Intel 486 DX2..with a whooping 8 MB of RAM.
I spent ~$470 (Not counting in inflation) to get 8 MB RAM more...so that Win95 had 16 MB to play with.

Also why I laugh at people that whine about prices on graphics cards today...spoiled brats!

But yeah 3Dfx SLI have very little to do with SLI today...and cannot be compared directly.

They could kinda in the NV40 days (NVIDIA 6800 series) as they offered both SFR, AFR and CFR...today everyting is AFR.

 

[Magic Carpet]

^, Diamond cards were the fastest since they had been overclocked slightly... out of the box.

Quantum3D was the "SLI master" of 3dfx, however. Their AAlchemy line had many chips SLI'ed.

 

[SirPauly]

The major reason was probably geometry and 3dfx scan line interleave was probably too much of a hassle to continue from nVidia's perspective. AFR made more sense on it also scales geometry.

S L I acronym did go from Scan Line Interleave to Scalable Link Interface.

Edit: Thanks goes to Ferzerp for the correction.

 

[Ferzerp]

The major reason was probably geometry and 3dfx scan line interface was probably too much of a hassle to continue from nVidia's perspective. AFR made more sense on it also scales geometry.

S L I acronym did go from Scan Line Interleave to Scalable Link Interface.

ftfy

 

[SirPauly]

Thanks!

 

[joshhedge]

The main difference is cards got so powerful for a time that it was simply not worth it to get games that needed SLI. Remember, it used to be a handful of games that everyone played in the world. For the longest time it was simply Quake, UT, Doom and some other basic games i'm to tired to think of.

Unreal Tournament still looks damn decent these days!

 

[SickBeast]

The main difference is cards got so powerful for a time that it was simply not worth it to get games that needed SLI. Remember, it used to be a handful of games that everyone played in the world. For the longest time it was simply Quake, UT, Doom and some other basic games i'm to tired to think of.

Yep. My Voodoo 3 was one of my favorite cards of all time. It ran *everything* maxed out and it cost around $100, perhaps even less. My Voodoo 2s cost way more for an inferior gaming experience.

 

[Oyeve]

Man. I remember play tomb raider 1 in dos3dfx mode. Was awesome. Paid 400 for the addon card and vesa feature connector.