3 Way SLI - MultiCard setups Bah Humbug

I'm currently running an SLI setup and I totally agree with you on that.
 
I always wished I could have done 3-way before I got married but... umm wait this is about video cards? yea screw it im happy with my single 8800gt :D
 
Hehehe, sounds like somebody(Nvidia) feels hurt their shiny new toy isn't liked by everybody...:D


But anyways I feel much like you in that SLi is a waste of money, and in most instances space as well. It could also jeopardize the life of your other components in that the setup would generate a lot of heat while consuming a lot of power.
 
First off i find it kind of offensive that you make the decision for everyone here at HARD OCP that 3 way sli is a waste of time, Maybe for some but not for others. So does this mean that in the future if there is something you ( KYLE ) dont like on a personal level your readers will not got the information in a Un-Biased way. Hmm im scratching my head on this one, I personally think 3 way Sli is crap as well but let me make my mind up on it, Hell i wanna see some benchies.
 
What do I think? I smell burnage of some kind, not sure which kind though :p

"corporate epenis saber battles" kekkles
 
Marcdaddy said:
First off i find it kind of offensive that you make the decision for everyone here at HARD OCP that 3 way sli is a waste of time, Maybe for some but not for others. So does this mean that in the future if there is something you ( KYLE ) dont like on a personal level your readers will not got the information in a Un-Biased way. Hmm im scratching my head on this one, I personally think 3 way Sli is crap as well but let me make my mind up on it, Hell i wanna see some benchies.
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Well, I guess if I were making a decision for you, I would not be posting here or on the front page asking for you feedback???? NVIDIA asked my opinion and I told them. Obviously they are still doing it.....and we would have covered it for sure had the opportunity been extended to us, then we could give our informed opinions backed up with data and you could have drawn your own conclusions on that.
 
Kyle this is what you said and maybe i took it out of context,
One of the reasons NVIDIA stated that it had not shared 680i/3-Way SLI with [H] was because we have previously expressed to them that we think 3-Way SLI would not interest our readers, which we did tell them in closed meetings.
 
I rather see more expensive high end cards than just suckering people into buying multiple cards. I could understand if you got twice the performance but yeah you dont....
 
I agree. I used to SLI with two 7900GT's. After the upgrade and wanting to play FEAR (the top game at the time) at high settings, it was awesome. But any more, I just don't do enough gaming to consider SLI or CrossFire anymore.

I think that having the option to do Triple SLI or CrossFireX is a fun thing to throw in for the "high-end" gamers. And by high-end, I'm talking gamers with money to burn, just for the fun of it. Kyle is right, more games like Crysis are going to be needed for such a setup, as a single top-range card can run almost all of today's games at nearly (or total) maximum settings.

Like I said, it's a fun idea that NVIDIA and AMD came up with, but I would never use this as a prime selling point/item.

As for heat/power issues, if a person can afford this many cards, they probably can afford high-end liquid cooling solutions and 1K watt+ PSU's as well. aka, e-penis time!

If I could afford it, I would do it, but it would just be for fun and the experience.

More games are definitely needed with advanced graphics. Like the Physix card, more games were needed. When they weren't released, it tended to make the card unpopular to the gaming masses. It was a good idea that fell short due to lack of supported games/applications.


...now just imagine CrossFireX with 4 HD3870X2 cards. 8 GPU madness! lol :D


If a Quadro-style solution of this were released, then I could understand more due to the advanced CAD and 3-D development. 3 (or 4) of these cards could really be usefull in a high-end developement situation. But in the end, it really depends on whether that kind of GPU power is necessary or not (and if the programs support it to its full advantage).
 
Hell i wanna see some benchies.
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QFT. If, and I strongly mention IF, the benchies prove to be impressive to warrant the kind of money needed for one of these setups, then maybe it could be worth it to get it in the future. But when nVidia launched SLI, its performance wasn't THAT great and drivers were problematic. Eventually it matured to a better performing setup, but it took time. Seeing this, I would be quite shocked if nVidia released drivers that actually gave you 3x performance boost from 3-way SLI. Again, benchmarks are what I want to see first before I give any opinion about this. Sure its good for the average enthusiast, but for mainstream users, that depends on performance and price.

Edit: It just came to me that It would be an interesting idea if nVidia decided to work on dual core GPUs. I mean they have dual core CPUs, why not the same for graphics? Seems plausible.
 
If SLI scaled perfectly then maybe, JUST MAYBE more people would adopt it.

But when 1 slightly more expensive card can perform better than two weaker cards, what is the point?

if I want to upgrade than I have to upgrade both of them?

It is too much hassle, work, headaches for too little boost in performance.
 
DAN_D this is Kyles comment that i didnt agree with
One of the reasons NVIDIA stated that it had not shared 680i/3-Way SLI with [H] was because we have previously expressed to them that we think 3-Way SLI would not interest our readers, which we did tell them in closed meetings.
 
The Gonz said:
If SLI scaled perfectly then maybe, JUST MAYBE more people would adopt it.

But when 1 slightly more expensive card can perform better than two weaker cards, what is the point?

if I want to upgrade than I have to upgrade both of them?

It is too much hassle, work, headaches for too little boost in performance.
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I don't mind replacing both cards. Many people feel like a selling point for SLI is the upgradability but as we've seen for the last several generations a single higher end card is often the better route to go with than two lower end cards in SLI. Scaling and newer features often being the reason for this. Not to mention relatively short product life cycles for some of these cards makes availability difficult. Now use SLI with two high end cards and your looking at something special. However the returns on the second card vs. the first one are obviously smaller, but like Ferrari's and higher end products in other markets those with the cash to afford these things usually don't mind the expense and feel that what they are getting is worth the price.

inotocracy said:
The performance jump going from 2-SLI to 3-SLI is pretty nice actually...

http://www.pcgameshardware.de/?article_id=624620&page=5
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So far it seems like it is. Two scale well depending on the game and I imagine that the 3-Way SLI is the same way. Some games will see huge improvements and others won't.

Marcdaddy said:
DAN_D this is Kyles comment that i didnt agree with
One of the reasons NVIDIA stated that it had not shared 680i/3-Way SLI with [H] was because we have previously expressed to them that we think 3-Way SLI would not interest our readers, which we did tell them in closed meetings.
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I understand that.
 
Dan_D said:
Not if the setup is carefully thought out and assembled. SLI can be a pain in the ass, and it can also be very rewarding to those willing to shell out the cash for it.
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Which isn't the average Joe.

It also negates the fact the apps/games/etc your are getting rewarded in are so few and far in between.



Dan_D said:
I think that NVIDIA is just doing this to save face against ATI who now has CrossfireX. If you ask me three and four card setups are horribly impractical, but that doesn't mean that they don't have thier uses. I can see high end professional systems configured with three or four FireGL/Quadro cards, but in the desktop space, our motherboards don't have enough PCIe slots and real estate to make this practical. Not to mention the power requirements are absolutely insane. Most people also don't have low enough ambient temperatures and adequate cooling in general to make a setup like this work reliabily.
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I somewhat agree with you here around the end but I really don't feel Nvidia is trying to save face.

They probably honestly feel that TRI Sli is the next step up. And also weren't TRI SLi rumors heard before the CrossfireX rumors started?
 
Marcdaddy said:
WOW if thats true 3 8800GTs wopuld look pretty nice running at 1920X1200
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He didn't tell them not to, he offered his opinion, they chose not to. I personally didn't know about Tri-SLI until yesterday when Kyle asked me about it.
 
Marcdaddy said:
WOW if thats true 3 8800GTs wopuld look pretty nice running at 1920X1200
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You can't use 3 8800GT's in SLI. Only the 8800GTX and 8800Ultra are capable of 3-Way SLI. The 8800GT/8800GTS 320MB/8800GTS 640MB and 8800GTS 512MB cards are incapable of running 3-Way SLI as they lack the secondary bridge connector.
 
Nvidia should have just left things alone and not gone in this direction. It's pointless and contrived and I really don't understand how upper management lets the marketing tards get away with this kind of stuff. Nvidia is a good company that designs and outsource manufactures good video cards. Why they would go in this 'enthusiast' direction is beyond me.
 
If the [H] is not hard enough for 3-way SLI, then I would like Nvidia to share with us who they think IS hard enough for it. Is there a website for rich ass dudes with money burning a hole in their pocket out there? Seems like if you would find anyone wanting to run something like this, it would be here.

I personally am ditching my SLI system and going back to a single-GPU system with a higher end video card instead.

SLI is neat, and will probably set the table for multi-gpu solutions in the future, but I think it has a lot of room for improvement. Single-GPU with multi-cores should be the only SLI we are doing, imho.
 
bigk said:
Which isn't the average Joe.

It also negates the fact the apps/games/etc your are getting rewarded in are so few and far in between.





I somewhat agree with you here around the end but I really don't feel Nvidia is trying to save face.

They probably honestly feel that TRI Sli is the next step up. And also weren't TRI SLi rumors heard before the CrossfireX rumors started?
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The rumors have existed since the 8800GTX was introduced. The secondary bridge connector has always been present on the 8800GTX cards. I've expected Tri-SLI for some time now. I am actually surprised it took so long for them to announce it officially.

Honestly I do think NVIDIA is trying to save face. Not because they have to in reality but because they probably feel the need to take some steam out of ATI's CrossfireX.

As far as the rewards being too few I disagree. Everytime I crank up COD4, Crysis, or UT3 I feel the rewards. I also feel the rewards on the older titles as it allows me unparralled image quality and insane levels of AA and AF. Not worth it for some, but it has been for me.
 
Methadras said:
Nvidia should have just left things alone and not gone in this direction. It's pointless and contrived and I really don't understand how upper management lets the marketing tards get away with this kind of stuff. Nvidia is a good company that designs and outsource manufactures good video cards. Why they would go in this 'enthusiast' direction is beyond me.
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It is quite simple. Guys like me who buy the fastest configuration possible most of the time will buy three cards instead of two when thier next generation parts are released. So basically they've probably sold three cards to most people who embrace SLI and always have. NVIDIA has been selling me high end cards two at a time for a few years now. So now they want to sell me three at a time.
 
Methadras said:
Nvidia should have just left things alone and not gone in this direction. It's pointless and contrived and I really don't understand how upper management lets the marketing tards get away with this kind of stuff. Nvidia is a good company that designs and outsource manufactures good video cards. Why they would go in this 'enthusiast' direction is beyond me.
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You have to understand Video Cards are for the most part an 'enthusiast' product.

How many Soccer Moms you see installing a 8800GT in their rig? If they even had a "rig".

I do understand your premise though(or at least I think I do) in that Nvidia had stayed out of the gimmicky side of doing business in producing their products.
 
Dan_D said:
It is quite simple. Guys like me who buy the fastest configuration possible most of the time will buy three cards instead of two when thier next generation parts are released.
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Pretty much the only game that will really benefit with such a setup though is Crysis, every other game runs very well with a single Ultra (or SLI-2 card for 2560x1600). Take for example COD 4, brand new game, looks really great, plays well at 19x12 4X AA, max in-game settings on a single GTX.
 
Brent_Justice said:
Pretty much the only game that will really benefit with such a setup though is Crysis, every other game runs very well with a single Ultra.
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Yeah, but I can still crank the settings up higher than I could on a single Ultra on my dual overclocked 8800GTX's in SLI. When you are running on a 30" monitor at 2560x1600 every little bit sometimes helps.
 
Dan_D said:
Some games will see huge improvements and others won't.
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That's why SLI isn't really my thing. Give me something that works consistently all the time, or forget about it. A single GPU driven card with the power of 3? Make that and I'm sold.
 
Dan_D said:
Yeah, but I can still crank the settings up higher than I could on a single Ultra on my dual overclocked 8800GTX's in SLI. When you are running on a 30" monitor at 2560x1600 every little bit sometimes helps.
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At 2560, yes, 2-card SLI is beneficial no doubt, but honestly right now only Crysis pushes a need for more than 2 cards even at a high rez like 2560.
 
Brent_Justice said:
At 2560, yes, 2-card SLI is beneficial no doubt, but honestly right now only Crysis pushes a need for more than 2 cards even at a high rez like 2560.
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Agreed.

And if I could find a watercooled 8800GTX that was cheap enough, and I had the necessary drivers, and assuming the card would clear my south bridge waterblock, I'd give it a try tomorrow. (Also assuming I had a patch or beta build of Crysis that would work with it.)
 
Well I like to game with everything on at the native resolution of my 24" lcd. That being said, having 8 or even 4xAA looks very nice especially with 16xAF. I've been playing COD4 and on my opty 165 2xAA and max AF is what I'm currently at, the game starts getting laggy when I up settings to 4xAA (even though I have 8800GTX's in sli, most likely the proc opty [email protected] is holding me back). I havent installed Crysis yet cause I'm waiting for the so called "sli patch".

Well anyways I can imagine users with 30" lcd's wanting to get full eye candy with 4-8xAA and 16xAF at 60fps min in current games will go for a tri sli setup. Realistically I see myself going dual sli with the D9E on a 780i chipset C2Q setup.
 
I'll probably go Triple-SLi at some point if I can figure out how to do it on air (I'd imagine it won't be that impractical).

SLi is far from a waste as long as you do it at the get-go with the high end parts. As an upgrade path, it makes very little sense. But as a means of getting "better than the best" performance. . . why not? As long as you have the means, there's nothing wrong with "doubling up" on an initial investment in gaming performance.

My last two rigs have had SLi at their inception (7800gtx then 8800gtx). They weren't trumped during their lifetime (each about a year. . . and stilling counting on the latter). Then you sell the cards and buy the next pair. Why not?

It's not about e-peen waving (though note that Kyle was referring to the corporations wagging their e-peens, not the users). It's just about folks with the means seeing no point in not spending more to get more. And quite frankly, the difference in eye candy levels between SLi and non-SLi can be dramatic.
 
Dan_D said:
It is quite simple. Guys like me who buy the fastest configuration possible most of the time will buy three cards instead of two when their next generation parts are released. So basically they've probably sold three cards to most people who embrace SLI and always have. NVIDIA has been selling me high end cards two at a time for a few years now. So now they want to sell me three at a time.
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I think the point everyone is missing here is that nVidia is doing marginal PR stunts like this instead of releasing that next-generation part, simply because they can. It took ATI a whole year to just catch back up in the sub-$300 range - nV has absolutely no incentive to continue advancing into new technologies, when they can get the same PR with stunts like this, all the whole keeping the performance crown with the same part for 12 months.
 
SLI is for retards with big pockets... reminds me of the saying, "A fool and his money are soon parted".

I can see the Nvidia marketing team:

"Hey let's make graphics cards cost the cost of a brand new pc alone."
"Great idea!"

"Oh, now what... we need to scam more money out of people because that's the only way to afford luxuries in this day and age as a business"

"I GOT IT! LETS MAKE IT PHYSICALLY POSSIBLE TO USE TWO!!!"
*motherboard manufacturers are like "sure, fug it, why not"

"OMG WHAT MARKETING GENIUS!"

Then I read Hardocp....

NOW THREE WAY SLI?!?!!?

BWUAAHAHAH!!! The morons will buy it too!

I remember the QUAD SLI stuff from back in the day and I just shook my head.

SLI is the most worthless waste of money I could imagine when purchasing a new PC component for a system.

I'll bet you half of the SLI users out there if not more don't even have a 10k rpm drive or are running at 1 GB of memory versus 2 or 4.

SLI should stand for Stupid Loser Interface.

IF you need SLI to own, you probably suck ass anyways, spending another 500 dollars isn't going to pixel your way into the lead on FPS games.
 
Another issue, not mentioned yet R.E. SLI, is that multiple-displays are not supported with SLI enabled. You have to turn off multiple-display before you can enable SLI. I personally run a tri-display setup, and to have to keep disabling displays to enable SLI would get very annoying, especially because most of the time a restart would be required and I can't exactly restart everytime I want to play a game.
 
Brent_Justice said:
At 2560, yes, 2-card SLI is beneficial no doubt, but honestly right now only Crysis pushes a need for more than 2 cards even at a high rez like 2560.
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pfft. The card in my sig could do that... at less than 1 fps! :D

Actually, my card can't even do 2560x1600. :eek:

I would have liked to see triple SLI with the 84/85/8600's, but the price/performance ratio would suck and the tiny memory bus width wouldn't help either. But it would still be fun to have the capability! Hey guys, look at my triple 8400GS setup! Bawlin! lol :p
 
Fuzzy Logik said:
SLI is for retards with big pockets... reminds me of the saying, "A fool and his money are soon parted".

I can see the Nvidia marketing team:

"Hey let's make graphics cards cost the cost of a brand new pc alone."
"Great idea!"

"Oh, now what... we need to scam more money out of people because that's the only way to afford luxuries in this day and age as a business"

"I GOT IT! LETS MAKE IT PHYSICALLY POSSIBLE TO USE TWO!!!"
*motherboard manufacturers are like "sure, fug it, why not"

"OMG WHAT MARKETING GENIUS!"

Then I read Hardocp....

NOW THREE WAY SLI?!?!!?

BWUAAHAHAH!!! The morons will buy it too!

I remember the QUAD SLI stuff from back in the day and I just shook my head.

SLI is the most worthless waste of money I could imagine when purchasing a new PC component for a system.

I'll bet you half of the SLI users out there if not more don't even have a 10k rpm drive or are running at 1 GB of memory versus 2 or 4.

SLI should stand for Stupid Loser Interface.

IF you need SLI to own, you probably suck ass anyways, spending another 500 dollars isn't going to pixel your way into the lead on FPS games.
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I honestly think that is a bit harsh, SLI does have its benefits, 2-card SLI anyway, especially at 2560x1600 on a 30" display. It is just tri-SLI and so forth, that is questionable right now since there is really only 1 game it would benefit.
 
I'm glad I wasn't drinking coffee when I read,
NVIDA has 3-Way SLI, AMD has Quad-CrossFire, but I just don't see them being much use beyond corporate ePenis saber battles. That’s my 2 cents, you might need change.
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That cracked me up. :D

I'm running SLI'd GTX. Running 3 GTXs or Ultras would require super cooling on top of the new MB/PSU etc. At least with 2 cards, there's room for airflow between them unlike the Tri-setup.
Your getting into the realm of a dedicated circuit for your main box and another to run your peripherals.

The numbers from Crysis don't look that great on the tested setup running Tri.
 
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