Why SLI sucks and is a waste of time:

I dont remember anyone bringing ATI up, but ok.
Fanatics you say huh?????
Maybe some of you should look into a mirror once in a while and maybe some threads would actually stay on course.
Everyone will benefit from SLI like mentioned before, but waiting for something you bought to mature while your toys depreciate is pointless.
I make pretty good money and I was looking @ SLI like a pregnant chick looking @ a pickle and ice cream, but there is no freakin way I can justify the cost not to mention time for something that doesnt always work.
So if its so worth it and cheap go ahead and buy into the marketing and wait for it until it matures. Ill just buy it in 3-5 months for half your cost while laughing @ you.
You say $400-$500 and $100 more for a mobo. What about people like me that run a Intel cpu. In my case its a 3.4EE and would like the best that AMD has to offer which would be an FX-55.
I say do the math and quit reading between the lines.

This is coming from a 6800U owner that would like to run 2 of them one day so I can turn all the eye candy on @ 16x12 on a huge ass LCD which is another $1k. That is the only reason I would go SLI is to run my games @ higher res on a larger LCD.
Im not willing to make the plunge into SLI and a new LCD just yet, but I would love to if I could play 10 out 10 of my favorite games. Im not willing to settle for 5 out of 10.

So as you can see for some of us the plunge into SLI is not as simple as for some of you.
I expect the best and I expect it to work.
Alot of the guys on here work their asses off for their money and you say its ok to spend the cash on something that doesnt completely work???

I say thats kind of selfish.......I say its kind of fanatic like.
 
omg, quit your damn whining. Don't want it? Then don't buy it. And I'm sorry, nothing you are going to buy is going to completely work with everything, so go ahead and hold out, you'll be doing it for the rest of your life.
 
Dr. X said:
omg, quit your damn whining. Don't want it? Then don't buy it. And I'm sorry, nothing you are going to buy is going to completely work with everything, so go ahead and hold out, you'll be doing it for the rest of your life.
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I agree.... like the 9700Pro worked fine when it first came out... :rolleyes: and then months later was proclaimed to be one of the best cards in history.
 
Dr. X said:
omg, quit your damn whining. Don't want it? Then don't buy it. And I'm sorry, nothing you are going to buy is going to completely work with everything, so go ahead and hold out, you'll be doing it for the rest of your life.
Click to expand...

Sorry I didnt shed any tears like you are implying so please stop reading between the lines.I though you and I were on the same page kind of, but I guess not. Im just making sure people dont make this into Nvidia vs ATI thread.
I would love to make the plunge into SLI, but wont right now.
BTW there is thousands of products that work with everything perfectly fine, but if you spend most of your life in a Nvidia bubble you have a different outlook on technology.
 
quicksilverXP said:
I agree.... like the 9700Pro worked fine when it first came out... :rolleyes: and then months later was proclaimed to be one of the best cards in history.
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Where does ATI come into this???? ATI has had their issues and will in the future just like Nvidia. So??? Its not about ATI. Its not about Nvidia. Its about SLI right now in its current state.
 
D4hPr0 said:
Where does ATI come into this???? ATI has had their issues and will in the future just like Nvidia. So??? Its not about ATI. Its not about Nvidia. Its about SLI right now in its current state.
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Well, if it's about SLI...it's about Nvidia. :) And maybe I misunderstood you before, I dunno. Maybe I'm just tired. It is 4:00am. Time for bed I think.
 
Dr. X said:
Well, if it's about SLI...it's about Nvidia. :) And maybe I misunderstood you before, I dunno. Maybe I'm just tired. It is 4:00am. Time for bed I think.
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Yeah I know. I think its about me wanting some new toys more than SLI. :p

HHHHHHHMMMMMMM 23" LCD.....cant wait.


I would change the title of the thread to why SLI sux right now though. Because I know it will get better....I hope
 
obs said:
I said it before and it still holds true. The only people who could not like SLI are the absolute diehard ATI fanatics. I'm not saying you have to be willing to go out and buy it, but EVERYONE benefits from this technology. Either directly or indirectly. This is something new people. It isn't going to be perfect and it will take time to get the maximum benefit out of it.
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The last thing I am is an ATI fanatic. Currently I'm a Matrox fan :D
 
I suspect that Nvidia thought they could dump the responsibility for profile creation on the game developers themselves....

Now, if I were I game developer, I'd think, why the fuck should I spend time and cash on implementing someone else's hardware details? If my software product is good, it will be bought anyway, regardless of whether it will run faster on a specific rendering platform...."

Now, I'm not going to disrespect nvidia's efforts, they have some damn smart people there, smarter than all of us fucktards who think we can tell them how to run a company.

BUT...the problem here is not the technology itself....the problem is that the value of the hardware is being held back by a lacking implementation in SOFTWARE.

Consider the following: Manufacturer A and B both bring out a hardware product. A's product is not as fast as B's, but it supports all known games, whereas B's product only has sporadic support.

Which are you going to buy?

Nvidia should get to work and address this issue. It's at the heart of it.


.
 
PhyberOptik said:
I suspect that Nvidia thought they could dump the responsibility for profile creation on the game developers themselves....

Now, if I were I game developer, I'd think, why the fuck should I spend time and cash on implementing someone else's hardware details? If my software product is good, it will be bought anyway, regardless of whether it will run faster on a specific rendering platform...."

Now, I'm not going to disrespect nvidia's efforts, they have some damn smart people there, smarter than all of us fucktards who think we can tell them how to run a company.

BUT...the problem here is not the technology itself....the problem is that the value of the hardware is being held back by a lacking implementation in SOFTWARE.

Consider the following: Manufacturer A and B both bring out a hardware product. A's product is not as fast as B's, but it supports all known games, whereas B's product only has sporadic support.

Which are you going to buy?

Nvidia should get to work and address this issue. It's at the heart of it.


.
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Couldnt say it any better. Its not the technology, its the support for the tech. Although game developers could be put to the task of writing profiles while developing the game I think it would be a bad idea. Hell most games miss their release dates by large margins as it is. No need to push them back more.
 
D4hPr0 said:
Couldnt say it any better. Its not the technology, its the support for the tech. Although game developers could be put to the task of writing profiles while developing the game I think it would be a bad idea. Hell most games miss their release dates by large margins as it is. No need to push them back more.
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I'm sure many games will be supported in the future. At least the games that DO need SLi are supported, while the ones we would like, such as WOW, will be in the future, although time will tell. But, I'm sure ALL future highly-anticipated games will support SLI. After all, the one positive thing about SLI is that it's made by a graphics card giant such as Nvidia. What future game wouldn't want to support Nvidia.
 
PhyberOptik said:
Consider the following: Manufacturer A and B both bring out a hardware product. A's product is not as fast as B's, but it supports all known games, whereas B's product only has sporadic support.

Which are you going to buy?
.
Click to expand...

Where does ATi support a game that dosn't run on Nvidia Hardware? :confused:
Last time I checked Nvida has MORE features than ATi...PS3.0 dosn't mean that it won't run PS2.0 games...OpenEXR HDR support dosn't mean that non-HDR games won't run on nVida hardware ect.

Terra - Talk about a useless anology...
 
PhyberOptik said:
Consider the following: Manufacturer A and B both bring out a hardware product. A's product is not as fast as B's, but it supports all known games, whereas B's product only has sporadic support.

Which are you going to buy?

Nvidia should get to work and address this issue. It's at the heart of it.


.
Click to expand...
Well lets see here. For one, there is no A unless you can name something that competes with SLI. It's a matter of just B. Would you be willing to toss down extra money to get a 150-200% performance boost in most popular games? Sure, if the games you play aren't supported then of course not. However, if they are, then it might be worth it. A lot of people only play 1-3 games most of the time.

The thing is, you are expecting it to be compatible with every game under the sun about a week after you can actually get the motherboards supporting it. This simply is not going to happen. If you really think that NVIDIA is going to drag their heels on support you are crazy. Both NVIDIA and ATI work with the developers of just about every new big game.
 
Its still in its early phase. I'd give it about 6 months until most every game (Top 100) is supported. Sure, you're going to have classics that are not supported by SLI, but that doesnt mean they dont work. They just dont use the full power that SLI offers. The only reason I'd really be concerned is if having an SLI system caused you not to be able to play certain games, which at this point I do not know if this is the case.

From my view (the poor hardware lover): I cant afford SLI, never will be able to. But I hope it does will, that way there is even more competition between the two big giants. This means that things will be better for all of this, there will new and interesting ways that SLI can be used allowing things we've never seen before. All around its a great thing, its just having its growing phase right now, you cant expect it to be perfect right away.
 
Everyone seems to be blinded by the nvidia SLI light. In order for a game to benefit from SLI, the game must be coded along nvidia's guidlines. How many games use AMD's 3DNow, Intel's SSE1/2/3? The technology is nice, but has limited application. I was hoping for something a little more transparent and not so dependant on programming render methods. If rendering techniques change, SLI could become unworkable. I am sure the developers of OpenGL, D3D, etc are not going to base their future designs on maintaining compatability with SLI considering there will be other implementations of multi-GPUs in the future.
 
panhead said:
Everyone seems to be blinded by the nvidia SLI light. In order for a game to benefit from SLI, the game must be coded along nvidia's guidlines. How many games use AMD's 3DNow, Intel's SSE1/2/3? The technology is nice, but has limited application. I was hoping for something a little more transparent and not so dependant on programming render methods. If rendering techniques change, SLI could become unworkable. I am sure the developers of OpenGL, D3D, etc are not going to base their future designs on maintaining compatability with SLI considering there will be other implementations of multi-GPUs in the future.
Click to expand...
Sigh, you really need to put some things into perspective. Would it really be bad if OpenGL and D3D move in a direction to allow easier multithreading? Yes, this could move it that way. Just like hyperthreading forces changes in windows and gives programmers more incentive to use multithreading in their programs. Same goes with SSE1/2/3. All these are tools that programmers have the option to support or not to support.

You act like the SLI coding requirements are extremely strict. You have NO CLUE what is involved. Heck, neither do I. However, considering quite a few different games support it, and those games had their engines finished long before SLI was out, I think that it is safe to say that the requirements are fairly broad.
 
obs said:
However, considering quite a few different games support it, and those games had their engines finished long before SLI was out, I think that it is safe to say that the requirements are fairly broad.
Click to expand...

Looking at the 17 currently supported games, http://www.nzone.com/object/nzone_hardware_sliapps.html
most of them have been released in 2004 the rest in 2003. Those games were in depelopment at the same time as SLI development. Nvidia has already stated that 2 games, also released in 2004, cannot support SLI, Microsoft's Flight Simulator 9 and Novalogic's Joint Operations. NVIDIA states that frame buffering techniques used in games of this sort that are problematic for SLI. Until Nvidia states what games can support SLI and what games cannot we won't really know.
 
Amazingly enough, all the major synthentic benchmarks work in SLI. I guess Im not too suprised, have to make sure those work!
 
Sims 2 is that on that list. I can see a few games that I'd love to be on there, I'm pretty sure they will at one point.

One interesting thing from looking at that list is that there is a Battle Field 1942 Desert Combat Mod. Now this really does worry me. Would nvidia have to create profiles for mods too? Okay, that makes little sense to me, but its interesting that DC is on there, but BF 1942 by itself is not.....
 
quicksilverXP said:
I'm sure many games will be supported in the future. At least the games that DO need SLi are supported, while the ones we would like, such as WOW, will be in the future, although time will tell. But, I'm sure ALL future highly-anticipated games will support SLI. After all, the one positive thing about SLI is that it's made by a graphics card giant such as Nvidia. What future game wouldn't want to support Nvidia.
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How many games support SMP multiprocessing? SMP has been a standard for years and game developers rarely support it if at all. What makes you think game developers are going to spend the time and money on nvidia's SLI with other multi-GPU platforms on the horizon. I think the 3D APIs will have to embrace this or a competing technology before multi-GPU are mainstream.
 
What if the games which are currently SLI compatable, get are updated to a newer version and get like major changes in their configuration, will the default SLi profiles still support them?? if yes, that'll be a constant assload of work for the ppl updating the nvidia drivers. If no, thats even better... :(
 
Nvidia is supposedly working on a way for users to create their own profiles and to make SLi more transparent and easier to use. Offering higher performance across all games.

Don't know how easy that is or isn't to do. But it seems necessary.
 
darn. if only i'd known about how crappy my sli is.
this forum is amazing.

I'd better get rid of this lethal rig and "upgrade" to a slower single slot solution.
 
They're just stating the fact that even for the wealthy enthusiast that SLI isn't really worth it other than the mainstream games.

I'd really love to see Pacific Fighters at 1600x1200, all options on 4AA 16AF or something to that effect. And no normal single graphics card could do that, but no, there is no SLI profile for it.
 
I'm personally of the opinion that this technology isn't all it's cracked up to be. You have to think that they knew about this technology limitation quite a few months before it was released, yet there are only

21

supported games on that Nvidia list link. I want you guys who poo-pooed the OP and defended NV to look at that list and tell me you don't have something in your gaming library, that HAD you gone SLI you would have been majorly disappointed to find it not there.

I'm not going to go SLI, but one look at that page would have made me say 'whoa' and 'no' if I was leaning that way. I learned long ago not to early adopt.

I play everything from FPS to RTS to MMORPG and I can tell you that that list is not adequate for 'Top 10' or anything else for the expected outlay of funds to acquire the tech.

Thats like having an expensive sports car you can only drive on 10% of the roads in america.

There are plenty of games they should have on there by now, of the Online games, Star Wars Galaxies is one huge FPS hog, and also very beautiful when the settings are cranked. IT and many others would benefit greatly from some extra power. The WOW and EQ2 guys have every right to be pissed. The right road for the big NV to travel is definitely going to be open sourcing that profile software.

I think the original poster made some good points and everybody got hung up on his examples. Yeah, Grim Fandango might not be the best example... or even a good one, but plenty of people have laid out better, and still old examples like Morrowind. Hell, Halo is old but it's on there. It's definitely not top 10 any more, so kudosfor effort, but still, there SHOULD have been more at launch

I think that like many have said before "if it's not for you, it's not for you" But that still doesn't excuse the fact that this wasn't the best way to innovate and introduce the new killer app for video cards. Letting people know the issue in advance would have been ethical, but likely would have killed the buzz surrounding the product. If you think they didn't think that one through in the ol' marketing dept, you are very naive.

So I'll give The Big NV (-1) point for shoddy business practices and hope they clean up their act by the time I need a new card, or two. :)

t
 
Heh some minor problems aside, I've managed to get SLI working on a good amount of titles that I still play, and it's worked fairly well on some of the games I've tested on it so far.

EQ2 shows a noticeable benefit from SLI now, and 1600x1200 4xaa 8xaf is very easy on the eyes in that game (and it's still quite playable in various grouping spots including dungeon crawls). And honestly despite the fact to some excessively tweaking a computer is fairly frowned upon these days, tweaking and figuring out how SLI works has been a fairly entertaining experience.

Do I regret buying this rig? No not at all, it's worked very well with the games I play, and overall it was my jump into the Athlon64 bandwagon (I came from an mobile barton 2500+ overclocked on an Nforce2). I'm not planning to upgrade again for quite some time so this rig should keep me pretty comfy for a good while.

SLI is still pretty rough, with a few glitches here and there that just don't want to work itself out without some newer driver revisions, but it's nothing I can't deal with and the gameplay aspect of it has been fantastic for me so far.

At the same time, I would NEVER blindly recommend someone to pick up an SLI rig without telling them to do their homework first, since it's fairly obvious that this kind of setup isn't attractive to a lot of people. And honestly to a lot of people all it takes is for SLI to not work in ONE game to turn them off completely to the concept.

The info is out there about SLI, and there's people out there with rigs like this already. The people on the fence about SLI will just have to do a little research and arrive at their own conclusions about whether or not this stuff is right for them.
 
Personally i think its an elegant solution and quite frankly i am suprised the technology is working so well at such an early stage. I invested in the 6600gts so that in the event it worked poorly i could easily sell off these mainstream cards( and the Ultras were not available lol) . Now that I have resolved all my issues and things are purring like a kitten , its Ultra time.

PS: It is absolutely amazing to me that an addtional .0125volts on the Vcore solved all of my issues of stability. Note it was a motherboard issue not Video card issue
 
I think SLi is a great technology and it should do nothing but improve over the next couple years. Early adoption of technology often has it's issues. But for most of us who do this knowing what we are getting into, we are fine with it.
 
Why SLI sucks and is a waste of time
Click to expand...

Assuming the technology stays around how could it be a waste of time? Throw an extra $350-550 more in one computer and it should be able to play the latest games for a long, long time with good fps & detail. Well worth the money. And if an older game isn't supported--well, what game doesn't run well on a single 6800GT?

<grain of salt (yeast, hops & ferment)>This is coming from someone still using a 900 Mhz processor so I do get the mileage out of the things. I don't *have* to run at the highest resolution, refresh rate & detail to enjoy games.
 
so tell me why i'd be better off to NOT get SLI, when someone has a tremendous amount of wealth.

im not saying thats me, but i'm not poor by any means at all.

just saying, whats the point in ripping on a usable, rich boys toy? because you cant have it or refuse to pay for it?

i mean, i could see how its a little expensive for someone on a budget, but for those of us who really are not on a budget per se.. whats the problem?

i mean, it works for me, and in any resolution any setting.. and any game that i've thrown it at.


granted, i've found over the years (i've been gaming since the commodore 64) that the mainstream games seem to be the best quality, most fun and the ones i enjoy the most (HL2/Doom3/UT ect), those are all supported, and its really easy to add games that arent supported.


i dont know guys.

i just expect this debate to be going on again when ATI releases their SLI or you are all hypocrits.
 
People have been voiceing thier concerns, complaints over Nvidia's lack of gaming profiles ever since SLI was introduced. The answer from Nvidia has remained constant, that they are working on the situation and profiles are on the way. How many new SLI profiles have been introduced??? Not many..! I am not sure what Nvidia's support team is up to? No new driver releases, no new profiles. World of Warcraft is a huge game right now and has been for a while and still no SLI profile. Pathetic! :confused:
 
DandyBear said:
People have been voiceing thier concerns, complaints over Nvidia's lack of gaming profiles ever since SLI was introduced. The answer from Nvidia has remained constant, that they are working on the situation and profiles are on the way. How many new SLI profiles have been introduced??? Not many..! I am not sure what Nvidia's support team is up to? No new driver releases, no new profiles. World of Warcraft is a huge game right now and has been for a while and still no SLI profile. Pathetic! :confused:
Click to expand...

I don't know where you've been but WoW works fine with SLi.
 
DandyBear said:
People have been voiceing thier concerns, complaints over Nvidia's lack of gaming profiles ever since SLI was introduced. The answer from Nvidia has remained constant, that they are working on the situation and profiles are on the way. How many new SLI profiles have been introduced??? Not many..! I am not sure what Nvidia's support team is up to? No new driver releases, no new profiles. World of Warcraft is a huge game right now and has been for a while and still no SLI profile. Pathetic! :confused:
Click to expand...

It's not like you can't create your own profiles easily enough, and it seems a smaller price to pay to get next gen performance than say, waiting till next gen?
I can see why HL2/Far Cry/Doom3 are the titles nV did first, they need the power most.

I'm not a WoW type game player, but aren't those games more CPU limited than GPU? I thought the deal with the MMORGs was they are bound by AI computations on CPU, not the pixel processing? Also, isn't the pace much slower, so raw fps doesn't matter like shooters?

http://hardware.gamespot.com/Story-ST-x-1304-x-x-x&body_pagenum=4
When taking cost into account, the performance improvements offered by the high-end contenders don't justify getting a top-of-the-line ATI or Nvidia card just for World of Warcraft.
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Correct me if I'm wrong, I don't like those types of games so I don't read nearly as much about them.
 
In my experience with SWG, the pace is slower, but the extra graphical horsepower would have been nice when I was playing to even out the massive drops in frame rate when coming into towns or huge areas with detailed scenery.

My 9800pro ran decent enough, but you could really crank up the viewing distance, shadow details and bump mapping if you wanted, and it ran at like 10 FPS. So to achieve a fairly consistant rate you had to compromise, which dropped your immersion factor a lot...

It's good to hear that EQ2 and WoW are running now, I'm sure that EQ2 takes advantage of the extra power.

T
 
The problem with sli, Peoples expectations... People were expecting it to work as seemlessy as the 3dfx version.. It didn't... Scan Line Interleave worked with pretty much every 3d game out there, without any special profiles. If it was 3d, it generally just worked..

People had expectations, nvidia said nothing to dissuade people of them, and some people are now pissed.. But if you didn't buy it, you can't really complain.. If you did, that's different..

They should have been alittle more forthcoming with it's limitations, but what company ever markets their shortcomings..

Nv will prolly fix it, get many more games supported, b4 the next gen cards come out though. The last thing they want is a sleeper hit come out that will not benefit from their version of sli..
 
for the issue of how Few games support SLI,

1) Nvidia just released ew drivers that support a boatload of new games

and 2) if you really want Simcity1 to work with SLI a 2 minute coding job is all it takes, u dont even need any programming skills, all you need are typing skills and reading skills, and if you dont have those then you are hearing voices in your head right now...
 
early adopters bleed from the wallet and the fingertips, thats a fact jack.

This is one technology I am gonna wait on.

Yall figure it out and I will pick it up when it makes sense to run it.
 
In the immortal words of Jack Nicholson's character from As Good as it Gets - "I think people who speak in metaphors should shampoo my crotch." So can we quit with the figurative language. It's not like a cpu that doesn't work. It's not like a sports car. It's not like anything - just talk about what it actually is and does, what it isn't and doesn't. That's what helps n00bs like me.

I'm pretty new here, but am amazed at the territorial pissing contests that go on and the bitching in this thread - it sounds like a damn quilting circle at the Old Ladies VFW Auxiliary. Usually when I come for help there isn't this much back and forth.

I don't bleed at the wallet. And I don't bleed from the fingertips. And I see so many people on here calling me someone with too much money to spend and just wasting it on bleeding edge technology just to say I've got it.

Not true - how incredibly presumptuous some of you are. I've been saving for a new computer for the last five years. I wanted to wait until there are upgrades that seemed truly worth it.

What do I classify as worth it?

SLI and 64-bit processing dual cores and SATA 2. DDR3 I am not sold on.

So I am compiling components - this is what I have been using for the last five years:

Dell Dimension #### - 500 MHz P3
128 MB SDRAM (PC-100)
32 MB Diamond Viper v7770 Ultra TNT2
13.6 GB WD HD
19" CRT monitor

I am planning on getting or have already gotten (indicated with *):
DFI Lanparty SLI-DR
AMD 64 3500+ Winchester* 9 (hopefully, the 939 socket will accommodate dual core as indicated - if not, oh well - coming from a 500 P3, the 3500 will last me long enough ;) )
BFG 6800 Ultra OC or GT OC (x2)
1 GB 400-speed RAM (for starters - still need to do a lot of research, waiting for the results of mobo success with RAM before I commit)
3 160 GB Seagate Barracudas in RAID 5 array*
22" Viewsonic CRT*
PCPSC 510-SLI power supply*
CoolerMaster Stacker Case*

I think I've suffered with a weak rig long enough. But it was good enough for Quake 3, Starcraft, Microsoft Word, and surfing. It was good enough to get me through college and the first couple of years of 'real life' - but because I've saved, I'm gonna enjoy spending it. And I'm neither stupid nor rich.

But SLI really intrigues me and it's not like I need it to be perfect right out of the box - what ever is? I remember the issues when I was considering a 9700 Pro years ago. By the time I am ready to have it working perfectly, I'm sure nVidia will be able to provide.

In the meantime, while all the SLI kinks get worked out (which anyone should expect there will be with such technology) I'll have the performance of a single 6800 if need be. I think the upgrade from a 32 MB TNT2 card will be enough for me to enjoy for a while.
 
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