An interesting read on SLI.
Highlights:
That's bad news, IMHO.
SLI requires nVidia to code a specific profile for each game in order for it to work with it.
What do you think the odds are of nVidia bothering to SLI up older games like Grim Fandango or Monkey Island 4 or X-Wing Alliance?
Or what about modern graphics-intensive games that aren't mainstream. "Pacific Fighters", "Lock On: Modern Air Combat", "Dangerous Waters", etc?
Forgive me if I don't want to be bound to a manufacturer's proprietary standard to determine if a game I want to play will even run or not. (Alright, so I know it will run in non-SLI mode if it can't enable it....but, as Tom's Hardware noted...when run in non-SLI mode, you only have one card doing the work, but the SLI overhead is still there. So, in the end, it's *slower* than that one card would have been on its own. For a single 6800 Ultra, maybe 'a little slower than on its own' is fine - but what about users who want to SLI GeForce 6600GT cards? Or use that Gigabyte 2-core card? If the SLI profile for that game doesn't exist....suddenly performance in the game is going to SUCK!)
Amazingly, reading their article, Tom's Hardware noted that of the 10 games they tested, 2 didn't support SLI. And they were testing mainstream - MAINSTREAM! - games! If we can count on 20% of *mainstream* games not working with SLI....I shudder to think about backwards compatibility with it!
Seriously, if you think the case is mistated, take a look at the .inf file for the stereo drivers! 1200 game profiles. 1200, and, yet...the Sims and the Sims 2 are missing! X-Wing Alliance? Not there! The *demo* of it is, but, strangely, the driver released 3 years after the game only has the demo supported, but not the full game. X-Wing vs Tie Fighter? Nope. Longbow 2? Naddah. "Lock On" and the first "IL2" are in....the second IL2 (and third - "Pacific Fighters") are not.
The list of omissions goes on and on....and that's a driver that's been out and being updated for years (literally, at least 5 now). How much less support can we expect for something that has only just been released and is more complicated to configure, anyway?
Highlights:
Tomshardware said:After several benchmark tests we noticed some relatively slow performance in two of our games. After turning on SLI HUD in the driver we saw that SLI was not active during these games. Even our efforts to force SLI operation through the expanded driver settings had no effect. After talking with NVIDIA we learned the cause: SLI is not available with some games. NVIDIA has so-called SLI Profiles for games that are defined in the driver. The driver recognizes the game via application detection and executes the SLI mode (split or balancing) designated for that profile. If no SLI profile exists for a game, there is no SLI rendering. It is not possible to force SLI mode or generate your own profile. According to NVIDIA however the driver already contains over 50 profiles for games running with SLI. For newer titles this therefore means that SLI system owners have to wait for a new driver. But even then there is no guarantee that SLI will be possible with a particular game.
According to NVIDIA there are games that are simply not compatible with SLI. Microsoft's Flight Simulator 9 and Novalogic's Joint Operations for example both cause problems. As of the test date we were unable to find out the precise reasons why. NVIDIA only talks about frame buffering techniques used in games of this sort that are problematic for SLI. Of the 10 games we included in this test, two of them were non-SLI-compatible.
That's bad news, IMHO.
SLI requires nVidia to code a specific profile for each game in order for it to work with it.
What do you think the odds are of nVidia bothering to SLI up older games like Grim Fandango or Monkey Island 4 or X-Wing Alliance?
Or what about modern graphics-intensive games that aren't mainstream. "Pacific Fighters", "Lock On: Modern Air Combat", "Dangerous Waters", etc?
Forgive me if I don't want to be bound to a manufacturer's proprietary standard to determine if a game I want to play will even run or not. (Alright, so I know it will run in non-SLI mode if it can't enable it....but, as Tom's Hardware noted...when run in non-SLI mode, you only have one card doing the work, but the SLI overhead is still there. So, in the end, it's *slower* than that one card would have been on its own. For a single 6800 Ultra, maybe 'a little slower than on its own' is fine - but what about users who want to SLI GeForce 6600GT cards? Or use that Gigabyte 2-core card? If the SLI profile for that game doesn't exist....suddenly performance in the game is going to SUCK!)
Amazingly, reading their article, Tom's Hardware noted that of the 10 games they tested, 2 didn't support SLI. And they were testing mainstream - MAINSTREAM! - games! If we can count on 20% of *mainstream* games not working with SLI....I shudder to think about backwards compatibility with it!
Seriously, if you think the case is mistated, take a look at the .inf file for the stereo drivers! 1200 game profiles. 1200, and, yet...the Sims and the Sims 2 are missing! X-Wing Alliance? Not there! The *demo* of it is, but, strangely, the driver released 3 years after the game only has the demo supported, but not the full game. X-Wing vs Tie Fighter? Nope. Longbow 2? Naddah. "Lock On" and the first "IL2" are in....the second IL2 (and third - "Pacific Fighters") are not.
The list of omissions goes on and on....and that's a driver that's been out and being updated for years (literally, at least 5 now). How much less support can we expect for something that has only just been released and is more complicated to configure, anyway?