Nvidia Corp. on Thursday officially announced its 3-way multi-GPU technology dubbed triple-SLI. The tech, which tries walking in the shoes of quad-SLI that failed to offer any serious advantage, promises to get video games on the PC to a whole new level by improving performance by nearly three times over a single graphics card.
Nvidia’s 3-way SLI technology allows three Nvidia GeForce 8800 Ultra or Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX graphics cards to work in unison in order to bring framerates that were never seen before in modern video games, according to claims made by Nvidia Corp., the world’s largest supplier of discrete graphics processing units (GPUs). In addition, customers will have to own a personal computer (PC) based on Nvidia 680i SLI core-logic that supports three PCI Express slots for three graphics boards.
“The new crop of PC games offers stunning visuals. And for truly immersive game play with all the eye candy you need to play on a PC with a lot of graphics horse power. 3-way SLI produces stunning visuals, pristine image quality, and a truly awesome gaming experience,” said Ujesh Desai, general manager of GeForce desktop GPUs at Nvidia.
According to the developer, Nvidia’s new 3-way SLI delivers up to a 2.8x performance increase over a single GPU system, “giving high-end gamers 60 frames per second at resolutions as high as 2560x1600 and with 8x antialiasing”.
Unfortunately, at press time there were no benchmarks of 3-way SLI available in a respectable amount of modern video games on the Internet. Back in the days of its 4-way SLI multi-GPU systems Nvidia also decided not to let reviewers to benchmark four of its GeForce 7 GPUs working in company. The technology was scrapped eventually due to low performance gain and the release of the GeForce 8.
Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX graphics card has recommended retail price of $549 - $599 and upwards, whereas Nvidia GeForce 8800 Ultra costs $849, according to Nvidia’s official pricing. Nvidia nForce 680i SLI-based mainboards are priced at around $200.
Comments currently:
8
Discussion started: 12/13/07 05:15:01 PM
Latest comment: 12/15/07 08:22:01 AM
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1.
It sounds great, and early benchmarks show that it performs admirably, just the kind of quality one would expect from the graphics leader, Nvidia.
I would definitely jump on it if it trickles down to the more affordable 8800GT, coupled with 45nm Intel Quad-Cores and I've got myself a system that BLASTS games (except crysis) to pieces. YAY
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Posted by: Mr. BonBon
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Date: 12/13/07 05:15:01 PM]
2.
Technology seems mature, unlike the "late" quad-SLI, and the performance scaling is good under the right circumstances.
Drawback is that it's really for the ultra hard core people with lots and lots of money, for two reasons:
1) only available on ultra high-end cards, so if one is not willing to spend at least $1500 on graphics cards alone, nothing.
2) only makes sense if you are playing on a monster screen at 2560*1600 with 4 or 8x AA and 16x AF, at which settings 3-way SLI gives 2-2.7 times the performance of a single card. Already at 1920*1200, the "gain" compared to standard SLI is between -10 and +25% (the only exception probably being Crysis).
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Posted by: Ivan
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Date: 12/14/07 04:07:58 AM]
3.
How came 3-SLI delivers 2.8X performance, if standard SLI with two GPUs, delivers around 1.7x. I would expect that adding the third card is going to lower perfomance .
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Posted by: Knez
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Date: 12/14/07 04:12:58 AM]
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In the preview I've seen, the performance also scaled really, really well when comparing single card and regular SLI. Two possible reasons: 1) they used cases (games/game sections) where SLI does best;
2) scaling is better than usual on high end systems (C2 Quad Extreme 6850 and high performance memory were used) when there is no bottleneck other than the graphics subsystem at any time.
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Posted by: Ivan
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Date: 12/14/07 06:42:34 AM]
4.
This Tri-SLI crap is a waste of money and it's really ridiculious!
What about a single video card with mult-core gpus?
If cpus can do it then why can't gpus?
Also what't the point of having all these extra slots if they going to get blocked off by those massive dual slot cooler. Motherboard manufacutres should just make 2 types of boards. One with just 3 PCIe x16 slots for Tri-SLI wannabes (They can save a lot by remove those extra unused slots). And the other who knows how to use a computer to it's full potential instead of just playing games all day like a dickhead.
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Posted by: bngf
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Date: 12/14/07 08:28:58 AM]
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Trying to answer the Question of why people need triple or quad or even twin SLI is trying to answer the similar question into why people need 1,000,000+$ cars (Rolls Royce or the Bugatti Veyron) that merely brings you from point A to B.
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Posted by: huh
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Date: 12/14/07 10:06:23 AM]
5.
The ONLY reason NV are pushing tri sli is because using two NV cards in SLI is nowhere near as efficient as crossfire
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Posted by: alpha0ne
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Date: 12/14/07 06:57:27 PM]
6.
Where are my single slot 3-way-SLi compatible cards? geez, it'll be pretty tight with 3 x 2 slot cards..... I can't wait to put them in my shuttle box... oh wait I CANT! :)
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Posted by: piper
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Date: 12/15/07 08:22:01 AM]
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