Nvidia lubes up for three-way SLI

You do have a valid point but at the same time I really can't see anyone even a hard core gamer running a Triple SLi Setup, IMO it a big waste of money.

Am a gamer and I update my Computer every two years to keep up with the current games out on the market I usually go for the Most powerful Graphic card out at the time this time round it cost me nearly £400 which is a bit pricy but I can afford that. Now if I was a bit stupid and went triple SLi it would cost me almost £1200 'JUST' for the cards and am sure even the most dedicated gamer going to think twice before buying that kit. >.<

I do not want 2**N x AA, texture, higher frame rate or resolution and so-called many **features**, I want real-time CG generation... I need to render Pixar's Ratatouille on my 8-way SLI (well, 8 PCI-e 3.0 maybe) in one day with less than 1000Watt power supply, any vendor can give me this? That would be God of graphics

If i'm spending that much money I want to know its going to last! 

I'm sure as hell they don't use half their potential using that many cards otherwise we'd see huge leaps in performance in current games over single cards. Work on better drivers and stop rushing out this needless junk. Its good for developement but consumers are getting bored of it. 

I have a old nvidia 7600gt, would i buy another card for sli or replace it will one much faster card. I'd take the single card route everytime.

Fact is that Quad SLi still does not work to this day. Should we expect this to work?

I think not for the most part. 

Most people think that gaming cards are just for games. In today's world that's far from the truth. Fact is that there is a market for people that don't game just benchmark between friends, and the top dog list.

That is where the new quad and 3 SLi will be for the most part. Now you may see this used with lower cards more than the top cards, but the ones everyone will be talking about is the top 3DMark06 scores.

My opnion is this SLI x2 works great only if you have a sound card to got with it. On board sound sucks big time taking way too many CPU cycles to produce that high def sound. 3x SLI great now there no more room in your computer for a sound card and you'll be forced to use on board sound. 

To me I think nvida and ati have lost good inventors. Why can't they make a single card with 3 GPU's or 4 for that matter. Remember the Voodoo 5 6000 that had 4 GPU's on it. 

A single card with multi gpu's would rock in my opnion giving us the room to add a high end sound card and other devices to give the cpu less load. That would provide better FPS anyday.

Just my 2 cents.

I am a gamer, but even if I am ready to shell out a buckload of cash to get the fastest card on the block I don't care about SLI. Waste of money, unreliable performance, power hungry beast, bugs and so on. It's just better to get some top grade cooling system to overclock a single card and CPU than go down the SLI road. As far as I can tell, most of my buddies feel the same. So 3 way SLI ? Quad SLI ? I don't know what these NVIDIA guys are smoking, but it must be some really good stuff. Keep me some.

ok you've just bought 3 gfxcards to work in SLI for an unimaginable sum of money ..to run what ? 

what game requires 3 gfxcards??

does SLI work anyway ? didnt on my system, the only thing it worked on was 3dmark06

Weee! Para que queres algo así, How many people can afford that! What a waste, of money! besides, I gonna have to buy a 1500 watts of...

first i think that you.re right ... nobody needs this power at the moment, but life goes on and someday you will need these cards to play your newest games. besides nvidia is a company which is under pressure because they MUST be better than there concurrent(s) therefore they have to bring new technologies on the market else they would be out of the game sooner or later ;)

what they're smoking is something called fat f*lking profit margins. The more of these high-end cards they sell, the more money they make. 

Note that I am not in favor of this technology, coming from an enthusiast gamer's perspective. Multi-GPU may scale well in benchmarks, but it just doesn't work for many games, and when it does the performance is usually lackluster.

what about skull trail with its quad sli support?

lol, i quite agree.

however, think about Crysis. supports SLI, and three-way SLI sounds nuts!

also, if ATI are doing stuff with Crossfire, it makes sense that NVIDIA should also cash in on such technologies, if ATI can. so i think it makes perfect sense to do such an outrageously stupid thing...

thats just me tho.

It is not the fact what game requires 3 gfx cards, but rather what hardware requires 3 gfx.
To play games at higher resolutions which some of the new 30 inch monitor supports you need horsepower to get an acceptable fps.

Guys, just because you cannot imagine cases where you have to have SLi to get good framerates and therefore good playability, doesn't mean SLI is worthless at a whole!

SLi is not for noobs, and when you say it doesn't work- i say B***S***.

I have SLi since day 1, and 99% of all games support SLI and provide at least 70% more fps than a single card would.
Sometimes you would have to use tools like www.nhancer.com, but it WILL run- and run good ;)

When playing at resolutions at or above 1600x1000 together with 4xAA or better you NEED SLi for modern games to get good framerates!

With SLI you get the performance of tomorrows hardware TODAY ;)

I was once awed by the stunning performance of Voodoo 2 in SLI. When Nvidia bought 3Dfx and then said it was going to do SLI as well, I was overjoyed.
What a let-down.
Buggy drivers, games running slower, performance simply not there for the price. Of course, some drivers are better than others, but really.
SLI is only really valid on a high-end machine, with two high-end GPUs.
Well, for the price, I prefer to have one high-end GPU and buy the next gen the following year.
Because basically, after a year or fourteen months, the next high-end will have the same performance as the SLI now, and with less bugs.
On top of that, there was the argument that SLI allowed you to buy one card now, then another the year after. Bollocks. At the beginning, you had to buy exactly the same model from the same vendor, or you had every chance of not getting SLI to work. Name me one vendor who had the same model in its catalog after a year.
Then, when that issue was more or less sorted out, you still had the problem that, a year after your initial purchase, it is hard to find the same GPU on sale with the same DRAM configuration.
So SLI is something you do right away, to be sure, or you don't.
Well I don't mind waiting a year and saving some of my hobby money. I'll catch up, and Tabula Rasa in 1600x1200 at 50fps is just fine for me, thank you.

I've had two 7800 GTX' SLI for over a year now and the performance has been nothing but great never had any problems although I've been using XP.

Today my new 8800GTX arrived which I hear will mop the floor with my current SLI setup.

So I can only image how powerful/crazy expensive this would be.

You can probably thank nVidia marketing for this one. With each additional gfx card there is more performance at greater diminishing returns, but what percent of the market is enlightened about this simple relationship?

At the same time mind you, there are no diminishing returns in nVidia profit when you buy 2 or 3 cards instead of 1. nVidia (and ATi for that matter) is MUCH happier to find an excuse for you to buy 3x or 4x $500 cards rather than improving a single card solution they could charge you $600 for.

70%? Do you work for nvidia or amd? That's a ridiculous claim, and I'd love to see some facts backing that on something other than 3 games.

you buy 2 or 3 GPUs for the same price? so you spend twice or triple amount of dollares, and gain (at MAX.not at least 70% performance) where is your gain again? GONE. and it went right into the poket of a GPU producer, who still sits there and thinks about how he could plaster ur Rig full with this graphic cards,instead of inventing one, that does play all games at max resolution, and in-game settings.FOOOOUL

The amount of heat this is going produce is enough to produce a nuclear meltdown in your case! Geeze I have an 8800 Ultra superclocked version that runs at 80c idle, 3 of these? 
No way in hell buddy. Better bust out the waterblocks and chiller units just to keep these from turning into a puddle of molten NV crap.... That and the heat put off by the quad cores and 48W Freinkenbridge...