SLI makes Nvidia grin, ATI grimace

SLI IS THE HOTTEST thing out there, and you can almost feel NVidia PR grin when you mention the term, AMD too, but not as much. ATI and Intel wince a bit, but usually smile, and that has lead to some furious behind the scenes engineering work, and some backroom deals. ATI has MVP, and Intel is looking scared, or was until recently.

Intel cut a deal with NVidia, they needed SLI, and the only way to get that is NVidia. You can put out two PCIe slots, but no SLI unless NV gives you the nod. So, enter the backroom deals, engineering, and for the first time ever, a P4 chipset from NVidia, the NF4 Intel Edition. Intel will finally be back in the gaming game again.

I was waiting for the numbers to come in about the chipset, expecting good things, and then I got what I wanted. The numbers were not good though. According to an unnamed source, an NVidia NF4, a P4/3.8 and 2 XFX 6800Ultras running in SLI mode will net you 8900 in 3DMark05. Hmmm, a quick look at the scores posted by AMD based chips backs up the testers assertion that the scores are 'weak as shit'.

What is wrong, what did NVidia screw up? Were the beta boards this bad? Drivers? Cosmic radiation? None of the above? The answer is none of the above. I asked an unnamed NV staffer about the performance, and why it was so 'bad' and he/she/it replied 'weak as shit compared to what?'.

Good point. First, there is no SLI setup on Intel right now, so by definition, the NF4/I is better than everything else, but that is not a good argument. I have an GF6800 here, and with a P4/3.46 on an i925XE board, it scores about an even 5000 on 3DMark05 with no tweaks. It is a solid performance, and is my current gaming box of choice. It is hard to make this rig break a sweat with anything, it is really really fast. The 6800 has to be pushed to unnatural limits to see frame rate drops, and the P4 hardly breaks a sweat.

So why was it weak? It really isn't. If you add in a few hundred points for a slightly faster CPU, 3.8 vs 3.46, you are still at almost an 80% increase in speed for adding a second GPU. The first round of AMD based CPUs scored about the same level of increase on the initial benches.

Add in that the chipset is subjectively 'snappier' than an equivalent Intel one, and you look to have a winner. All the whispers about inadequate memory controllers and bus bottlenecks appear to be groundless. The chip will do what you expect it to, be the fastest gaming experience you can get on an Intel platform.

What it won't do is dethrone the AMD FX platform as the top gaming dog. AMD has to much of a lead, and is several generations into driver optimization while Intel is not for sale yet. It has more than adequate performance, and more importantly, checks the right boxes to keep Dell from wandering. Let the games begin. µ