- Monday, 16 November 2009
- INQ Mobile
- RSS
Whatever is funny is subversive, every joke is ultimately a custard pie - George Orwell
Nvidia thought to be preparing triple SLI
NVIDIA IS AGAIN seeking to expand the graphics card boundaries with a new SLI configuration – Triple SLI.
This rumour has been sweeping across gaming websites and forums this past week and shows no sign of abating. It began with a picture posted on Expreview.com of a motherboard with three Nvidia 8800 Ultra’s installed. Touted as Nvidia’s “new Ultimate Gaming Platform,” it remains to be seen as to whether this is simply a rumour or a valid advancement. Enough about the rumour aspect, however.
While there is little information available at the moment regarding triple SLI, there are a few things that have leaked out. Triple SLI support will initially be available for Nvidia’s top cards, the 8800GTX and the 8800 Ultra via a redesigned 3-way SLI bridge connector. Other GPUs may be supported down the road.
Nvidia Nforce 680i and the upcoming Nforce780i chipsets will power triple SLI with the former chipset supporting PCI Express 1.1/1.0a. The latter chipset will feature PCI Express 2.0 along with a special “BR04” switch to enable more efficient operation.
Obvious questions appear regarding this move, however. While triple SLI certainly has the potential of being rather powerful, drivers will determine its true performance.
If we remember last year when Nvidia released Quad-SLI technology, actual systems faltered due to poor driver support. Even now, current quad-SLI technology is not supported for Windows Vista. Also, dual-card configurations currently offer an improvement over single cards, but they do not double the performance increase. What makes us think that a triple-card setup will be that much better?
Beyond drivers, the physical properties of triple SLI come into play. Each 8800GTX or Ultra takes up two slots on a motherboard. Which means that the cards will be forced to stack one on top of each other. This, obviously, will allow for reduced airflow over the cards and these have already been proven to run hot. One wonders if a few extra fans would solve this problem or if the heat generated would force buyers to install water-cooled cards as a solution.
All in all, the triple SLI configuration seems a bit redundant with dual-card, and yes, quad-card configurations. While this is a rumour, it could very well be a gimmick by Nvidia to try and sucker buyers with far too much money to spend on graphics. Or, it could be the start of the Tri-Computing revolution. What with AMD triple-cored processors an that. µ
Share this:
ShareBusiness Intelligence Software
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Enterprise Accounting Software
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
Enterprise Systems Management
As Usual Nvidia is wasting their time on something which will be used by very low amount of people. They better improve their drive quality first and try this fancy tri-sli later or else AMD will put them in the back even with their shabby products.
Tri- Sli

I have to agree that Nvidia is focusing to much to the "Rich boys"

2 cards are already cost enough

You can imagine what 3 cards can cost...

How many people are going to waste their money for buying 3 cards when every 6 months we always get new solutions

Tri-Sli = waste of time and money

Better focus in even better drivers and in 1 card solutions
Improving Driver quality? you're hinting at Vista, am I right? Firstly, with Vista, it takes time to optimize drivers since the codebase is so different (thousands of lines of code, you expect it to be completely bug free?) with the 162.xx series, nvidia's forceware has improved leaps and bounds and keeps getting better. keep in mind that XP's drivers were a nightmare too, when it was launched. Vista is barely 1 year old. Miracles don't happen in computing, everything slowly progresses. it'll take nVidia quite a while to give all the functions in Vista, so either quit whining or go back to XP.

"AMD will put them in the back even with their shabby products."

Errr.. Stop smoking whatever you're smoking...

as for Tri-SLI, the only thing that worries me at this point is the heat dissipation. three High end GPUs stacked together will generate a tremendous amount of heat. It'll be interesting to see how overclockers and enthusiasts deal with this. Water cooling maybe?

What about all the lowend cards that are SLi able? 3 7600GTs would be awsome! Hell, three 8500GTs in tri-SLi would be way cool for budget gamers. If you actuly think about it, it kinda makes sence. If you have two 8500GTs in SLi for a total of about $130 and get the same performance of a single 8800GTS that runs for about $260. I think I would take to two 8500GTs. SLi isn't just for the big boys with big toys.
Having bought an SLI rig with one card which, at the time could play all the games without the use of another card. I was thinking that when it couldn't play them I'd buy another. Time that happened, you can't buy the card any more and even if you did the latest card kicks sand in the SLI combo's face.
I just got it now reading this article. we bought our 680i's long ago, not much was spoken about why we had the 3rd PCI-e slot we have in our motherboards. And now by end of year 2007, they have the new line up of products out but also unleash a refreshment to the previous series with features that were locked for an entire year. That way, they can boost sales of the 8th series graphics cards at the right time before they go cheap and to give way for the 9800's high-end cards.
Reminds of Microsoft. we customers, hate products to be time-planned upon us!
No one is going to buy 3 graphics cards for a motherboard that only supports 2... so this is idiotic right?

No. This is checkmate. This is so brilliant that it wreaks of brilliantness and could put AMD out of business.

What the Heck am I talking about? The article is misleading. The third graphics chip is embedded to the motherboard at a cost of $30.

So for $30 more, you get SLI... double performance. And on thop of that you can add a second graphics card... and for $30 more (vs. $300 for SLI)... you get increased performance... and the fastest system on the market. 10% cost for 50% performance is a winner... and changes the balance of power towards Nvidia's favor.

This is called "HYBRID SLI" and it is right around the corner.