jmke

Nvidia Corp. not only plans to refresh its lineup of performance graphics accelerators this year, but also intends to introduce its 3-way SLI multi-GPU technology aiming extreme performance enthusiasts. But will the new triple SLI technology truly become a high-performance solution, or will share the destiny of Nvidia quad SLI?

According to a slide published by Expreview web-site, which is presumably from Nvidia Corp.’s roadmap, 3-way SLI is Nvidia’s new “ultimate gaming platform”, which will offer ultimate performance in three-dimensional games. ATI, graphics product group of Advanced Micro Devices, also plans to offer 3-way CrossFire multi-GPU technology, however, one of the graphics processing units (CPUs) in such configuration will be able to compute physics effects in case the game supports this capability.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/video/d...928160719.html

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Rutar

meanwhile at the NV HQ:


Manager 1: Making people two video videocards with SLi was a brilliant idea.

Manager 2: I got an idea, why not make them buy 3 so we get even more money?

jmke

Yup seems to be the case here... they want to catch up with quad core CPU

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Xploited Titan

That news isn't really a news.

It's known for some time now nVidia wanted to add a third graphics card for PPU purposes.

But yeah, it's all about how much they can milk out of the consumers.

If only game developers would optimize their products fully, we wouldn't need such overkill setups.

Kougar

Anyone else realize that to use triple SLI, you would not have any PCI, PCIe 1x, or PCIe 4x slots available for use? Almost every single SLI board will be completely blocked by three 2-slot GPUs

The third GPU isn't for physics, it is for graphics this time.

Xploited Titan

Sounds like physics acceleration to me ^^

But yeah, no room in actual comps for other stuff if you go with triple GPU setup.

Kougar

You clipped off the part of the sentence that states ATI.

Both Nvidia and ATI already announced SLI/Xfire + 3rd GPU for physics more than a year ago. That's very old news... this is different, and nothing more than SLI+one more card for pure graphics performance @ obscene prices, since only 8800GTX/Ultras are supported.

Das Capitolin

Insane prices are exactly what manufacturers are aiming for. What kind of profit margin do they have on the low end parts? Take a look at some of you biggest names, and you will find they are top-end heavy.

But I digress. Triple-adapter SLi/CrossFire is only going to be something the smallest possible fraction of the market will want, so I think that this will be too much for most manufacturers to support. They always look for the sweet spot; where margin is high but demand is higher.

Xploited Titan

Woops, don't mix up work and reading forums