NVIDIA readying three-way SLI for CeBIT?

Who needs two-way SLI when you've got three-way SLI, right? Reportedly, NVIDIA is readying a new three-way SLI approach that will actually hit "the mainstream," which differs somewhat from the SLI x 4 renditions that currently reside primarily in pre-fab boxes and luxury boutiques. While we've already heard that Asus' forthcoming U1F will show up at CeBIT, NVIDIA's new SLI treatment just might steal a bit of everyone's thunder by loosing it on the public with a presumably "spiffy marketing" scheme. What this means for the future of linking GPUs together to squeeze marginal benefits out of a gaming rig remains to be seen, but if this rumor proves true, we'll be getting a lot more details come month's end.

[LuckyChowmeinDude @ Feb 1st 2007 2:48PM]

Nvidia sucks , ATI is better.

[Scabies @ Feb 1st 2007 3:07PM]

soon we're going to have to daisy-chain power supplies to keep up with the daisy-chained GPUs

[ASTROBOT @ Feb 1st 2007 3:25PM]

Great, 3 big fatass video cards and no room for any other cards. How about creating a external box for the SLI setting or how about making just one kickass videocard?

[Jason Brown @ Feb 2nd 2007 3:59AM]

This is an obvious progression for Nvidia. Soon games will have a new format DirectX 10 requiring more power out of a graphics card. Currently sli is only needed to run large monitors. With tri-sli less power will be taken from ram and visuals will be utilizing directx 10. As far as motherboards are concerned nvidia produces its own formats and will probably produce a new style atx that will be more spacious. Possibly utilizing more of the empty space in full atx cases. The new boards will maybe called the 700i am2 tri-sli mobo. All the major companies will produce their own formats. (evga,xfx,etc...) I doubt different cards will ever be made compatible for sli. As far as drivers are concerned the 100.59 driver released recently are 8800 sli but are lousy in that format. But the same drivers are working great in single card for the 7x series. I don't think the wait will be too much longer. It is regrettable that nvidia missed the obvious deadline and i do think they are losing business.

[Chris @ Feb 1st 2007 3:37PM]

I hope they develop a way to link two, three different graphic cards, even different brand, so I can use my now obsolete GF4 Ti 4200 and MX440 and Radeon VE to boost performance..
hmm.. will it be a job for motherboard companies?

[adam @ Feb 1st 2007 3:46PM]

I wish that SLi supported multiple monitors. I am sick of switching in and out of SLi mode.

[Johan @ Feb 1st 2007 3:57PM]

I agree with the above comment in that NVidia should make it possible to SLI two, non-identical cards together.

[adelossa @ Feb 1st 2007 4:02PM]

what hasn't been doubled (or tripled) in computes lately?

[rektide @ Feb 1st 2007 4:10PM]

honestly i'm more interested in having 4 video cards so i can run 8 monitors. given the quad core processors price these days, we could replace every aging POS computer in this place with a single box no sweat. a linux server with Xen powered windows instances is probably what the solution will end up being. the suck part is 50 foot DVI cables and usb extenders, they arent cheap.

what i really want to see is more amorphous resource allocation. having four video cards that are almost never utilized is kinda pointless, so if one user suddenly breaks open 3dsmax, having that one user be able to borrow power from the other GPU's.... that would be enormous. given the massive dynamical partitioning already in place with the 8800's, adding some partitioning between cards does not seem entirely unreasonable to me. man that would rock the freaking house.

[LongshotX @ Feb 1st 2007 4:14PM]

Why don't they develop some "green" GPUs that consume less power and lessens our carbon inputs.

[August @ Feb 1st 2007 6:56PM]

Shut up please.

[T221 @ Feb 1st 2007 8:34PM]

I have to agree with lower power consumption CPUs. I'm not into saving the planet, but I'm just looking for dual-dual-link DVI video cards that use low power. The lowest you can find is 65 watts, which is the Nvidia Quadro FX1500. The lowest single-dual-link with one single-link DVI is 30 watts which is a Nvidia Quadro FX560.

Personally, I'd love to see a FX4500x2 (the only quad-dual-link dvi card on the market) in a low power form factor like the NVS440 (31 watts yet four single-link dvi).

It'd allow me to put one card in a mini-itx box and run several T221 DG5 monitors without the heat, thus less fan noise and fan power consumption.

I'd like to see HDMI 1.3 Type B in a card. That's my wish...not multi-SLI.

[Mike @ Feb 1st 2007 4:16PM]

How about they fix me some Vista drivers first, THEN move on to tri-SLi.

[catfish @ Feb 1st 2007 4:34PM]

non identical sli would be a driver nightmare, but really, really useful if they could make it work.

[SporkRocker @ Feb 1st 2007 4:40PM]

2 good videos cards is already expensive to run sli, now 3? Can Nvidia just focusing on one prebuilt video card that has multiple gpus and is actually an awesome product. Yes I know of the 7950....

[Kenban @ Feb 1st 2007 5:02PM]

To anyone who wants to use old video cards together with newer cards its easy say and pretty much impossible to do. The older cards are not designed to share rendering anyways but lets assume thats not a problem. You still can't do it for the same reason why you don't do it between two cards from different chip makers. The cards are not running the same code. Most high end games feature multiple code paths for different generations of video cards. The only way then would be to use either an older code path on a card which is capable of running more features. It might lead to a game running slower then it would have without the older card in the system. There are a number of other problems as well but don't expect anyone motherboard makers or otherwise to be able to produce a system that can link several video cards of different generations and chip makers together. Even if you get around all of that and make them work together. You would end up being able to see bands on your screen because everything renders differently.

[andy @ Feb 1st 2007 5:29PM]

I'm just wondering how they plan to put a diesel generator in a standard ATX case. That, and how they plan on dealing with the fumes.

[Andir3.0 @ Feb 1st 2007 7:41PM]

soon...RAIGPU5 Arrays will be available with polarity checking to insure data retention if one of your GPUs fail mid game.

[T221 @ Feb 1st 2007 8:40PM]

I meant GPUs. ;o)

[Darkflame @ Feb 1st 2007 8:45PM]

Has anyone else noticed diminished returns?
We are talking about using 3 times the more power, yet the end result seems to be just a few more frames a second? I love having powerfull systems, but every "major" hardware improvement has less effect on the end result.
Its better, but not as much better as the last step up,ect.

We dont need 3 graphics cards. Its wastefull, pointess and shortlived.
Purely to gloat-worth.

Lets wait, and developer smaller, power efficiant and space saving cores on the same chip. Not to mention quieter!

Why are cpu's all multi-core yet the graphics card makers insist on trying to fill our pc case with their stuff?


One graphic card with more cores = more power, less lag time due to bandwidth, less spaced used in the pc.
)

[Juaquin @ Feb 1st 2007 9:42PM]

Considering that Nvidia's highest card (8800GTX) can get ridiculous frame rates from any game on any settings, I really do not see the need for dual SLI, let alone triple. Maybe Nvidia should focus on getting us some mid-range DX10 cards faster than going for three cards. Multiple GPUs are too expensive and you're almost always better off going with the best single card you can afford rather than two (three) lesser cards. Sure, if you had the money for three, you could, but 3 with 8800GTX's, we're talking at least 200fps in the most hardcore game on max settings, and that's just plain overkill.

[wayne-kerr @ Feb 2nd 2007 2:51AM]

I dream of doing three-way. um what were we talking about? GPU's? oh. right. yeah. not so good.

[kynetx @ Feb 2nd 2007 1:55PM]

Gee, since current SLI rigs yield a 10% increase in speed, a third card might be able to yield stunning results of up to 20% at TRIPLE THE PRICE. neeto.

[applesucksLeo @ Feb 2nd 2007 2:30PM]

The AMD/ATI merger is looking worse all the time. I never did like ATI because their drivers are so poorly written. They are becoming the AOL/Time Warner 2.0

[lonas7 @ Feb 2nd 2007 3:52PM]

Nvidia needs to support SLI for Vista first!!! Multiple GPU's without SLI drivers for Vista is like taking a shower with your clothes on. Get with it Nvidia, support your customer base first!!!