From our front-page news:
We posted last week about HotHardware's article on NVIDIA's latest enthusiast-bound SLI configuration. There's no denying the fact that three GPUs in a single rig is drool-worthy, but the performance gains were not incredibly large and the power consumption was unbelievable.
Anand has now taken the new setup for a spin and has similar thoughts. He adds that it would be a bad idea to run out right now to build such a system with G92 right around the corner. Considering that the GPUs for 3-way will set you back $1,500, holding off until the next incarnation sounds like a great idea.
I am still amazed at the sheer power 3-way rigs require. Even at idle the power drain is around ~400W. NVIDIA needs to design a card with a low-power-draw mode like our CPUs have. Power bills are high enough, but to have them increase that much further when the computer is at idle is rather pointless.
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NVIDIA always does this. We got Quad SLI with the 7950 GX2, only to be replaced shortly thereafter by G80, and now we're getting 3-way SLI with the 8800 GTX/Ultra, which we all know is on the way to being replaced by G92. Investing in a 3-way SLI setup today would be a terrible idea, you're buying into old technology and you're buying it after it's already been made obsolete by a new GPU. It's only a matter of time before G92 makes its way up the food chain, and three of those bad boys with even more shader power should give us a much cooler running, and faster, 3-way SLI setup than what we've tested here today.
Source: AnandTech
Anand has now taken the new setup for a spin and has similar thoughts. He adds that it would be a bad idea to run out right now to build such a system with G92 right around the corner. Considering that the GPUs for 3-way will set you back $1,500, holding off until the next incarnation sounds like a great idea.
I am still amazed at the sheer power 3-way rigs require. Even at idle the power drain is around ~400W. NVIDIA needs to design a card with a low-power-draw mode like our CPUs have. Power bills are high enough, but to have them increase that much further when the computer is at idle is rather pointless.
<table align="center"><tbody><tr><td>
</td></tr></tbody></table>
NVIDIA always does this. We got Quad SLI with the 7950 GX2, only to be replaced shortly thereafter by G80, and now we're getting 3-way SLI with the 8800 GTX/Ultra, which we all know is on the way to being replaced by G92. Investing in a 3-way SLI setup today would be a terrible idea, you're buying into old technology and you're buying it after it's already been made obsolete by a new GPU. It's only a matter of time before G92 makes its way up the food chain, and three of those bad boys with even more shader power should give us a much cooler running, and faster, 3-way SLI setup than what we've tested here today.
Source: AnandTech