NVIDIA's SLI Shortchanges Gamers?

[Rob Williams]

HardOCP has a great article on how an SLi setup.. only works on specific games..

In order for SLi to work on any game, Nvidia has to specifically write special drivers for it! Am I the only one insulted by this? They expect people to run out and get their $1,000+ set up, to play games THEY prefer?

At first, SLi seemed like a great toy, albeit an expensive one. But this makes me just dislike Nvidia a little more..

 

[brettmar]

Amen. I still love Nvidia though, but that bites. Really bites.

I read that article too. They want to push ahead of ATI sooooo bad that they mass produce whatever they can. One BFG 6800 Ultra OC will do it for me.

 

[ultragooey]

I miss 3dfx.

 

[Rob Williams]

Haha, word!

I remember being in awe when I spent too much money on my VooDoo 3 2000 card. Ahh, good times!

 

[Nosebiter]

LOL. I still have my voodoo2 8meg, and my Banshee 16 meg. My main video card now of course is the GF6800 Ultra.

 

[Rob Williams]

Nice.. I so want to get one of those one of these days. I still love my 9800 Pro though, but I notice a little bit of drag [no pun intended] in NFS: Underground 2.

 

[leecho7]

I love my 9800 pro too, it's my baby. Since I payed 200 friggin bucks (on sale) for that card. A huge upgrade (in my opinion) from the Ti 4200. Was on top of the world with my beastin card, Doom 3 on max settings? No problem. Half-Life 2 on max settings? Not too bad. Counter-Strike Source with mroe than 10 people on a server? Talk about nightmares.

I'll probably get the new fancy shmancy Nvidias someday...

 

[Rob Williams]

Yeah. I kind of wish they came out with the 6600GT's for AGP sooner, I would have gotten one of those.

However, the 9800 Pro rocks. Especially since I overclocked it quite a bit. Great card overall.

 

[Cool Barn]

If it's not considered arrogant I would like to link to an article I wrote at NGOHQ detailing how SLI is perhaps over-rated and a marketer's dream. The link is http://www.ngohq.com/home.php?page=Articles&go=read&arc_id=71.

Don't get me wrong - I realize that SLI is the fastest video setup you can buy. I also realize that it comes in very handy if you want to run FEAR with all the eye-candy on your new 30" Dell widescreen monitor.

If I could afford to buy a SLI rig I would, but until that time however I have to question Nvidia's ethics in spending time ensuring SLI is optimised for 3DMark but not all games

 

[sbrehm72255]

If I could afford to buy a SLI rig I would, but until that time however I have to question Nvidia's ethics in spending time ensuring SLI is optimised for 3DMark but not all games

Nvidia has had this attidude for some time now (benchmark performance that is) but so has ATI to a lesser extent. That's one small reason I will not run SLi even though I still like Nvidia cards for a single card setup................

 

[fussnfeathers]

*ahem* This is shocking to you? Aside from video card drivers, how about little things like dual-core support, or even HT support for Intel procs? I can think of exactly two games that come with dual-core support, and that's not even out-of-the-box support.

Yes, for a game to run SLI, nVidia needs to provide the code to the game developer for them to program into the actual game. I wouldn't be so fast to blame nVidia, though. Start looking harder at the game developers, who are *supposed* to embrace new tech, but often don't.

 

[Cool Barn]

I wouldn't be so fast to blame nVidia, though. Start looking harder at the game developers, who are *supposed* to embrace new tech, but often don't.

Who says game developers are *supposed* to embrace new technology???

Unfortunately money dictates what game developers embrace; they don't just do it for the good of gaming or to make us enthusiasts happy. Why would they embrace a technology that is aimed towards the <5% of total gamers who run a SLI system? It's just not worth their while spending countless hours optimising for a game that only a small percentage of customers can take advantage of.

So I WOULD be fast to blame Nvidia. It's their creation (well the idea to resurrect it was their creation at least), and they knew its limitations and pitfalls before it went into production. However as long as they keep dominating 3DMark and making shedloads of cash then why should they do anything to rectify the situation???

Marketing and Spin Doctoring at its finest