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Forceware 77.76 Preview |
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No Bridge, New AA |
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by Josh Walrath |
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Today NVIDIA is releasing a new driver which promises a lot of functionality for SLI users. While this update will fix some of the more nasty problems (overbright while playing video, compatibility on a few applications, etc.), the most exciting features are reserved for SLI. With the imminent release of Crossfire, NVIDIA is hoping to keep its lead in dual video card configurations by both adding features and decreasing the overall cost of ownership. NVIDIA is trying to make this happen in a variety of ways, all of which are working together to deliver a full SLI system (that is a complete system, by the way) for less than $799. To achieve this NVIDIA has enabled the use of previously non-SLI cards in SLI configurations. This means all of the 6600 series of cards can now run in SLI, which includes the new, low cost 6600 LE. NVIDIA has also lowered the price of the nForce 4 SLI chipset to its partners, so these motherboard manufacturers will soon be able to offer SLI motherboards that hit the $100 US pricepoint. NVIDIA also certified a whole slew of new power supplies for SLI use, so the ability to buy a much more inexpensive supply for SLI configurations is now within our reach. While this may not be the second coming for users, it certainly holds a lot of promise and flexibility for those interested in even low cost SLI solutions. SLI Without the Bridge Any card under a 6600 GT will not feature the SLI bridge connector. So how exactly will SLI work then? In the 77.72 drivers there was the little known functionality that allowed SLI use without the bridge. All of the data that is typically shot across the bridge is now shunted through the PCI-E bus. For lower end cards this really should not affect performance, because the data needs of these cards is quite a bit lower than the 6600 GT’s and above. The over the card bridge delivers slightly more than 1 GB/sec of data throughput, all at very low latency. The PCI-E bus on the other hand delivers a grand total of 500 MB/sec of bidirectional throughput per lane, so with the 8 lane SLI PEG slot, the card has around 4 GB/sec of bidirectional traffic to work with (as compared to a full 16 lane PEG slot being able to use 4 GB/sec upstream and 4 GB/sec downstream for a total of 8 GB/sec of traffic).
Blatantly ripped from NVIDIA's PDF. The 6600 LE will be the entry level SLI product for those interested in a low cost solution. The 6600 and 6600 LE are not exactly “high performance” parts that eat up the bandwidth. The loss of the bridge does not really adversely affect overall performance. The extra traffic over the PCI-E bus will not provide a significant impact, and due to the bidirectional nature of PCI-E, it is still a very low latency bus implementation. Once a 6600 GT or above is used though, we see a greater impact on performance by just using the PCI-E bus. Not having a bridge also decreases the overall price of the cards in question. Not having to design that extra bus into a PCB should result in lower prices. While not hugely significant towards the bottom dollar, every little bit helps to hit that magic $799 mark. The big question we have to ask here is how many people are going to run out and buy one of these $799 SLI systems from a performance standpoint? Probably not many, as those looking for performance will go with either a faster single card, or with beefier SLI cards. I think that the people that will be most interested in these low cost SLI solutions will be those looking for the greatest amount of flexibility for their dollar spent. Two 6600 LE’s will not burn down the barn when it comes to frame rates, but when we consider that each of these cards cost around $70 to $90, their appeal becomes fairly obvious. Buying a SLI enabled motherboard and power supply and using a single 6600 LE will give the user a whole bunch of flexibility when it comes to future upgrade choices. The first choice would be to buy another $70 card and essentially double their performance. Anymore a $70 upgrade is nothing, especially considering that a top of the line card is $599. Also, users will not be as mournful to replace a $70 card when they upgrade to something a lot beefier and much more expensive. SLI isn’t just about performance anymore, but rather providing the end user with a greater amount of flexibility and choice when it comes to choosing components. There will undoubtedly be some very happy people out there picking up another $70 card and overclocking the duo and getting performance comparable to $200 range cards. I can certainly think of worse combinations than 2 x GeForce 6600 256 MB cards. The lowest price for that combination so far is around $238, and the overclocked performance should be very close to a $320+ 6800 GT PCI-E. It cannot be stressed enough that NVIDIA is moving SLI away from a pure performance perspective, and leveraging it as the most flexible graphics solution out there.
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