Hands on With NVIDIA’s SLI

” The announcement of SLI and the nForce 4 in the middle of 2004 generated a lot of talk in the hardware community. There were the skeptics who thought that it would remain a limited release product and be relegated to a niche solution but when pretty much every single major manufacturer is producing a SLI board it is hard to substantiate that claim. It is apparent that a product is making an impact in the mainstream segment – this past weekend when I walked into a store and overheard guys inquiring about SLI boards and when they can get a pair of video cards to go along with it. For those that are not familiar with SLI (Scan Line Interleave), the one line summary is that with certain PCIe motherboards (with dual x16 slots), a pair of identical GeForce 6 based video cards can be used in tandem to nearly double video performance – a more extensive look at SLI can be found here. This has several advantages – for the uncompromising hardcore enthusiast, this means they can take a performance leap into next-generation levels today. For mild-mannered Clark Kent and those of us that are constrained by a budget, this means that 6 months down the road when we are craving more performance, we do not need to shell out the big bucks for the ultra expensive high end card but can drop in another identical card to double performance.”