[review]3-way SLI, a new gaming experience
Page 1: The cost of 3-way SLI
Page 2: 3-way SLI bridge
Page 3: 3-Way SLI platform settings and important remarks
Page 4: Test bed
Page 5: 3DMark06
Page 6: DX10:Lost Planet & DX9:FEAR
Page 7: DX10:Company of Heroes OF & Crysis
Page 8: DX10:Bioshock & UT3 Demo
Page 9: DX10:PTBoats & World in conflict & DX9:HL2:EP2
Page 10: Comparison
Page 11: 3-way SLI platform power consumption
Page 12: Final thoughts
3-Way SLI platform settings and important remarks
3-Way SLI is Vista only. Microsoft have released some patches for 3-Way SLI. The latest patch is KB945149. NVIDIA strongly recommended user to install the patch.
Now, only 169.25 beta and 169.25 WHQL can support 3-way SLI. To turn it on is easy. Not so different from the 2-way SLI, simply click the SLI configuration in your NVIDIA control panel and it is done.
If “Show SLI Visual Indicators” is selected then SLI x 3 will shown on the screen.
Important: To switch from 3-way SLI to 2-way SLI is simple, just unplug the middle VGA card from your 3-way SLI settings. But if you want to switch from 2-way SLI to 3-way SLI, you have to do these step by step:
1. Turn off SLI mode in NV Control Panel
2. Power off the computer and plug in the third VGA card.
3. Power on, and turn on the 3-way SLI in NV Control panel.
If not do it like this then it is not possible to switch from 2-way to 3-way SLI.
December 27th, 2007 at 9:59 pm
“Don’t forget the Quad CrossfireX coming this January. Will AMD do better this time?”
Hehe, from a technical perspective, the reason why Nvidia chose to do a 3way SLI(not 4way or more) is that they wanted to have direct SLI connection between every video card. Using 2 SLI connectors, Nvidia’s solution utilizes the low latency of one hop connection. Compared to ATI’s quad crossfire, the data has to jump 3 hops from the top ATI video card all the way to the bottom card, which makes the latency 3 times as high, which will cause image synchronization issues, degrading performance.
Plus, Vista without SP1 currently only support 3 frames of forward rendering in AFR mode, thus putting the limit of SLI to 3 way. Now, SP1 will allow more GPUs, but ATI’s solution is limited to the release schedule of Vista SP1. We will see, it is getting interesting.
December 28th, 2007 at 5:45 am
FEAR is DX10?
December 28th, 2007 at 10:17 am
FEAR is DX9 game
December 28th, 2007 at 11:00 am
@Doug Friedman,
ya, 3 hops is not good, but you forgot the PCIe-2.0. ATI’s Quad CFX is based on PCIe-2.0. while 3-way SLI isn’t.the CFX connector itself is not as important as SLI connector.
but i really concern about the Catalyst..you know that is not a good driver
December 28th, 2007 at 11:06 am
Maybe I missed something, but I thought that 680i tri-sli is not as effective due to the middle slot being 8x not 16x and thus bringing the other 2 slots down as well.
December 28th, 2007 at 12:42 pm
yes 16+8+16 PCIe
December 29th, 2007 at 1:06 am
Nice review. A few edits needed though.
1. Title :
“[review]3-way SLI, a new gaming expreience”
Should be – “experience”
2. Page 3 :
“Important: switch between 2-way SLI and 3-way SLI is sample,”
Should be – “Important: To switch from 3-way SLI to 2-way SLI is simple,”
December 29th, 2007 at 2:09 pm
Thank you LaGUNaMAN, i already fix the bugs..
December 29th, 2007 at 2:20 pm
You’re welcome jeff, rock on!