Date:
Thursday , October 27, 2005
Author:
Kyle Bennett
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NVIDIA SLI - Ready for Mainstream?

Does NVIDIA's latest ForceWare driver update show that SLI is truly coming of age? We take a real-world look at just what SLI is capable of now days.

Grammatical & Spelling Editor: Timothy Daniel

SLI THEN

We have covered NVIDIA’s SLI since it was

first mentioned last year. And then we covered it some more a few months after that. Then after an excruciatingly long introduction period, HardOCP finally got around to writing our NVIDIA SLI Upgrade Guide in November of last year when production products finally made it to market. After getting a true gaming feel for NVIDIA SLI, we saw that there were some shortcomings that needed to be addresses and we took a look at whether or not NVIDIDA was Shortchanging Gamers. A few months after that, in March of 2005, HardOCP again visited NVIDIA SLI to see just how well it was maturing.

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Here we are today, about a year and a half since “SLI” re-entered our vocabularies. With the latest v81.85 ForceWare driver release, SLI has once again changed greatly. You might even say that NVIDIA SLI is now ready for the mainstream market. Let’s take a look at what has been accomplished from a consumer perspective; no frame rate charts or techno-babble, just real feedback on the end user experience. Is SLI truly ready for the mainstream user?

A USER EXPERIENCE

I have approached this from a very no-nonsense viewpoint. I decided that I finally wanted NVIDIA SLI in my own personal gaming box. The last time I built a system, right after the debut of the AMD Athlon 64 X2 , I figured at some point I would want to install an SLI setup in my box, so I went ahead and configured it with an ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe. This motherboard has been “the one” that we have recommended all year long, and it has personally proven to me just how great it is.

In essence, four issues stopped me from implementing an SLI setup:

• I hate rebooting;

• My current video card was handling anything I threw at it;

• I didn’t want the hassle of adding more GPU waterblocks to my water cooling setup; and

• I would periodically need the two 7800 GTX cards that I was going to use in my SLI setup for other testing.

I had intended to immediately install a set of SLI-capable video cards, but a few things stood in my way. First and foremost, I run a triple monitor setup, and there were some multi-display issues with SLI that impacted me. If I were to use SLI, I’d have to reboot between using SLI for gaming and using the multiple SLI heads for normal, everyday computer applications. As you could imagine, this constant rebooting was a major deterrent for me. I don’t like to reboot my box at all, much less be required to do it between my gaming and my work. In the end, all this rebooting would cause me to do less work -- or less gaming -- neither of which was a good solution. Another major issue with making the move to SLI was the fact that my single BFGTech 6800 GT OC was already delivering an excellent gaming experience. Prescribing to the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” philosophy is not exactly something I live by, but, in all honesty, I did not feel as though I needed to upgrade earlier in the year. In addition to the constant rebooting issue and the fact that a single 6800 GT was getting the gaming job done for me, I had two other issues keeping me from taking the SLI plunge. First, I was feeling a bit lazy and I wasn’t looking forward to reconfiguring my watercooling setup. Second, the matched set of GeForce 7800 GTX video cards that I was going to use in an SLI setup would have to be uninstalled from my gaming rig for motherboard testing now and then.

Then, last week I was looking at all the pre-buy games suddenly stacking up on my desk. Quake 4, F.E.A.R., and Serious Sam 2 were staring me in the face. While we could sit around and argue about which one is best, being the id Software fan that I am, I immediately loaded up Quake 4, set the resolution to 1600x1200, and turned on the 4X antialiasing. It was at that point that I realized that the 6800 GT was no longer up to my high-end gaming expectations. It was time to upgrade.

The SLI Upgrade - Hardware

Aside from my obvious lack of understanding how gravity and water work together, the upgrade process went easily. A roll of paper towels and a can of air later, I was back to having enough confidence to plug the power supply back in again. Of course, if you are not using a watercooling system to cool your video cards, you will not have this problem.

Instead of installing a matched set of NVIDIA SLI cards, one of the new driver features that we wanted to put to the test was using mismatched SLI video card sets. We picked two of the most different 7800 GTX-based cards we could find: the highly-overclocked EVGA 7800 GTX KO and the MSI NX7800 GTX.

Installing my SLI cards was about as easy as could be. My “old” ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe motherboard required me to flip over the “Single/SLI Video Card” switch, which is now not necessary on many of the new motherboards. After physically installing my new SLI video cards, which was as simple as pushing them firmly into the X16 PCIe slots and turning a screw, my motherboard also required me to connect an additional 4-pin Molex PSU connector, which is referred to as the “Easy Plug Molex.” This connection allows the motherboard to deliver power beyond the 75watts supplied by the PCIe slot itself. With both video cards installed, a red LED lit up beside the Easy Plug reminding me to do this. After that, each 7800 GTX video card requires a special 6-pin power plug that should be supplied with your video card when purchased. Then, the "bridge" that is supplied with the motherboard must be connected to bridge the video cards to one another. Obviously, the last thing you are required to do is to plug the monitors you want to use into the video cards. In my case, that means my three LCD panels had to be plugged into my video cards.

Overall, the SLI hardware installation is very straightforward and should not be beyond anyone that is feeling confident enough to open their computer case. We do suggest you unplug the computer from the electrical wall socket before attempting this installation.