Multi-GPU rendering in games. Ah, truly a geek's dream come true; to be able to drop in an extra graphics card and double the performance of a game, or keep the lovely performance and up the resolution and IQ a couple of notches. But the two consumer multi-GPU implementations - SLI and CrossFire - aren't without their caveats, right?
Let think up a few drawbacks you might have on your mind. There's price, drivers, game compatibility, platform issues, power requirements, the setup and more. Oh, what a minefield... except it's not quite that bad and it's continually getting better.
We could wax lyrical about how yes, some single cards cost and perform the same as two cards in dual-GPU mode, but that with two cards there's the upgrade path of buying one now and another later... or we could talk about how game support is constantly being tweaked with every driver release. In fact, we could rattle on for hours about it, especially with assistance of a Hoegaarden or two.
Let think up a few drawbacks you might have on your mind. There's price, drivers, game compatibility, platform issues, power requirements, the setup and more. Oh, what a minefield... except it's not quite that bad and it's continually getting better.
We could wax lyrical about how yes, some single cards cost and perform the same as two cards in dual-GPU mode, but that with two cards there's the upgrade path of buying one now and another later... or we could talk about how game support is constantly being tweaked with every driver release. In fact, we could rattle on for hours about it, especially with assistance of a Hoegaarden or two.
Bridgeless and dongle-less multi-GPU rendering isn't exactly new. We've seen it on lower-end SLI and CrossFire solutions, but now it's starting to rear its head higher up the product ranges, where the lack of a dedicated inter-card link might have a bigger impact. Shall we see if it does?
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