8-way SLI and Crossfire Power Supply (PSU) Roundup

This article is a bit older, about 9 months. But it's definately worth readin so you could decide which quality PSU you should buy to hav enough power for your SLI configuration.

When NVIDIA and ATI started certifying power supplies to work on their SLI and Crossfire gaming platforms a number of problems instantly popped up. The first issue was that ATI and NVIDIA only tested power supplies submitted to them, resulting in their list of approved power supplies being small. The second issue is that both companies test their certified power supplies on a ?current system?, not a high end platform running wide open on all cylinders.
A number of weeks ago a number of system integrators contacted Legit Reviews looking for stable power supplies to power their top end gaming systems. It turns out their systems were not working right with ?approved? power supplies and they turned to us looking for an answer to their problem. We then contacted Aerocool, Antec, Mushkin, OCZ Technology, and Thermaltake for SLI/Crossfire power supplies to see which ones could hang in our test systems.

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Dell XPS 710 H2C

The XPS 710 H2C represents the pinnacle of Dell’s engineering, and is the company’s first true no-holds-barred gaming machine, so we’re looking for unparalleled gaming performance, stunning design, rock-solid stability, and exceptional tech support. At $5,500, if ever we expected a PC to be damn near perfect, it’s this one.

Dell has stated very clearly that it wants to compete with the other hardcore PC builders, and for a couple of years now we’ve been waiting for Dell to whip out the big guns and go toe-to-toe with the best the rest of the industry can offer. With the H2C, which is Dell’s first factory-overclocked gaming PC, it has finally thrown down the gauntlet – or at least answered the gauntlet that has been thrown down by the boutique integrators.

But anyone can build a PC with high-end specs and a modest overclock. Whether or not the H2C’s build quality, Windows build (Dell is notorious for bloatware), and tech support (it also has a spotty record in this category) can live up to the level of quality we’ve seen from other boutique builders remains to be seen.

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Purepower Express 250W

With each new generation of high-end video cards the demand for power just keeps growing. Not only does the separate video cards need more power, using two in SLI or Crossfire mode increases the power demand even more. It is of course possible to just buy a new more powerful PSU every time you upgrade but that is not always practical, especially if you have a PSU that you are happy with and do not want to have to replace.

With the release of the GeForce 8 cards from NVIDIA and R600 from AMD we also have another problem. While two PCI-Express power cables were enough to power two previous generation video cards in SLI or Crossfire, we now need 4(!) cables if we happen to be able to afford a second GeForce 8800GTX or R600.

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High end multi-GPU solutions - part 2 -The NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX and GTS in SLI

Hi people!

I can only say that I'm very happy to make this post! Since in my yesterday post I've shown you the comparision of Ati's X1950XTX vs. Geforce 7900GTX. And the battle was neck to neck... but I was a bit dissapointed that the test didn't include Geforce 8800 GTS/X series of cards in that test! Luckily that's is now changed - and after a few hours of google-ing, searching around various tech sites, I was able to find a good article comparing Geforce's 8800 GTS/X with Ati's X1950XTX in single mode and in dual mode!

You can go into details on every benchmark, and I think that pictures are are speaking more that anything else.

Several weeks have passed since we first began our analysis of NVIDIA’s new generation of DirectX 10 video cards. Launched on November 8, 2006, the GeForce 8 series have become the leading performers out of all single GPU solutions, NVIDIA and ATI alike, available for retail. Today our analysis will center on multi-GPU configurations of the GTX and GTS models of the 8800 series. At the present moment, these are the only video cards available that support Microsoft DirectX 10.

For the past two years nearly all high-end solutions introduced by NVIDIA have supported SLI technology. This holds true for the 88000 GTS and GTX. In SLI, consumers are allowed to connect two 8800 video cards that are the same models. It is not required, however, to have the video cards be produced from the same manufacturer.

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