CrossFire on a Stick - 'Just Say No' To Four GPUs

"Double your pleasure, double your fun." Well that is what Wrigley's stated about its Doublemint Gum. When 3DFX launched Scan Line Interleave for the Voodoo 2 it proved to be true as 1024x768 never saw such amazing frame rates. Later on the world was wowed with SLI once again with Scalable Link Interface. Nvidia pushed the envelope again for more performance but ran into the same proverbial brick wall that 3DFX did with the Voodoo 5 6000. Two cores were awesome but four was a bit too much to handle.

Not to be left out of the excitement (or the profits from selling 2 cards instead of one), ATI joined the party late in the game. While the first version of CrossFire with Radeon X850s was not a crowd pleaser, later versions were much more user friendly and pack some punch. Although AMD, Intel and Nvidia started toying with quad processor configurations ATI decided to steer clear.

Just my quick comment is that this card received a good review on TH, but I really don't see what is the reason for this. Since that dual graphic card got beaten my single 8800GTX and even in some benchmarks by 8800GTS. Not to mention that this product in not finished yet, but still TH hopes to see that this type of cards will work in Crossfire combination, and they expect that it will outperform SLI configurations. Nvidia has a solution that works, and Ati? Well you be the judge for yourself.

Ah well speculations, speculations (or better to say marketing gimmicks)....

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NFORCE 650I Ultra overclocking result

We already introduced the fundamental characteristics of standard motherboard on base of chipset nForce 650i Ultra . It was possible to note that this new chipset has some limitations in comparison with elder . In any case, if support SLI does not interest you, then the chipset nForce 650i Ultra is a good choice.

Associates published one of the first motherboard review on base of chipset nForce 650i Ultra with standard design. Such motherboard have four-layer design and passive chipset cooling . The authors of this review recommend focusing attention on improvement in the cooling of the north and south bridges, to gain stability with high fsb frequency

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Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB vs. 320MB - is BIGGER really BETTER

Okay, so the cheaper 320MB GeForce 8800 GTS alternative has been out in force for a little over a month now and at just $300 US it is a great buy. Realistically in this price bracket the GeForce 8800 GTS (320MB) runs somewhat unopposed, though the Radeon X1950XT cards are now very cheap. However, those looking at purchasing a GeForce 8800 GTS graphics card have to make the tough decision to spend either $300 US or $400 US. Of course if you are limited to a $300 US budget then the 320MB version of the 8800 GTS becomes an obvious choice.
Generally when a new graphics card such as the GeForce 8800 GTS (320MB) is released, there is much more to talk about such as increased pipelines, additional memory bandwidth, different clock frequencies for both the core and memory. However as I mentioned earlier, there is absolutely no difference between the 320MB and 640MB versions of the GeForce 8800 GTS, other than the onboard memory capacity of course. Both GPU’s are based on the G80 architecture which features a 90nm design process.
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Budget PSU Roundup with HardwareCanuck

Well here we are on my first PSU review here or anywhere else for that matter and this one is going to be a big one. This roundup will focus on four budget-minded power supplies which range in price from $45 to $75 with one power supply being included in the price of a $120 case. I will give all these units a thorough going-over and put them through a battery of tests. I suggest you read this whole review as in many places I will refer to performance differences between the units. You should also know that these are all on an even playing field as they were all purchased by me so I do not want ANY of them to fail.

Just my quick comment that this review is good because it includes two EVGA 7900GTO cards in test! So you can see how much quality and reputation of PSU is important in setting up SLI comp. So here it goes Sparkle, Nmedia, Enhance and Antec go head to head....

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AM2 SLI-capable Main boards - 2*Asus and 1 MSI

In the today's Review we regard now today three Main boards with NVIDIAs current chip corroding of the 500-Serie, which have at present a not insignificant portion with sold Main boards for AMD CPUs. ASUS made us available with the model Crosshair a copy for the Over the Top Enthusiast, which flanks the M2N32-SLI Deluxe already mentioned. Both use NVIDIAs Top model nForce 590SLI, while the third Main board in the federation, a K9N SLI Platinum of MSI, which nForce 570SLI represents smaller brother.

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PNY XLR8 2GB (2 x 1GB) PC2-8500 DDR2 SLI-Ready RAM

PNY’s new XLR8 RAM is available in two speeds PC2-8500 running 1066MHz with 5-5-5-15 latencies on 2.2V of power and PC2-6400 running at 800MHz. Both sets of RAM are SLI-Ready and have EPP. Today we are going to be looking at the faster PC2-8500 memory in a 2GB (2x1GB) dual channel kit. PNY uses a heat sink design that looks sort of like a comb. The black colored design has spikes that help remove heat from the memory. The required voltage for the memory is 2.2 V and in my test board the memory was automatically set at the correct voltages and timings thanks to the EPP support with my NVIDIA 680i Mainboard.

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BFGTech GeForce 8800 GTX OC2

The most important aspect of the BFGTech GeForce 8800 GTX OC2 that sets it apart from the other GeForce 8800 GTX video cards is its clock speed. This video card comes from the factory with a 51 MHz overclock on the GPU, and 200 MHz overclock on the memory. The GPU on this video card is clocked at 626 MHz and the memory is clocked at 2.0 GHz. Subsequently the stream processors are also overclocked at 1.45 GHz versus 1.35 GHz on a standard 8800 GTX. The memory speed increase extends the memory bandwidth to 96 gigabytes per second, and the GPU overclock increases the texture fill rate to 40 billion pixels per second. Apart from the clock speeds, it appears to be identical to its older brother.
The BFGTech GeForce 8800 GTX OC2 has 768 MB of GDDR3 on board, running at 2.0 GHz on a 384-bit bus. The GPU has the same 128 streaming processors 6 ROP partitions that ever other GeForce 8800 GTX has. The GPU is manufactured on a 90nm process and comprises 681 million transistors. It fully supports HDCP and has two dual-link DVI-I connectors.
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GEFORCE 8XXX NEW DATA

We got some new data suggesting the final specs of the upcoming nVIDIA GeForce 8600 and 8500 series GPUs...As it seems GeForce 8600 GTS will NOT have 64 Stream Processors BUT only 32..The same is true for the GeForce 8600GT. On the other hand GeForce 8500GT has only 16 Stream Processor i.e 1 shader cluster as compared to 2 shader clusters in the8600 series and 8 shader clusters in the 8800GTX form..The cards will be available on April the 17.
Just my quick comment, what's important is that they will all support SLI technology!!
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ECS NF650iSLIT-A Motherboard – Much more affordable than 680i

The platform for Core 2 keeps growing on a daily basis - chipsets are coming left, right and centre - and we are more than pleased about that.

Intel has chipsets for their processor and it is no surprise that both are for high-end (975X), mainstream (P965) and value (G965). While Intel does make their own chipsets and some are very solid indeed, they aren’t always the most feature rich or technically impressive, what the market even wants. I do remember the old Intel I820 chipset and the attempt to push people on to RDRAM (Rambus) but that was a total failure, which they seem to have learnt from.

nVidia is definitely the major player in the Core 2 market. AMD/ATI does have a chipset for this market, but we haven’t heard much more about upcoming chipsets for this platform. VIA has no intention of pushing into the market as the major player, only SiS has the opportunity, and they are starting to work on this.

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CyberPower Gamer SLI KO QX6800 System

Today, we're looking at the other end of the spectrum from CyberPower. We know what they can do with a budget based build, but can they impress us when dropping a small fortune on a PC? The model we're looking at today we're told will cost $3999 (more on that later), and for $4K, we expect the white glove treatment. After all, that's more than some people pay for an engagement ring, and while we can't expect a PC to offer the same benefits as a giddy girlfriend turned fiancé, a four thousand dollar rig better put out (heh) nothing short of an ass kicking computing experience.

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Inno3D iChill 7300GT 256MB GDDR3 Graphics Card Review

Roughly around a month ago we reported that Inno3D plans to introduce separate overclocked cards’ range in their product line. Every other successful graphic card manufacturer has one and thus Inno3D brought one as well. Instead of just increasing the clocks and renaming the overclocked models, Inno3D opted for a different product line approach and brought ichill in to equation. Basically the concept behind ichill is a product line equipped with best of the best of graphic card cooling industry has to offer. Currently different models equipped with Zalman’s V series and Arctic Cooling’s Silencer and Accelero series have been introduced but it wouldn’t be long when they bring 8 series card with better cooling performance as well. Aside all the bells and whistles, the idea behind this is to offer cards pre-equipped with third party cooling devices saving customer's costs and efforts while reducing significant RMAs from overheating and so on. Inno3D, however, propogates the idea of producing cream of graphics cards through several enhancement over the lowend model, we'll see how that is achieved through this product here in this review.

We have a 7300GT model from the ichill to start with Inno3D, although this is our first Inno3D product review, we hope to work with them on future endeavors as well. The 7300GT here is equipped with arctic cooling’s Silencer 6. Inno3D offers 7300GT, 7600GT, 7600GST, 7900GS and 7950GT under ichill brand, we just happened to acquire the lowend model. However it is a fact that no one has reviewed iChill's lowend and mainstream series so its a good chance for those who want to see how these cards par up against your everyday off the shelf graphic card.

Just a quick comment - SLI is also supported on this card..

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Liebermann Olympus 20" Widescreen Notebook with SLI Announced

Just when you thought a 19" notebook was big, the Liebermann Olympus 20" gets rolled out. The Olympus 20" seems almost mythical based on the spec sheet. It supports Intel's Pentium-D Dual-Core and Extreme Edition processors, along with quad DVI-out, an integrated 3 megapixel camera, dual Blue-Ray and HD-DVD optical drives, and dual graphics cards with up to 1GB RAM each.....
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The Liebermann Olympus 20" sounds pretty hot right? The only down side is the machine sounds too good to be true, and may in fact be. There's no release date known and the company representative we talked with could offer no guidance on pricing either. Rest assured it will probably approach, if not surpass $10,000. If nothing else it acts as a nice proof of concept.

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I'm on my easter vacation

Hi readers!
Just one quick note I wanted to add before I go on my vacation
First of all happy easter to all of you and I hope that you'll spend it with your family and friends with tons of drinks and food :-)
Secondly, since I'm going to a trip I won't be able to update my SLI blog page regulary. So there won't be new posts for about 2/3 days.
But I'll catch up with the news in SLI world when I return.

MSI NX8800 GTX OC Liquid - compared to MSI 8800 GTX SLI and others..

Hi people

I've just saw on the internet one great review of MSI's NX8800 GTX OC Liquid card. The cool thing is that you can easily compare results to MSI 8800 GTX SLI cards which where review about two months ago... and also comparision with single 8800 GTX/S models, and Ati's X1950 XTX CrossFire

MSI uses a different water-cooling kit than the Thermaltake based one we saw on ASUS' AquaTank. We're not sure who makes this for MSI but basically, instead of taking up PCI slots, this one fits on the back of your chassis next to the CPU, where you generally install back fans. The good thing about it is that, unlike ASUS, you dont lose any PCI/PCI-E slots. However, the bad thing is that you need a chassis with enough room behind the CPU to install the large radiator/fan combo.

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MALIBAL Releases 20-inch Notebook Computer with NVIDIA SLI Technology

Las Vegas, Nev., April 5th, 2007 - MALIBAL, a world leader in innovative laptop design and development, today announced the release of its new Veda Series™ line of notebooks. Available immediately, the Veda Series features an extensive collection of high-end options, including: 20.1" widescreen display, two hard drive bays and RAID 0/1, dual GPU capabilities with NVIDIA® SLI™ technology and AMD dual-core mobile technology.

NVIDIA® SLI™ technology is a multi-GPU solution that increases graphical processing power by linking multiple NVIDIA graphics processing units (GPUs) together to produce a single, high-performance output.
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