I feel bad for anyone willing to waste their money on this overpriced POS.
<A HREF="http://www.alienware.com/Configurator_Pages/area-51_alx_sli.aspx?SysCode=PC-AREA51ALXX2SLI-D&SubCode=SKU-DEFAULT&cs=1" target="_new">http://www.alienware.com/Configurator_Pages/area-51_alx_sli.aspx?SysCode=PC-AREA51ALXX2SLI-D&SubCode=SKU-DEFAULT&cs=1</A>
In a couple more months nForce 4 SLI will be out and we'll a be able to get kick ass performance with ATI and AMD!!!
y do u say ATI ?
SLI is just Nvidia. For ATI we gotta wait for ALX videoarray.
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OK, maybe I'm being a bit speculative...but you gotta be pretty naive to think ATI's just going to sitback and watch nVidia do all this to them, come on. Either way, nForce4 with two 6800's would be nice, too. But I'm counting on ATI.
Actually ATI is 2 years ahead, not only dual Boards, but <A HREF="http://www.darkcrow.co.kr/News/News_Content.asp?board_idx=2657" target="_new">dual boards plus dual GPUs</A>.
Yes I posted this in another thread, but it's just so much fun.
Really those 2 years seem to be an exageration of the effort required. 2 years of work for a small team more likely. I'm certain the majority of their people were working on the FXs and getting them to work with the run-time compiller. The biggest wait was likely for the proper platform (PCIe) to appear rather than trying to develop any other single aspect.
I don't expect to see anything from ATI with their R480, but you may see something with the R5xx series, but even that might be a bit too early for something that might require an on die solution. I would expect something more like an ALX or XGI/MAXX stype solution near term. I'm sure ATI is thinking of solutions, but I doubt they'd be willing to jeopardize their other products for such a small segment of the overall market. Even nV considers this an enthusiast only product with limited appeal. IF we thought R9800Ps, FX5900Us, GF6800Us and X800XTs as a small portion of their market revenues, what then is this solution?
These will no doubt be the 'kings' of performance, especially if ALX ever does succeed with 4 cards (which would likely mean 4x speeds for each card), but this will never be the bread-winner of either company, especially when 2 mid-level cards can topple a single overpricced top-end card. The only people I see making money off of this are the system builders, who were already charging ridiculous sums for single card solutions, so why not $6-8,000 for ALX style answers?
As always we'll have to wait and see. I'm still just hoping for better surround gaming. That's where my money is.
- You need a licence to buy a gun, but they'll sell anyone a stamp <i>(or internet account)</i> ! - <font color=green>RED </font color=green> <font color=red> GREEN</font color=red> GA to SK
Everyone keeps talking about how small the market is for these systems...and when you look at two 6800 Ultra ($500+) video cards this makes alot of sense. But this is a solution for lots of others as well. Think about this:
I buy a 6800GT today ($400), adaquate for todays games, probably more than sufficiant for at least a couple years...but then it starts showing it's age and I want to upgrade, another top of the line card at that time would probably cost another $400+...but another 6800GT would be down to $100 or less by then...and I'm back on top of the performance spectrum. This is the perfect setup for the mainstream enthusiast! Apply the same princable to more value oriented cards and you serve the budget enthusiast.
I'm becoming more cynical lately, so I may retract what I previously stated on SLI and the long-term video card thing. Seeing as video cards rarely nowadays trickle down to budget from high-end, and are instead replaced, I don't think a 6800GT will stay here in more than a year. I could be wrong, but this long-term budget price thing may not be THAT obvious. The 9700PRO is two years old now, but have you seen it yet at 100$? Heck, the 9600XT is most of the time 160-180$, the 9700PRO shouldn't retail for any less. 2 years!
This is the perfect setup for the mainstream enthusiast!
Which is still a small market.
If nV has to wait a year or two for people to buy their second card, by that time you still won't be at the top of the food chain, you'll be around the upper middle.
I'm not saying this isn't a good solution for MANY of us HERE, however we are still nowhere near the 'average' computer user (especially if you go by VALVE's numbers! ).
What I am saying is that overall this will still be a small part of the market until it's a proven commodity, especially for people who have trouble using Overdrive, let alone overclocking their systems. Rememebr that the majority of people wouldn't know where to start looking in their BIOS to tweak their systems. They are one step away from console users. NO COMPANY would risk any of their overall strategies for this small market. SLI itself isn't so much the threat as much as he PROMISE of SLI is. And really ATI's biggest issue will be to minimize that impact, but not at the cost of redesigning the R5xx series to accomodate SLI or something similar. That's my point, whatever they do it will be in addition to their current plans. MAYBE you could see it in the fall/winter of '05, but every indication is that the R5xx won't have it, so they would be foolish to halt that production instead of trying to make ALX or something similar work. Even a MAXX or bridge style solution would mean they could use current chips on either two boards or the same board, where there is more fexibility. The thing that may be making ATI sweat right now might be the fact that Aleinware is so enthusiastic to support technology that competes against their ALX solutions. Which an outside observer might see as their having major problems with their progress with ALX.
I dont' disagree that SLI offers people like ourselves a whole new concept of upgrades (heck why mention the 6800GT when you could also consider an even larger market in the GF6600GT range who can stay 'mid-level' or even minimum requirement for years to come with a second similar card, whose total cost wouldn't be much different than the next gen mid-ranges IMO.
OF course this is really what things like this are about, Consumer Adoption. I think SLI would've had a FAR greater impact if it had arrived over the summer, because having exposed the technology so soon, and taking so long to bring actual product and demos/benchmarks to the public has stalled what could've been gigantic momentum for this type of product. The shortage of cards has not helped either, because whatever benifit was to be found from a GT with an eye on a second one in the future has been somewhat stimied by the lack of cards, and especially cheap ones. PCIe versions are few and far between, and cost more than MSRP by a healthy margin right now. This may change with the NV41 taking on some of that demand, but really it has given the comeptition some time to sell it's cards, and while the promise of SLI is great, the thing that will sell it is when [H], THG, Xbit, Firing-Squad, The Proffesor and Marie-Anne get a chance to profile it and benchmark it, and truely declare to the world, 'Holy $hiznit, This is AWESOME!'
Until that day there will be ALOT of buzz, but limited movement in cards because of it alone, IMO.
If ALX and other potential variants fail, then nVidia will have a very strong advantage with SLI if it performs as expected; but like I said, that advanatage will appeal to a minority of the current buying public (be they 5% or 25%). Not to say it's insignificant, but it's not worth jeopardizing all else to win, and that's what I think would be required from ATI to have a similar solution by early 2005. ATI's best hope is to rely on others with their help, wether it's Alienware, or the boardmakers like Sapphire/HIS, or some other 'magical' software solution. And really I have little faith in Magic, so it looks like the short term options are limited. And probably more important than the solution itself will be the promise that their IS an ATI solution. Becuase as you point out, alot of this is about the future of the technlogy, and not just about get the top spot in the Bungholio Hall of Fame this instant, although that's always a bit of fun too.
- You need a licence to buy a gun, but they'll sell anyone a stamp <i>(or internet account)</i> ! - <font color=green>RED </font color=green> <font color=red> GREEN</font color=red> GA to SK
Also, in 2 years we will all want boards with DX10/WGF (or whatever) with unified shaders, virtual video memory (Hyper Memory/Turbo Cache), and all the other great bells and whistles that will make games look great.
Who wants to run games in DX7 when they can run in DX9?
I have said that before a lot of times in other old threads. prices generally dont go below a cut off line. they dont give a [-peep-] if their card is sold or not. ati will still sell 9800xt for 399 or some $hit like that
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Which sucks if you ask me. The geForce 3 can STILL be found around for very low prices now. Even a Ti4200 can be too. And they dropped in nearly half the price now. But that's the same thing with the 9700PRO anyways.
I dunno, there used to be a time these things happened. The CPU world is the best example, and I wish GFX companies would follow suit. Price drops rather than just new chips change a serious lot. People buy when price drops occur. Most things in the CPUs go from 500$ to 100$ eventually. Great value really.
tell me when it goes below $300 what i mant was local reatiler have their wish of doing anything. they want to give out their card free they can. But not nvidia, OEM direct sales. they genrally like staying above a border line.
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Another interesting thing that people seem to be overlooking is that, sure, SLI makes certain games run almost twice as fast, but what about 3 years down the road? It's using the current crop of games as an indicator, which actually doesn't prove that much. In other words, there is no hindsight to gauge how great the benefits really are.
Say NV50 comes out and they're benching Unreal 3. Say the single NV50 performs twice the FPS as a single 6800 Ultra. Will a 6800U SLI config. be around 80-100% of the performance of the NV50? Maybe not, because each new generation of cards introduces massive architectural changes that can improve performance in numerous and complex ways. SLI looks great right now because the comparison is apples to apples, it's the same tech. and current games, except <i>doubled</i>. Right now, people have a sort of 1+1=2 notion about SLI, but how SLI configs will stand their ground against single next-gen. cards may be dissappointing. I'd like to see how SLI compares to R500/NV50 with Carmack's new engine (whenever it's finished) or Unreal 3. The 6800U and X800XT absolutely blew down the walls with their performance, and the performance gap between generations may be even wider with the next set of cards.
Like Eden was saying about the 9700 Pro's sluggish price decline, I don't think the 6600GT or 6800GT/U will drop in price quickly enough to satisfy people who were planning on doing the SLI thing- waiting 8 months to a year to buy the second card because it will be cheaper. I'm not criticizing SLI, I think it's an excellent and interesting feature that gives great flexibility to the consumer who wants to upgrade, but it will be interesting to see where it stands in two or three years.
it would be funny if a nv50 has twice the power of a 6800sli it would make the 6800sli redundant in my view because of the cost of it £700 for 2x6800ultras is to much plus the MB to run them.
but ive noticed ATI`s prices are falling faster in england compared to nvidia may be that is due to ati listens to there customers here and shows they give value for money on sum things.
Well that's a bit of a stretch, but your exaggeration could prove to be somewhere near the bull's eye.
Quote :
ATI`s prices are falling faster in england compared to nvidia
It really is supply/demand that determines the retail price. For example, I've noticed that the price of the 9800 Pro 128MB has actually gone <i>up</i> in the last three months, probably because they are still selling like hotcakes and yet ATi is trying to do away with that chip to make way for the X700s. They'll only take a profit cut on chips, i.e. price slashing, if that's their only resort...
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).
