THG Graphics Card Buyer's Guide

SLI

When older gamers hear the term "SLI", their eyes tend to glaze over and they wax nostalgic. These three letters bring back fond memories of the glorious times when the now-defunct 3D chipmaker 3dfx was still around. The abbreviation SLI stood for a technique that allowed two 3D cards to work in tandem in one computer, splitting the work between them. This led to a performance boost factor of somewhere between 1.5 and 2.

The AGP bus put an end to this type of solution, but now, with the introduction of PCI Express, SLI is experiencing something of a revival with the help of NVIDIA. The new interface allows for several x16 PEG (PCI Express for Graphics) slots on one board. The success of NVIDIA's SLI technology will depend mostly on the pricing and the availability of motherboards with the appropriate support. So far, SLI capability has been announced for PCI Express versions of the GeForce 6800 Ultra, 6800 GT and 6600 GT cards. You can read up on SLI here: NVIDIA Takes a Walk on the SLI Side with Double Graphics Processing .