@TI SLI

[TrinireturnofGamez]

 just about every mutli GPU card of that era got pwned by the TNT /Geforce series  due to   poor implementation, nothing with how the technology in theory worked.  AGP  and older ATX 1.0 powersuplies weren't meant to power mutli gpu cards anyway . 

[TriniXaeno]

yeah

I remember the voodoo needed some serious power to pull off it's multi gpu.

exotic power requirements is a mc.

[W1nTry]

I think its bout time they came out with a new molex standard, cause dread in all honesty them damn 4 pin molex connectors SUCK. They are sometimes bent a lil so they give beans to put in and EVEN more to get out. Ever try to pull out the power from ur HD and the damn thing WON'T come out less u rock it side to side which is supposed to be a NO NO? dread imagine when yuh have a 6800U in SLI and have to put 4 molex in? dread the dangers to ur cards when taking those things out. Cause recently I put back the extension molex for my 9800 Pro cause the stress I had to put on the molex on the card when removing the power was not cool. Now imagine those dual GPU cards? can u spell 3 molex LMAO PER card in an SLI setup???

[Crixx_Creww]

depends on the manufacturer

asus and chaintech make 6800's with only one molex connector

but yeah the stupidity of how hard it is to take out a damn molex from a hd or card is ridiculous

[TrinireturnofGamez]

Thats the beauty of PCI-E , it can put out up to 75 watts to feed the video card by itself, which is more than enough for all but the highest end boards  ( dual 6800gt , X850XT) .  This time around  the infrastructure is in place for these uber video cards,  the new ATX 2.1 standard gives you 2 +12 volt connectors, and the power supplies . are now more efficient . 
    Besides that ,   some of the new  cpus consome very little power,   eg the athlon 64 3000 only burns about 40 watts under load, thats why Bushman's system didn't fry itself yet  with his 350 watt PSU, a64 3000 and Radeon x800.

[W1nTry]

I read an interesting article comparing Nvidia's SLI to ATi's version. They came up with nice pros and cons of both. I will now try to remember what I read and give the comparison

Nvidia's approach:
1. An alternating frame or distributed screen redering method to outputing to the screen
2. A High speed PCB bridge between two cards.
3. 2x 8x PCIe slots or 2x 16x PCIe (I not sure on this one, at least the 16x2 but I am pretty sure it was in their design to facilitate it)
4. Well this one is more of a co point to 3. Nvidia has their own chipset implementation for their SLI to support 2x 8x PCIe or even up to 2x 16x As seen in the DFI Lanparty nforce4 board.
Pros and cons of this approach:
Good: SLI has its chipset ready, can scale up to more than 2 cards with a possible longer Bridge pcb, the bridge adapter does not take away any bandwidth from the PCIe bus (although this is not currently a problem as the PCIe bus has enough when running in 8x mode and more than enough in 16x, next gen cards will kill the 8x limit easily and using the PCIe bus may become a performance hit *note this was taken from the article calculating MBps going to screen vs PCIe bus bandwidth etc).
Bad: Bridge pcb is awkward and will limit physically the no. of cards that can be connected. SLI cards MUST be identical, have the identical bios and be from the same manufacturer.


ATI's approach:
1. Chessboard-esk rendering of the screen.
2. support for 2x 8x PCIe (no work on 16x 2 yet)
3. Uses the PCIe bus to transport the data between the two cards

Good: The use of the PCIe bus allows for easier addition of multiple video cards to work together as their is no extra PCB designs, ATIs implementation will work across manufacturers and GPU versions.
Bad: THe PCIe bus could become quite congested by the next gen of cards esp if more than 2 cards are used in tandem, they have no chipset to support their implementation available yet.

And last but not least, until we see the actual performance of ATI's version of SLI vs. Nvidias SLI there will be no hands down winners.

[Zaid_ology]

Seriously speaking the graphic cards will never reach there true performance unless your using serial ata harddirves and dual processing ram and so... the performance is not only  based on the specs of your pc but how you maintain it and so on... well we will just have to wait and see how it performs overall..

and best of all once there is competion like ati and nvida they will continue in trying to out do the other and best of all the prices will drop after a few months....