Quad SLI has since NVIDIA’s launch of the GeForce 7900 family been somewhat of a ghost. The technology has been available, but very few have been posting any reports and the tests that have surfaced have quickly disappeared. Many have been waiting for a consumer version of NVIDIA’s dual-GPU card to be able to build their own Quad SLI system without having to turn to PC builders, but there is about a month left until we’re there. However, now the first real performance evaluations of Quad SLI has surfaced and they might be able to answer why NVIDIA has been careful with releasing too much detailed information about Quad SLI and its performance. Both X-bit Labs and TechPowerUp have published articles about Quad SLI where they had big problems just getting Quad SLI to work at all.
Loads of problems during the rendering, games crashing and substandard performance are frequently occuring in both articles. There are a few glimpse of the performance, but during most tests Quad SLI has a hard time keeping up with ATI’s X1900 Crossfire and during some tests the Crossfire leaves the Quad SLI system far behind.
The final judgment with both articles is that Quad SLI really exists, but the technology is far from ready as a commercial product and considering the outrageous prices you have to pay to get a hold of Quad SLI it feels extra bitter to know what problems the owners have to suffer through.
“Perhaps, Lamborghini cars are known for spending quite some time in services, but they are faster than Porsches, meanwhile Nvidia GeForce 7900 quad SLI is not faster than ATI Radeon X1900 XT CrossFire (which is known for high performance in high resolutions and with FSAA) across the board and may even lose to dual GeForce 7900 GTX setup. Furthermore, at present quad SLI has many issues with stability and compatibility.” – X-bit Labs
Whether the desktop version of NVIDIA’s dual-GPU video card, GeForce 7950GX2, will do better remains to be seen. NVIDIA has about a month before these cards are expected to arrive.
:: Read X-bit Labs’ article :: Read TechPowerUp!’s article ::
