nVidia SLI – without the SLI-bridge!

nVidia recently announced that its GeForce 6600-cards actually supports SLI, the weird thing about that is that the 6600-cards doesn’t have a SLI-connection. It seems that the SLI-support purely technically is software-based and the 6600-cards can be used in SLI despite the abscence of a SLI-bridge. The fact is that all GeForce 6xxx cards and the new 7800-series can use SLI without the SLI-bridge! The only thing that is required is that you use nVidia’s latest drivers that makes this possible. At OC Workbench they tested this with two 6600GT-cards and compared the performance with and without SLI-bridge.

As expected there is a small disadvantage when removing the SLI-bridge but in OCW’s tests that is based on 3Dmark03 and 3Dmark05 its a meager difference of about 5%. This obviously opens up a new makret for all of those with “non”-SLI-capable graphic cards and also those who have modified NF4-cards and doesn’t have an SLI-bridge. That nVidia now has chosen to make this software-based SLI-mode available seem to fit perfect with ATi’s launch of Crossfire, its answer to SLI that is suppose to be more compatible overall.

:: Read on at OCW