Page 24 - Two 8800 GTXes in SLI mode

That's right... SL-aIght

Well since we have two GeForce 8800 GTX cards, why not give them a serious run for the money eh? Let's hook them up together and run them in SLI mode.

As most of you know both ATI and NVIDIA have solution on the market called Crossfire and SLI. Basically this will allow you to play your games with the help of multiple graphics processors (GPUs). Within the confines of compatible mainboards you can increase the overall rendering performance of your games and thus increase your graphical gaming experience in several ways. Simply stated, you can run two or more "graphics cards" on selected mainboards, or one (or more) graphics card(s) with multiple graphics cores on it.

By utilizing more of them whether that is two or more GPU's on a videocard or two graphics cards in one system is what we call Multi-GPU processing of games.

Here's what you also need to think about when building a SLI rig component's wise and also why. Here are the Hilbert pointers:

	Graphics cards Simple .. you need two GeForce 8800 GTXes in this case Monitor Don't even think about high-end SLI gaming unless you can do a resolution above 2048x1536. The Dell & Apple 30"monitors are highly recommended here. Price ~2300 USD Mainboard You need a high-end SLI ready mainboard with two PCI-Express graphics connectors, 16x PCI-E lanes per graphics card! In short, go for a NVIDIA nForce 590 or 680 mainboard at 150-200 USD. Processor You need the best as your CPU is a symbiosis with your graphics solution. You need a dual-core CPU starting at AMD64 Athlon FX-60 or even better, the newly released Intel Core 2 Duo processors (Conroe core) kick ass. Even the cheap 320 USD E6600 will wipe the floor with an FX-62. So Intel Conroe is highly recommended! You do not want your four graphics cores to be held back by your CPU. Memory Good gaming requires good memory. Whatever you choose, get yourself low-latency memory DDR/DDR2 memory, minimal 1 GB in dual-channel. With the future in mind, now might be a good time to move to 2 GB, low-latency is expensive though and 2GB might set you back 300 USD. Power Supply SLI gaming, dual-core technology, this all requires a hefty toll on power consumption. You need a PSU with multiple 12 volts rails and decent Ampage.  In total over all 12 volts rails you should have 40 AMPs available on your PSU. We can really recommend the Enermax Galaxy series (review here) as we have tested it with today's setup; but it's priced at 350 USD.

Keep that in mind. And yes we have inserted a kilowatt PSU into our test system and will test at uber high resolutions up-to 2560x1600.

How to setup SLI

Let's talk a little about installation.

Well, I really have to give props to NVIDIA here as hardware and software installation simply is a breeze. Obviously assemble your PC, I won't go into details here as hey, you are a guru, you do it on a monthly basis right? :) But once you have your system ready you can have SLI powered up and ready to roll within a minute as it really is that easy to do.

Basically there are six steps you need to take. Here's what you need to do:

• Ready your PC, make sure all the latest mainboard, peripherals and OS drivers are up-to-date
• Insert cards into PCI-Express slots
• push SLI bridge on the GeForce 8800 cards
• Connect dual 12v 6-pin PSU connector to each card (make sure each 12v connector is on a different 12v rail)
• Boot PC, install latest ForceWare driver
• Reboot system and voilla...

In our case the system immediately activated SLI and we where ready to go. Now I'll quickly sift through the benchmark results without too much text. You'll understand why.

Prey 4xAA & 16xAF

Ouch.. !

Far Cry HDR & 16xAF

There's some CPU limitation there but have a look at 2560x1600 Sheeeewing!