here the thing that has been heard manytimes

3dfx Sli = NVidia SLI or 3dfx SLI = ATI's CrossFire
which isn't true or is it"

3dfx SLI
nvidia SLI
ATi Cross Fire.

if there is a difference can some body explain for all three types of sollution and which sollution is the best qua technollogy?

Cheers,

Ben Kenobi.

so NV SLI is more like Split Frame Rendering each card does half of the screen just as the idea Card A does top of the screen and Card B the bottom part.

hmm okay and 3dfx is indeed Scan Line Interleave idea hehe so a 5000 and a 5500 would work the same as a voodoo2 Sli set right? VSA-100 A does the even lines and VSA-2 does the unevenones so indeed more like NV's idea both chips do half of the work and with Sli you get one big thing.

But Ati is more complicated so many ways, I only thought that ATi only used one way and no so many togeather, Tile Scaling or something that looks very wierd, I suppose that technology is very new right?

I am looking foreward to ATI's upcomming R580 in Cross Fire unless ATi is gonna use thier MAXX technology again

BTW S3 uses a Multi GPU technology as well it's called Multi Chrome hehe also read that on thier front page some time ago
http://www.s3graphics.com/en/pressroom/pressrelease/2005/s3gpr051103chrome_s20Se...

MultiChrome™ - Chrome S27 introduces S3 Graphics MultiChrome, an open-platform and cable free multi-graphics acceleration technology. MultiChrome will enable two or more Chrome S27 cards or GPUs to operate together to provide additional game acceleration on any motherboard with suitable PCIe slots, and its completely open, non-propriety demonstrated support on multiple vendor chipset solutions is another industry first for the Chrome S27 product.

here 2 S3 Chrome S27 Prototypes   in Multi Chrome mode on a test rig

so 3dfx SLI was the only SLI that was really worth the money because in every app there was a signifficant boost of speed anyways the Voodoo5 6000 AGP did show me that compared to the Voodoo5 5500 AGP and PCI hehe

Hi,

I'll throw in some more info. By default each chip in SLI had 32 lines to render. Chip 0 would do 0 to 31, chip 1 wold do 32 to 63 etc.. That was in the fast mode. SLI band height could be changed in the registry.

In 4X FSAA each chip was responsible for entire screen with a different AA offset. The result was added and divided by 4.

The front end (PCI) was also implemented so the chips looked like a single chip to the driver. No command streem copy was necessary to each chip. All 4 chips would be read only if synchronization was necessary.

Visible protion of SLI was allowed to be rendered in bands, but off screen all the chips would render the same image. That is in the case if the image would be used as a texture in visible image. This way you do not have to move data between the chips.

Same texture was coppied to all chips.

This appears to be wastefull, but the final goal was achieved. The application did not have to do anything special to support SLI. You just turn it on in the control panel and enjoy.

I think ATi is behind Nvidia is going to lead next gen :p

Sorry ATI has lost this round- The ATI solution is clumsy and in majority of cases takes a beating.

yeps I totally agree, BTW there are benchmarks of ATI's X1900XT 512MB v's nVidia's old 7800GTX 256MB , the ATi wins rather obvious agianst a 256MB version rumours are that it would loose against the 512MB version of the 7800 GTX that card also runs alot faster thatn it's 256MB version so even the X1900XT is a bad performer, it's because it only has 16 pipes that is the main bottleneck.

anyways driver updates might save it or it might not
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=310

I call it a bad test the fastest ATI versus the slowest NV 7800GTX card, I rather see a test of the Fastest V'S the fastest lol ATi has lost it again it's not even 25% faster than NV's 256Meg 7800GTX, that card is old compaired to the new one, ATi still has a big problem, they have to get thier X1900XT on the market and have to improve the drivers, they have to prepare thier Crossfire model also well to me they haven't made a great progress at all.



let's hope that ATi will give the X1900XTX model 48 pipes as 48 vertex units that should do the trick I'm think's

Then it would be like the Radeon 9700 Pro was back in 2002

ATi's CrossFire is good but it still needs to be patched up, I am hoping that ATi will get better with thier R600 let's hope that that will change the world again. it's time they started to design a new way of Multi GPU technology which would give more effectiveness also, thier CrossFire is actually a Failed project sad to say., so maybe they should start useing the Scan Line Interleave way the best way imho

oh well it's just a graph lol I'm hoping for a change in CrossFire technology,and I'm sure that ATi Technologies is quite aware of that, that there are things that have to be patched on the things that need more support , stabillity and speed in the apps of today and tomorrow.

ATi has come quite far since the demise of 3dfx, and I'm hoping they will stay longer than today, so I really hope that thier CrossFire will be fixed sooner this year, because every delay causes ATi to be left behind