Sli?

[wtiberon]

What excately is SLI for MoBos? I tried to research this abit myself but most sites are very ambiguous simply stating that its an improvement...but why is it an improvement they don't say.

 

[vbraun]

I think it['s where you have 2 video cards running at the same time. If this is the case it would benift like having 2 CPUs.

 

[Zelig]

Yes, it lets you run 2 nVidia cards at once. The price to performance ratio is only really worth getting SLI on for top of the line cards, otherwise you're usually better off getting a better single card.

You don't have to use it though, I've got a DFI SLI motherboard, but only a single video card.

 

[wtiberon]

Is there any other benefit for having the SLI with just one video card or do you have it in case you decide to double up?

 

[ainwood]

With a single video card, there is zero benefit - it simply doesn't do anything!

 

[Zelig]

No, there's no benefit. I don't even actually have "SLI", I just have an SLI compatible motherboard.

However, this motherboard also does allow to run dual (different) video cards without running them in SLI mode, so you can have 4 monitors plugged in.

 

[CruddyLeper]

SLI has upsides and downsides - it's expensive to get 2 cards, typically you have to get 2 that are identical down to the the BIOS, and it is usually beyond the capacity of an average power supply unit. It doesn't provide a speed benefit with all programs.

When working it does give a 30%-70% performance boost on graphics power.

ATI's equivalent X-Fire (Crossfire) is just being introduced, and is much the same conept as SLI, except for nVidia cards. Whether or not it's really technically better or cheaper remains to be seen.