Why get a SLI motherboard?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Tony G
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Tony G

Hi All

Am looking at new motherboards and am interested to know if it is
worth getting a SLI motherboard.

Are they basically good for gaming only or are they benificial for 3D
applications also? I am not into gaming etc but looking to get into 3D
applications...

Is there a benifit with SLI for 3D apps..?

Thinking over getting an Intel chip set over a nVidia chipset.

Tanx
Tony
 
Tony said:
Hi All

Am looking at new motherboards and am interested to know if it is
worth getting a SLI motherboard.

Are they basically good for gaming only or are they benificial for 3D
applications also? I am not into gaming etc but looking to get into 3D
applications...

Is there a benifit with SLI for 3D apps..?

Thinking over getting an Intel chip set over a nVidia chipset.

Tanx
Tony
Click to expand...

An "SLI" motherboard is nothing more than a board with more than
one PCI Express x16 sized slot. You can actually put a video card
in one slot, and an Areca RAID controller in the other slot. You
don't have to put video cards in both of them.

One reason for buying an SLI board, is for overclocking support. The
SLI board may have BIOS features for overclocking the processor. A person
buys the board, so they can overclock, and ends up with an extra video
slot for free.

SLI and Crossfire don't guarantee scaling by 100% when used. The gain
is less than that. The standby power dissipation, and economics of
purchasing two video cards, also are a factor. And in the case of
games, not all games support every feature. When SLI is running,
they have a collection of "profiles", one per game, to determine
how to set it up, and what mode to use. That should tell you the
benefit is not universal.

You can still buy a motherboard with two video card slots, and
not fret about the fact that the second one is empty. When 10gigabit
Ethernet cards come out, you can stick one of those in there :-)

Paul
 
Hi All

Am looking at new motherboards and am interested to know if it is worth
getting a SLI motherboard.

Are they basically good for gaming only or are they benificial for 3D
applications also? I am not into gaming etc but looking to get into 3D
applications...

Is there a benifit with SLI for 3D apps..?

Thinking over getting an Intel chip set over a nVidia chipset.

Tanx
Tony
Click to expand...

I read in Tomshardware that SLI aren't significant improvements for most
games over a single video card, especially considering the costs for 2
SLI cards. I thinking about adding a phyics PCI instead of SLI.
 
Tony said:
Is there a benifit with SLI for 3D apps..?
Click to expand...

According to the available benchmarks, there is a benefit. The problem is,
the benefit simply isn't worth it, at least to mentally sane people.

Contrary to what you may expect, you will not get twice the performance. In
fact, according to some benchmarks, you may get only an extra 10FPS in your
already smooth gameplay, which frankly does not justify spending so much
money.

But hey, those who spend their money on those novelty toys aren't exactly
driven by sound judgement.


Rui Maciel
 
Hi All

Am looking at new motherboards and am interested to know if it is
worth getting a SLI motherboard.

Are they basically good for gaming only or are they benificial for 3D
applications also? I am not into gaming etc but looking to get into 3D
applications...

Is there a benifit with SLI for 3D apps..?

Thinking over getting an Intel chip set over a nVidia chipset.

Tanx
Tony
Click to expand...

Generally no, SLI'd video cards are for gaming. 3D
rendering is mostly CPU bound. The 2nd SLI slot isn't a
problem as Paul mentioned, except that having it may reduce
the # of legacy PCI slots or cause other compromises to the
board features or layout. Often these SLI'd boards are
considered higher end boards with more features but since
the 2nd slot does take up more room it can potentially
effect more than just whether it exists on the board or
not.
 
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