NVIDIA SLI Performance Preview With MSI’s nForce4 SLI Motherboard

As you’ll know from our previous coverage on the topic, nForce4 SLI is the highest-end nForce4 offering outfitted with a configurable number of PCI Express lanes. The beauty of having a configurable number of PCI Express lanes is that you can have a single PCI Express x16 slot, or you can split that one slot into two x8 slots - which is perfect for installing two graphics cards in.

NVIDIA is less than a month away from sending final shipping nForce4 SLI boards out to reviewers, but we managed to get some quality benchmarking time with a pre-release nForce4 SLI board from MSI.

…The GeForce 6600GT is the prime candidate for the SLI poster child as it is the most affordable card with SLI support from NVIDIA. Unfortunately our tests here today are more geared towards the higher end cards as the 6600GT, even in SLI mode, is still generally outperformed by a single 6800GT. At lower resolutions or with AA disabled, the performance of two 6600GTs would definitely be more similar to that of a single 6800GT.

But the important thing to keep in mind here isn’t what you can do with two cheaper cards and SLI, but rather the upgrade potential SLI offers. Buying a $200 6600GT today and upgrading to another one several months down the road, at a potentially much lower price, is a great way of getting the performance you want today while at the same time having a cheap upgrade path for when tomorrow’s games come out.

NVIDIA SLI Performance Preview
with MSI’s nForce4 SLI Motherboard @ Anandtech