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NVIDIA GeForce 7900 Quad SLI Performance Review |
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Written by Mavke
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Sunday, 30 April 2006 |
X-Bit Labs shows a review on the NVIDIA GeForce 7900 Quad SLI graphics card. When announcing the Quad SLI technology at CES 2006, NVIDIA stated that there are some gamers who desire to have extreme performance, quality and exclusivity, but did not begin shipping such products immediately. At CeBIT 2006 the company stated that the systems featuring four GPU's were shipping, even though not all system makers can supply such computers even now. This is the idea behind the Quad SLI, to offer extreme gamers a truly extreme solution. But is the first implementation of the Quad SLI really brings extreme speeds and quality?
 NVIDIA GeForce 7900 Quad SLI Performance Review
Quad SLI implies that users get four premium graphics processors that should allow them to attain very high speeds. It means that users have to buy four graphics chips with memory that could sell for $500 per single graphics card. Obviously, quad SLI solution will be extremely expensive, about $2000 for a graphics sub-system. But quad SLI is not meant to be inexpensive. It is meant to offer something that nothing else can and make owners of such technologies feel like the owners of Ferrari or Lamborghini. The same applies to quad SLI, perhaps, some graphics cards may perform truly well, but the quad should be faster.
After looking at the benchmark numbers, the experience we had with the GeForce 7900 Quad SLI, let is try to summarize everything and draw a conclusion about the technology. NVIDIA managed to declare its lead in consumer oriented multi-GPU technologies by introducing its Quad SLI, a technique that allows four graphics processors to work together. While formally the company claim the lead in constructors' championship, the current implementation of the Quad SLI leaves much to be desired. The Quad SLI is here, the Quad SLI is now shipping from a few companies.
The reason why several big names, such as Alienware, are not yet shipping the Quad SLI systems commercially amid formal launch is because this technology does not seem to be ready for commercial systems, users, who will utilize graphics cards to play games at extreme quality, will almost surely run into significant troubles with freezes, crashes, quality issues and so on. It transpires that NVIDIA's current Quad SLI is not a product for buyers of luxury, as they desire stability and performance, not compatibility issues. Although, the Quad SLI technology indisputably has potential.
Perhaps, Lamborghini cars are known for spending quite some time in services, but they are faster than Porsches, meanwhile NVIDIA GeForce 7900 Quad SLI is not faster than ATI Radeon X1900 CrossFire across the board and may even lose to dual GeForce 7900 GTX setup. At present Quad SLI has many issues with stability and compatibility. When ATI CrossFire technology was released, we criticized it for its peculiarities, low scaling and some other issues. At the end, the technology has matured significantly, lost its disadvantages and came to stars through the thorns. Can NVIDIA's Quad SLI do the same?
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