Gigabyte GF6600 GT Intel SLI Review --- TheThirdMedia Hardware

SLI Technology ?No Longer AMD's Domain

For close to half a year, AMD systems based on the formidably feature-rich NVIDIA nForce4 SLI MCP boasted being the highest performing gaming platform as its SLI technology allowed combining the power of two NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra graphics cards. As the fastest (and most expensive) NVIDIA graphics card, owning even a single GeForce 6800 Ultra is enough to draw 'wows' from your colleagues or anyone in general, but purchasing two of them and tapping their combined power with SLI technology would give you power beyond present reality (relatively speaking at least). Imagine maximum game details on almost any game this year and probably even the next year. While that sounds awesome, it comes at a heavy investment that encompasses the need for a right motherboard, an adequately fast CPU, the dual graphics cards, an enclosure that has excellent ventilation characteristics and finally, a capable power supply unit that can handle the heavy power loads. All in all, it's purely aimed at performance enthusiasts who stop at nothing to get the best in technology and the best in performance.

Take heart that SLI is not an option limited only to folks who line their pockets with cash. NVIDIA offers multiple graphics card models that are SLI capable at different price points:- GeForce 6800 Ultra, GeForce 6800 GT, GeForce 6800, GeForce 6800 LE and the GeForce 6600 GT. Some of these in SLI mode are capable of outrunning the fastest single-card graphics card solutions available today, while some give you a good boost of performance over a single card but not quite breathtaking enough to set any records. Whatever the case, you will need an SLI capable motherboard with dual PCIe x16 slots to utilize this technology.

NVIDIA's nForce4 SLI Intel Edition Logo.

As of 6th April 2005, NVIDIA has launched their nForce4 SLI Intel Edition that brings SLI technology to Intel based systems among other high-end features that the chipset offers. We've discussed much of this new chipset, its features and capabilities, tested a reference board and even a full retail motherboard in the review of the Gigabyte GA-8N-SLI Royal. Since that's established, in this article you will find out how SLI technology on the nForce4 SLI Intel Edition fares with newer drivers and if it could match or surpass what we've seen on the nForce4 SLI for AMD. For this task we continued our tests using the Gigabyte GA-8N-SLI Royal (nForce4 SLI Intel Edition) and coupled two affordable Gigabyte GeForce 6600 GT graphics cards in SLI mode.

The Gigabyte GA-8N-SLI Royal (nForce4 SLI Intel Edition)

A pair of Gigabyte NX66T128D (GeForce 6600 GT 128MB) graphics cards.



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