There has been a considerable amount of buzz in the enthusiast community regarding SLI and it can be argued that it has already been a marketing win even before chipsets and boards have hit the retail market. NVIDIA has been heavily promoting their SLI technology for the last few months and it is important to them on both the chipset and graphics front. SLI cards, talk, and numbers are popping up all over the place. In a nutshell, for those who are unfamiliar with Scalable Link Interface (SLI), it is a method that NVIDIA has developed to connect two video cards together to nearly double video performance. For those who would like to dig a little deeper in the technology behind SLI, we have a much more thorough preview from June when it was first announced.
It is easy to guess by now that we will be looking at some form of SLI technology today but its form may be a bit surprising. Gigabyte, in an age of reference boards and reference designs has veered off the usual course and has integrated two 6600GT GPUs into a single board; typical SLI configurations are two separate boards. Gigabyte is the first to do so with the modern generation of video cards. ATI attempted a similar feat with their RAGE Fury MAXX in 1999, and there has not been another attempt -- until now.
Gigabyte has dubbed their creation the GV-3D1, which features, among the obvious dual-GPUness, 256 MB of GDDR3, a "256-bit memory architecture", and core/memory clocks of 500/1120 MHz, respectively - a healthy bump up from the usual 1000 Mhz memory found on typical 6600GT PCIe boards. Of particular note is the claim of a "256-bit memory architecture": 6600GTs usually feature a 128-bit bus. According to Gigabyte, this 256-bit architecture is actually each 6600 GT core's 128-bit memory summed. We'll take the GV-3D1 to task soon enough.
Specifications
| |
5700 Ultra |
5950 |
6200 |
6600 |
6600 GT |
Dual 6600 GT |
6800 |
6800 GT |
6800 Ultra |
| Architecture |
NV3x |
NV3x |
NV41 |
NV43 |
NV43 |
NV43 |
NV40 |
NV40 |
NV40 |
| Manufacturing Process |
0.13u |
0.13u |
0.11u |
0.11u |
0.11u |
0.11u |
0.13u |
0.13u |
0.13u |
| Transistor Count |
82 M |
130 M |
? |
146 M |
146 M |
146 M Each |
220 M |
220 M |
220 M |
| Pipelines |
4x1 |
4x2 |
4x1 |
8x1 |
8x1 |
16x1* |
12x1 |
16x1 |
16x1 |
| TMUs/Pipe |
1 |
2 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
| Clock Speed |
475 MHz |
475 MHz |
300 MHz |
300 MHz |
500 MHz |
500 MHz |
325 MHz |
350 MHz |
400 MHz |
| Fillrate (megapixels) |
1900 |
1900 |
1200 |
2400 |
4000 |
8000* |
3900 |
5600 |
6400 |
| Memory Interface |
128-bit |
256-bit |
128-bit |
128-bit |
128-bit |
256-bit* |
256-bit |
256-bit |
256-bit |
| Memory Size |
128 MB |
256 MB |
128 MB |
128 MB |
128 MB |
256 MB |
128 MB |
256 MB |
256 MB |
| SLI-Capable |
No |
No |
No |
No |
Yes |
Yes** |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
* Predicted value, unless we get specific numbers from Gigabyte.
** Two GPUs internally connected through an SLI interface.
Looking at those specifications, the dual-6600GT looks more like a souped-up 6800 Ultra than a 6600GT. Gigabyte has made claims that the 3D1 will be faster than ATI's RADEON X850 and NVIDIA's 6800 Ultra but at a lower price point than both. Things ought to be interesting when we get around to benchmarks.
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