Matthias99
Diamond Member
- Oct 7, 2003
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Originally posted by: Wreckage
With the exception of one ultra high end card, NVIDIA's cards cost less and run cooler so it's not affecting the end user at all.Originally posted by: Matthias99
On the flipside, you can say that building the extra hardware to handle SLI into the core of every NVIDIA GPU adds extra cost/heat output to all the users that aren't using SLI. It's a tradeoff, like anything else. Either you build the multi-card support into all the cards, or you sell a separate product that only people who want to use multi-card setups have to buy.
The way ATI does Crossfire requires more hardware support than NVIDIA's solution (so for NVIDIA, the added cost is smaller). The tradeoff is that you get (essentially) free SuperAA with a separate compositing engine, and maybe lower CPU overhead.
The higher cost on ATI's parts has been decreasing. The X1800 parts have only been on the market for about two months, compared to 6+ for the GF7s.