Hello all. Regarding Banshee SLI, though it has been stated that it cannot be done, I believe it can. At its heart, the Banshee is a V2. Within the workings of the V2 is the ability to do SLI. I think that the only folks who would do it, however, is Quantum. Remember, they did a SLI V1 card. V1 cards didn't have SLI connectors, the feature wasn't advertised, and nobody else did it.
As for Banshee not working with V1 I don't think I understand the point. V1 cards don't do SLI. Even if Banshee had the connector, it wouldn't work. As for Banshee itself doing SLI or the thought that if it did SLI with V1 it would be great for sales, get over it! TDFX isn't interested in selling this to the retail market. Yeah, yeah, of course they want the sales, and they want to increase their market share, but they want to sell VOODOO2 at retail! They want to sell Banshee to OEM's! Lets try to remember that a key to success is focus. Lets not make a bunch of different top of the line chips; make your chips for each market. Hit that market hard. Go after new markets.
If TDFX came out with a nice $15 chip aimed at low, low end, would we all be crying foul because it didn't do SLI? Do we really want to sell 2 lower priced lower margin chips instead of the V2? Banshee runs at a faster clock than V2. Put it in SLI mode and you have just killed most of your V2 sales.
You have to look at the big picture here. Strategy. Product positioning. Product sales mix. Profitability.
Not doing SLI with banshee was not a mistake, but rather good judgement. The real mistake was not doing 32bpp color in 3D and not doing 2x agp. Not because these features are really important now, but because of marketing. These are the features-for right or wrong- that you will see more and more in TNT reviews. "Yeah, TNT isn't a V2 killer, but it does have some advantages..." |
