firingsquad.com
Apparently Metabyte's technology is usable for ANY chipset. So it's all not just a rumor?
Call me crazy, but I don't think this is going to have much of an impact on the industry. At the most, hard-core gamers are at first going to gravitate towards Metabyte cards just in case they want that SLI-like ability. If it turns out not be of great benefit, then it will die there. If this capability turns out to be a smash hit, I guarantee we will see every other boardmaker (including our favorite 3Dfx/STB combo) scrambling to include the same kind of extendibility. Here 3Dfx is at an advantage because they engineered the first mainstream SLI rig, and despite the fact that they don't seem to be concentrating on it now, I think if they find themselves in a position where they feel they need to do it, they will execute it gracefully.
I personally think SLI was the most brilliant move 3Dfx ever made, and one of their biggest mistakes was not allowing Banshee or Voodoo3 to do it. A Banshee costs 80 bucks. An SLI'd Banshee would be the fastest thing on the block, and for 160 dollars?! It's a no-brainer!
SLI is not a new idea. SGI has for years made cards that you could plug in 2 or 4 or 8 RasterEngines to parallelize the rasterizations. This scalability allows you to reach several market segments with a single product, much like MP systems do. Take any MP-capable CPU for example. Power users and businesses want or need the fastest system, whatever the cost. If the manufacturer can provide this to them by simply selling them 4 of the same processor, they have accomplished an awful lot. Provided it's good they can sell at least 1 of this processor to everyone on the block, and they save millions in design, development and fab costs for a totally different product line.
I'm not an expert in this category by any means, but I am -VERY- disappointed that 3Dfx has put SLI on the backburner, and even more so because my favorite graphics chip company has allowed another company (Metabyte) to steal the thunder they created. Who's getting hyped now? Not 3Dfx, and 3Dfx needs it more than anyone.
-G |
