Geforce SLI vs ATI X800?

[Ozzy]

Hey Im new here,
I wanted to ask peoples oppinion on the new SLI technology from Nvidia.
Im a keen gamer and I am going to buy a new system built for that sole purpose of running the latest games. I've heard alot about how SLI was supposed to be far superior to ATI's x800 XT PE series. I looked at Tom's hardware and saw that the benchmarks seem to show that although ATI is beaten in 3dmark 05 by the top SLI Asus Mobo and 2 Geforce 6800 Ultras. The ATI appears to rival the performance of the 2 geforces in many games sometimes by a fair few FPS count. Personally I'd like to buy the X800 as it delivers sometimes better or nearly equal FPS to the Geforce cards. The 3dmark05 score of SLI is just so good though, call it a conspiracy theory but would I be wrong in thinking that instead of enginering the Dual Nvidia to play well in games some time has gone in to making the cards peform better in the benchmark tests, it makes sense from a marketing point of view. Personally I think if this is the case then Nvidia is misleading gamers a bit.
If you have any advice on this subject it would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Ozzy

[Richard M]

Well I'm waiting for the next generation of ATI cards because rumour has it they will support Shader Model 3 and also have their own version of SLI.

[Bifta]

Originally Posted by Ozzy

Hey Im new here,
I wanted to ask peoples oppinion on the new SLI technology from Nvidia.
Im a keen gamer and I am going to buy a new system built for that sole purpose of running the latest games. I've heard alot about how SLI was supposed to be far superior to ATI's x800 XT PE series. I looked at Tom's hardware and saw that the benchmarks seem to show that although ATI is beaten in 3dmark 05 by the top SLI Asus Mobo and 2 Geforce 6800 Ultras. The ATI appears to rival the performance of the 2 geforces in many games sometimes by a fair few FPS count. Personally I'd like to buy the X800 as it delivers sometimes better or nearly equal FPS to the Geforce cards. The 3dmark05 score of SLI is just so good though, call it a conspiracy theory but would I be wrong in thinking that instead of enginering the Dual Nvidia to play well in games some time has gone in to making the cards peform better in the benchmark tests, it makes sense from a marketing point of view. Personally I think if this is the case then Nvidia is misleading gamers a bit.
If you have any advice on this subject it would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Ozzy

2 x 6800 Ultra's will set you back probably over £700, add another £100+ for an SLI motherboard and it's a bit pointless when you could wait and get a next gen. card that'll probably outdo current models (using SLI or not) for around £300 - £350 (which seems to be the normal release price nowadays)

[Ozzy]

Ok cheers I'll look into that Model shader 3.