Originally drafted August 2006:
If you’re not a geek you have not heard about SLi. Even if you are a geek you may not have heard about QuadSLi. BFG fit 2 graphics cards on 1 PCIEx interface, allowing those who don’t have SLi to get SLi performance, and those that do have SLi to get QuadSLi performance.
In order to take advantage of the image quality these cards allow, you need a big frikken monitor, but you will be gaming like never before if you have the money.
**2012 05 02**
So a note on this. This was a previous draft from the old database. I have no idea why I never posted it but it was forshadowing. A couple years later I did get my 9850GX2s, two of them. I also got my 30″ monitor. Quad SLi worked nowhere near as well as I wanted it to. Half the games at the time couldn’t use more then one card, and others were actually bogged down by it. I don’t believe I ever went back to the dual chip cards after that.
There was always so much overhead, and not until a year or two later did they even have dual x16 PCIEx motherboards that could go full speed in SLi – previously it was 16x if you had 1 and it was 8x if you had two. They’ve certainly livened this up a little with the latest announcement of the 690s from Nvidia. They’re up to 85% efficiency? However, you’re still getting less then the 100% performance boost over 1 card you would get if you had 2 separate cards in SLi.
My stance is that a dual chip card is only for those without SLi motherboards.