SLI Anyone?

The Albatron K8SLI has a good number of features as we have already shown you.  However, the single most important reason for upgrading to this type of board is the SLI capability.  Before we jump into some performance results we need to give Albatron kudos for their SLI set up.  The majority of SLI boards come with a switch or jumper that needs to be physically set before a board can recognize dual cards working in SLI.  Albatron's K8SLI does this automatically.  I'm not talking about the bridge that physically attaches the two VGA cards, I'm talking about how the board knows to shift from normal single VGA operation to SLI.  Once a second VGA card is detected, the board runs through the motions to get you going.  Very nice.

Performance wise; this is the first SLI board we've looked at in the shop.  With that said, you can imagine we were quite curious to see first hand what SLI could do.  The selection of a GeForce 6600 GT as our test card wasn't coincidental.  We selected it because the 6600 GT can be had online for as little as $155.  Two of these cards would subsequently run you about $310.  Compare that to the price of a high end Radeon X850XT which goes for $450 or so.  Before I take this to the next step, let's look at the benchmark results in Doom3.

I was completely amazed.  Not only by the margin that the two mid range GeForce 6600 GTs trounced the high end X850XT but the price per pound as well.  One Radeon X850XT is priced at approximately $450.  Two GeForce 6600 GTs AND the price of the Albatron K8SLI mainboard is about $445.  Think about that.  Two VGA cards and a new mainboard upgrade for less than the price of a single high end VGA upgrade - not forgetting that the two midrange VGA cards kicked the crap out of the high end Radeon.  SLI gives you kick ass performance and allows you to upgrade in stages and not blow your wad of dough all at once.  Amazing.