Wired On Dual Card Graphics

Even with today's systems, there are caveats. Don't expect dual graphics cards to offer much improvement in older titles such as Quake 3, Unreal Tournament or Half-Life 2, or in other games that rely more on CPU computation and less on graphics processing. The frame rates might even decrease when playing some older games using SLI or CrossFire dual-graphics cards compared to using a single card, especially if the monitor resolution is set to a low value.

Despite those shortcomings, component makers are betting on increased demand for multiple-graphics-cards systems. High-end motherboards with four or more graphics-card slots will see wide-scale deployment next year, ATI's Raja said. Indeed, Nvidia already sells quad-SLI-enabled graphics cards, but adoption remains limited to the ultra-high-end gamer set due to high cost, availability of motherboards and driver issues.

-- Doom 3 Like You've Never Seen

I get more gloomy about PC gaming's future as I think about it. And trust me ... I don't want to be that guy. I've been an advocate of PC gaming since the 386. However, with the 360 and the PS3 emerging it seems that PC's real strength is the ability to chock so much hardware into a box that nobody's console will able to compete. Cell processor? Meet dual 7800s on my 64bit beast! ..... which cost me three grand. People are out there, right now, complaining about spending $600 for a machine which will undoubtably perform much better than your average $1,000 computer ... and still do all the media playing you need. Provided you aren't planning on writing a paper, there's no reason either the 360 or PS3 couldn't be made to perform most of a PC's common task. Games, web, email and IM. Heck, pretty soon my DS will be capable of that.



tagged: pc, gaming