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Feature: GamePro Labs Visits GDC 2008! (Page 3 of 3)

Feature by Tae Kim | 02/29/2008 | 12:12:30 PM PST

nVidia Hybrid SLI tech

Straight out the "Why Didn't Someone Think Of That Sooner" file comes video graphics card manufacturer nVidia's Hybrid SLI tech. This intriguing piece of computer hardware wizardy works like this: motherboards built using Hybrid SLI will feature a built-in graphics card chip. This is nothing new as motherboards with integrated graphics chips have been around for a long time. But here's where things get interesting-in the past, when you added on a discrete video card, it would override the integrated GPU, rendering it essentially useless. But with Hybrid SLI, you can add a discrete Hybrid SLI enabled video card and pair its power with the integrated GPU's, essentially giving you two graphics processors in one system.

Again, this isn't anything new, as both nVidia and its main competitior ATI allow you to link two video cards together to help improve performance, but there's yet another cool twist to the Hybrid SLI initiative: when you are engaged in less demanding tasks such as web surfing and word processing, you can disable the discrete video card and let the integrated GPU do all the rendering work. What's the benefit of doing this, you ask? Integrated GPUs consume far less power than discrete video cards, so rather than waste energy powering your video card all the time, you can shut it down when necessary and use your motherboard's graphics chip to take care of the menial tasks.

It might not sound particularly sexy but it's a very cool idea that makes a lot of sense. Pretend your car had two engines: one can take the car up to about 45 miles per hour and when you need to go faster, the other engine will kick in and help. It wouldn't make sense to have both engines on at the same time, guzzling gas, would it? No, the smarter solution is the have the first engine going all the time and only have the second engine kick in when you go faster than 45 mph. That's essentially what Hybrid SLI will do for you. With energy costs soaring and video cards demanding more and more power to run properly, this is one piece of technology that definitely bears watching in the future.