SLi Laptop Gaming. How's your experience with it?

I'm having a hell of a time debating with a couple of individuals on the Laptopvideo2go Forums who are outright convinced that SLi on a laptop is a waste of time, money, and is poorly supported. I'm here to see if there's ANYONE out here in these forums other than myself and some Alienware m9750 owners who actually do have a positive experience and can install drivers relatively easily and play games with a noticable performance gains via SLi. Can anyone else here do the same or is this really isolated to just Alienware's m9750 owners?

Please chime in with your Laptop Make/Model and your experience with it!

For those still having problems installing SLi drivers, Stone825 has written a great SLi Guide.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=202449

Thanks!

 

too bad i'm stuck with integrated

but as for your problem with having only 2.5 gigs of ram usable...you could install a 64bit OS.

Drivers might be flaky, but I believe XP pro 64 is pretty well off.

That would utilize all of your mem

 

SLI would make a lot of sense if I still used my laptop as a full on desktop replacement. Back when I bought the Alienware 7700, it would have been a real treat. Now that I need to be much more mobile, SLI tech is way out of my league.

Still, I do believe that the technology is functional and does produce significant enough increases in performance to be justified for gamers in need of a desktop replacement.

I certainly wouldn't turn an SLI notebook away.

That said, SLI is relatively new technology. There are still a few issues with compatibility and some games are not properly set up to utilize SLI at launch. Hopefully those issues will continue to worked on.

 

I have a Toshiba X205-SLi1, installing the 169.09 was easy, the same as a single gpu install, the second gpu was updated with the first automatically. SLi1's are posting 3DMark06 scores over 7000. Most single 8600gt's are in the 3000-3500 range. Chaz did a very good test of the SLi3 with different games, do a search for it, it's pretty interesting.

 

I've read the review thanks! I'm basically trying to debunk some misconceptions a few advanced users have towards SLi laptops over on another forum (laptopvideo2go sli forums). I dunno why all of a sudden it's so damn important to me as it really does feel like a form of pissing in the wind. Personally, I've been nothing but pleased with my laptop so far and it's performance.

Stormeffect, how do you like your MBP? A few months ago, I was in the middle of choosing between an Alienware m9750 for sheer gaming performance vs the Sleak/light package of a Macbook Pro that can do just about anything; Essentially top of the line for a 15in. Does it get pretty hot during normal use or in gaming?

 

Hasd nothing but a good experience with my AW m9750 so far, (dual 7950GTX) it is true that they are badly supported by nvidia but the forceware drivers do work well (though i admit i would prefer some proper support from nivida in laptop video cards). Ive been used to radeon cards all my computing life (from 64mb crappy radeon card, to 512mb 9600, to x1400, to x1800) and the upgrade to nvidia was stunning, on the radeon cards i could never play any game at full settings and was reduced to a slideshow in B&W2 most of the time, now i can play every game i own at full settings with a very good fps. (crysis demo needed tuning down but that has sli compatability issues).

plus its nice to be ale to have a laptop that is more powerful or just as powerful as most desktops costing $2400+ that you can take round to friends, with you on holiday (2 week holida's in ireland where its raining constant for a week and a half gets boring).

 

my AW does really nice when it comes to gamoing, i OC'ed it in my way and i can play Crysis on high 19 FPS xD, well till proper SLi support in Vista AND crysis becomes available i'm sticking with shadows at med

 

I'm runnin a X205 with SLI 8600's, and absolutely love it! I use all the latest Nvidia drivers through laptopvide2go, and so far have had no problems at all, and have been extremely impressed with the performance of the SLI versus a single gpu. I'm getting around 8000 in 3Dmark06 and think it's definately a worthwhile laptop alternative!

 

Acutally, the number is 3.5, not 2.5

 

Mobile SLI's are quickly earning reputuation in the Gaming world. If the SIngle 8800m GTX Scores 9000, THink on how much Sli Would score. That said, the Gap b/w desktop and laptop gaming is becoming less and less

 

hkman yes the gap is becoming less and less until the new GPU´s comes out for the desktops and suddenly they are a year ahead again in performance Anyway I´m planning to get the X205, though here in Sweden it´s named X200 instead with 8600m GT in SLI. Is it good performance of the two 8600m GT´s in SLI?

I need to replace my old XPS M170 with the go 7800GTX which still plays games really fine, but I want a dual core at least.

 

I did a thorough analysis of SLI technology here:
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4121
I have mixed thoughts on it. Yes it does provide a performance increase but not as much as you would think. On the whole it is not worth extra money in my opinion.

 

Anyone here owns the Toshiba with the dual 8600m GT´s in SLI? Can anyone post screenshots along with fraps to show what kind of fps you get in different games, like Lost Planet, Gears of War, Crysis, Oblivion and what resolution you play it at.

I´m very eager to get the Toshiba SLI laptop, for me the 8600m GT´s will probably be enough since I own the Dell XPS M170 in the sig now, doesn´t matter if I can´t play at high resolutions. My 7800GTX is starting to show it´s age in shader intensive games

 

Chaz when I first saw your post on the SLi3, I couldn't help but wonder, why didn't he create a custom game profile for the non-sli games using this http://www.directron.com/whatissli.html Will creating a custom profile boost the games performance? It's a lot to ask but could you do an extra project comparing before and after results?

 

I personally love SLi in my m9750. It's worked a treat for me and I wouldn't go back. Chazs' SLi guide is excellent however I do believe that SLi not performing is more down to game producers rather than SLi as a whole. Surely if something is coded to make the most of a hardware setup then it will, if it's not then it won't?

 

Game develepers do what they absolutely can to stay away from hardware programming as the number of different hardware configurations to track down and test can be mind boggling and not cost-effective.

They program to a standard, and that's DirectX or OpenGL, and do what they can to optimize their code while working in their selected standard. After that, it's up to the video card makers themselves to tweak their drivers and squeeze as much performance out of SLi as possible.

I'm starting to feel the same way as Chaz. For the most part, on newer games, you're pretty much left with one card until SLi get's tweaked more. That takes time, but expect your system to run like it had a single card installed on that latest game you just bought... or wait a few months and take advantage of SLi after the driver profiles have been tweaked and optimized. You're choice.

 

when i use one card 7950 GTX i get an average of 35 everything on max res is 1440X900 with UT3, when i activate SLI i get 37 average, same goes for Crysis, when i activate SLI game gets erally choppy, i think SLI still needs some optimization otherwise the alienware m9750 is capable of killing everything out there ( it still kill with 1 card xD)

 

If your using Dx10 try the games in Dx9, and the same 1 card vs Sli, I've seen a comparison were the Dx10 erased the SLi. Check out the 8800gtx sli vs the 8800gtx in Dx10 and Dx9.

 

If you are going to spend so much money on a laptop with SLi might as well get a desktop.

 

My opinion is that SLI in laptops needs alot more work. The m1730 that I thankfully returned to buy the laptop in my sig (which shipped today ) was rather buggy. I had tried different drivers from laptopvideo2go and my games still crashed.

... I hope that was not becaue it was a Dell...

 

Could be if you had Vista intalled to that they crashed, what I have heard is that SLI in Vista doesn´t work as it should yet. I will order a XPS M1730 tomorrow and I will install XP on it along with Vista a dual boot. I don´t see why there should be so much trouble with SLI in the first place. Now I own a desktop that kills that XPS M1730 but I really want a SLI laptop, would be my first one and I love the XPS series