Current SLI Market Trend

Considering buying a laptop with SLI

Will be using it for video editing, animation, cad, etc. Also extensive multimedia and a little bit of gaming.

Is it overkill to get a SLI laptop at this point??? Is a single ATI 5870 sufficient enough??? Probably would get an i7 840XM to accomodate that or would I need an i7 940XM???

Also where do you see SLI in the future???

 

Are you or are you not?

What games, what multimedia?

Depends on what you use it for.

For the vast majority of computer users--i.e. non-enthusiasts--it's actually overkill.

Even an i7-740m wouldn't be bad.

Definitely not in a Mac, for sure.

 

Hey I was actually interested in buying the Asus G73JH but the M17 XFire for some reason really appeals to me. I need it for programs like Vegas Pro and OpenGL.

 

basically let me tell u something..

1. The M17x is so heavy that carrying it everywhere as a laptop is a pain. The G73 is slightly more lighter ( 8lbs to 11lbs of m17x).
2. The G73 is more than powerful enough for ur needs.. the M17x is an overkill in a way.
3. The M17x RGBLED display is excellent but G73's one is not bad at all and is one of the better ones..

Concluding,

if u have a ton of money to blow and don't mind carrying around a tank , buy the M17x..

if u have a limited budget and cannot carry a tank around , the G73 is what u want.

 

Unless gaming is your main concern, don't bother with SLI. It servers no value in the video editing application.

 

hey since i'm doing 3dcg and graphic rendering should i look at getting a quadro fx 3800m supported by sager. okay that was the answer i was looking for whether sli served a purpose for what i was doing. is everyone else in agreement with that. i'm not using it for gaming.

 

the FX3800M ok but u need to pay a much bigger premium.. a GTX480M or GTX285M will do the same job.. even an ATI 5870 can do the job.. the FX3800M will do it better but just for some different drivers with same card , u pay $1000 more.. my suggestion is that u get a normal gaming GTX480M or ATI 5870.. the 480M is much better than FX3800M anyways..

 

You didn't mention the editing program you're using, or intend to use? If it's Adobe CS5, you can take advantage of GPU accelerated features. But that's only if you purchase an Nvidia card that supports it.

At last I checked the GTX 285 was the minimum GeForce--with the aforementioned, fx3800 being the beginning of the Quadro line.

 

to the OP, if your software supports a workstation card dont bother with a gaming card at all, for example Maya ... my wifes FirePro M7820 in her laptop does renders a measily 500-900% faster than my DUAL 5870's in my m17X, and even bends over and does bad things to my DESKTOP 480. KNow your software and what it can utilize

 

LOL @bends over and does bad things to your desktop 480. What actually happened?

 

my desktop with a 480 still takes 3 -8 times as long to render over her elitebook.
DONT get me started on HER desktop for renders ... YEESH

 

LOL. Nice. I guess the quadros are showing their couterpart who's the boss.

 

The FirePro M7820 is for all intents and purposes an HD5870m just with the special FirePro drivers. I wonder if there's anyway to mod the FirePro drivers to work on Radeon cards (the later models like the 5870)?

 

nope I have been unable to softmod anything past some of the earlier 4000 series ( I try all the time ) and ATI and Nvidia have both PHYSICALLY disabled some of the functionality on the die so if you do get drivers up and running you dont see alot of the benifit

 

Really? So it's not ALL in the drivers like it used to be!?

 

Not anymore. They got smarter. The consumer cards are really crippled.

 

yup those of us thay buy the G-force and Radeons get screwed , they are physically crippled so we cant make em pro cards on our own. gotta hate it when they catch on to the modding community