NVIDIA Corp. recently announced that it is driving its multi-GPU technology dubbed Scalable Link Interface (SLI) originally designed for high-end gaming PCs into mainstream market segments. While the company calls this an upgrade path, inexpensive multi-GPU computers may face challenges from more advanced single-GPUs by the company.

“For the casual gamer who is looking to make the transition to NVIDIA SLI technology, today's announcement means they can also make the jump to an SLI-ready PC and be assured of a viable graphics upgrade path in the future,” said Ujesh Desai, general manager of GeForce GPUs at NVIDIA.

Particularly, NVIDIA now enables multi-GPU SLI mode for NVIDIA GeForce 6600 graphics cards and ensures that its mainboard partners have affordable platforms with two PCI Express x16 slots for graphics cards. NVIDIA said it had worked with the OEMs and system builders to enable fully-equipped SLI-ready systems at a starting price of $799 for the mainstream user.

NVIDIA GeForce 6600 graphics processing unit features 8 pixel and 3 vertex pipelines, just as the more advanced GeForce 6600 GT product. However, it sports much lower clock-speeds: 300MHz for the GPU and 550MHz for the memory, down from 500MHz/1000MHz for core/memory of the GeForce 6600 GT. While two GeForce 6600 graphics cards may be faster than a single GeForce 6600 GT, pricing of two GeForce 6600 boards is very close to that of the GeForce 6800 that is likely to deliver even higher speed due to much higher memory bandwidth.

Still, buying one GeForce 6600 and adding another one after some time may be a feasible upgrade path as NVIDIA promised that from now on its multi-GPU technology will allow graphics cards with different BIOS versions and from different manufacturers to work in collaboration, thanks to new drivers. Up to now graphics cards from one maker and with similar BIOS versions were needed for multi-GPU operation.

“These new low-cost SLI solutions bring the revolutionary NVIDIA SLI capability to new price points, allowing the casual gamer to ‘future proof’ their PC by being SLI-ready with NVIDIA technology and having a platform that allows them to add in a second SLI-ready graphics card at a later date,” NVIDIA said in a statement.