SLI
The Voodoo2 introduced Scan-Line Interleave (SLI) to the gaming market. In SLI mode, two Voodoo2 boards were connected together, each drawing half the scan lines of the screen. For the price of a second Voodoo2 board, users could easily improve 3D throughput. A welcome result of SLI mode was an increase in the maximum resolution supported, now up to 1024×768. However, due to the high cost and inconvenience of using three separate graphics cards (two Voodoo 2 SLI plus the general purpose 2D graphics adapter), the Voodoo2 SLI scheme, though revolutionary at the time, had minimal effect on the total market share that the Voodoo2 held and was not a financial success.
The potential of the Voodoo2's SLI was limited by CPU bottlenecking Still, the long-term accomplishment of this technology can be seen in its usefulness in gaming as late as 2004.
SLI capability was not offered in subsequent 3dfx board designs, although the technology would be later used to link the VSA-100 chips on the Voodoo 5.
Having since acquired 3dfx, Nvidia in 2004 reintroduced the SLI brand (initially called Scalable Link Interface) in the GeForce 6 Series. ATI Technologies has also since introduced its own multi-chip implementation, dubbed "CrossFire". Although NVIDIA SLI and ATI Crossfire operate on the original SLI principle of utilizing the power of multiple video cards, the implementation is different.
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