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Double-Barreled
Graphics
Hardcore PC enthusiasts have historically sought new
ways to maximize graphics and system performance. Scalability—combining
multiple graphics processing units (GPUs) to drive
a single display—is one approach. Unfortunately,
adding additional GPUs did not always achieve
the desired performance increase. Two PCI graphics
cards in one system, two GPUs on a single card, and even
multiple cards in a workstation rack configuration
all had serious limitations.
Now, Alienware leverages a revolutionary approach to
combining multiple GPUs in a single system to enable
screaming, boundless performance. SLI™, or Scalable
Link Interface, is a high-performance technology that
allows users to intelligently combine and scale graphics
performance by having multiple NVIDIA® GPUs in a single
system. SLI works by intelligently scaling geometry
and fill rate performance for two GPUs.
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Seriously
Hardcore Hardware
SLI technology fully exploits the increased
bandwidth provided by the latest bus architecture—PCI
Express—when communicating between the
GPUs and the CPU. Providing 60x the bandwidth
of PCI, the PCI Express interface eliminates
the bottlenecks caused by previous bus
architectures and allows for maximum system
performance in a multi-GPU configuration.
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SLI-Ready
System Board
At the foundation of Alienware’s Area-51
ALX with SLI technology is the Alienware
X2, a PCI Express chipset and includes
two physical connectors for two NVIDIA
PCI Express graphics cards.
NVIDIA SLI-Ready Graphics Card
NVIDIA SLI-ready graphics cards are designed
around a qualified NVIDIA PCI-Express GPU,
such as the NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra.
SLI-based GPUs are embedded with high-speed communication capabilities that allow them to easily interact with one another and efficiently share the graphics workload, delivering unbelievable performance.
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 SLI
Connector
A high-bandwidth digital SLI bridge connects
two NVIDIA-based PCI Express graphics cards.
This bridge provides the necessary high-speed
data path required for the graphics processing
units to operate in tandem, providing up
to two times the graphics performance of
non-SLI enabled systems.
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