NVIDIA speaks
The two people we speak to are Nick Stam (pictured), the technical marketing director for GeForce and Bryan Del Rizzo, PR manager in the US. We start by asking them what they feel about losing the performance leadership.
"Is that interesting?" says Del Rizzo. "To some people maybe, but it took two of their GPUs to beat one of ours. We have had dual GPU cards and it's feasible that it may happen again."
That last point was intriguing. In our review of the 4870 X2, HEXUS.net editor Tarinder Sandhu said: "We'll have to wait for the GTX 200-series to go on a process diet, to 55nm, and then, just perhaps, we'll see a GX2 based on GeForce GTX 260."
While we're unable to draw either of them on whether or not this will happen, when we ask them if they expect to regain the performance leadership this year, Stam says "Yes".
That's as much as you're going to get on that topic for now and we move swiftly back to the 4870 X2. "Is that product the best product you can buy for a PC?" asks Del Rizzo. "A lot of people care about power consumption. Two GTX 260s have lower power consumption than one 4870 X2. In the Asia-Pacific region, for example, they're sensitive about power consumption."
Stam is keen to point out that he thinks NVIDIA's multi GPU platform has advantages over AMD's. "We've done our own testing of SLI vs Crossfire and we see a lot of issues with Crossfire. SLI is far more developed and doesn't have as many issues."
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