Computex: MSI Offers Graphics Cards, Mobos for Quad SLI

Micro-Star International (MSI) showed off 13 motherboards and four graphics cards made to be used with Nvidia’s scalable link interface (SLI) technology, for better gaming performance.

SLI enables users to connect two or four Nvidia graphics-processing units together for improved picture quality and multimedia performance.

Introduced at last week’s Computex IT show in Taipei, the multimedia NX7950GX2 is a monstrous card that comes equipped with two graphics processors on board. Connect two of these graphics cards together and you get Quad SLI, four graphics processors firing away at once to ensure top picture quality with the latest animation and 3-D visual effects.

It also can hold up to 1GB of double data rate, third generation memory that runs at 1200MHz, for faster processing. It’s MSI’s latest, most powerful graphics card. And it doesn’t come cheap. For a card like this, MSI says the street price is around 23,000 new Taiwan dollars (US$708).

The card was designed for gamers, and is compatible with Microsoft Windows Vista.

Another graphics card the company was showing off is a concept card not yet in production. The Geminium GO is MSI’s first upgradeable graphics card, allowing users to change out an old graphics processor for a new one. It’s also made to support two Nvidia graphics processors on one board. The company made this card smaller by combining a desktop card with a graphics processor on one side, to a laptop card with a graphics processor on the other.

Several of the motherboards MSI showed off at Computex were made for Intel’s latest processor, including one for use with the 975X express chipset and two with P965 express chipsets. Two of its motherboards support Advanced Micro Device’s latest Athlon 64 FX or X2 central processors, which work with DDR2 (second-generation) memory chips, as well as Nvidia graphics chips optimized for SLI.

-Dan Nystedt, IDG News Service (Taipei Bureau)

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