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Originally Posted by n0nsensical
I don't entirely agree with that. I think right now if I had one 6800 GT/Ultra and an SLI motherboard and wanted better performance, I would buy another rather than replace it with a 7800 GT/GTX, save some money and end up with comparable or better performance. It might not be a huge savings to do the SLI upgrade, but I think with the current and last generation it turns out to be a wash or better, and we can't really speculate at this point about the price or performance of the next generation compared to this.
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My main point is that you end up spending more money on an SLI solution than simply getting a better graphics card. Even if you wait 3 years for the price of a 6800 Ultra to get down to $100, it still cost more in the long run than just getting a 7800 GTX in the first place. And you're
still behind in performance. I just don't see it as an economical solution, no matter which way you look at it.
Take a look at my example from before. In the start, you pay roughly $600 for a motherboard with a single PCI-E x16 slot and a top of the line card. Or you could pay the same $600 for a motherboard that's SLI capable, and a graphics card that's not as powerful. In a few years, you buy another card.
No matter how cheap that second card is, you've already spent more money than you would have if you hadn't bought the SLI board, and you're performance still isn't as good as if you had simply gotten the better card to begin with. I'll say it again:
A single card of the next generation always outperforms two current generation cards. Until it becomes possible to truly integrate two completely different cards, SLI simply isn't a cost effective upgrade solution.