SLI Questioned, Mini-PCs, and a Sweet Gigabyte Video Card

This morning HardOCP checks in with an interesting piece on the real benefits of SLI in gaming.  After that, there are a couple of mini-PCs worth checking out from Shuttle and Soltek.  Rounding things out is Gigabyte video card that got Hardwarezoom so excited, they posted a preview.  Check It!

HardOCP has an editorial questioning whether SLI is falling short in gaming:

"The bottom line is NVIDIA is going to have to kick it up several notches on the driver side if they want SLI to impact the marketplace. The optimal solution is to make it so SLI is completely transparent to games so they don't have to create a profile for each game allowing SLI to "just work." Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to be the case..."

Soltek's Qbic EQ3901MAY-300P mini-barebones system @ The Tech Report:

"For gamers and enthusiasts, the most attractive member of the Mania series is the Socket 939-based Qbic EQ3901. With four colors to choose from, VIA's trusty K8T800 Pro chipset, a pair of 5.25" drive bays, and a beefy 300W power supply, the Qbic EQ3901 could be a great alternative to more established small form factor brands. Read on to find out if it measures up."

Shuttle SB77G5 XPC – Socket 775 through Intel Canterwood @ TweakTown:

"We've got yet another Shuttle small form factor system under the spotlight today, this time it's the SB77G5 XPC. It makes use of the Intel Canterwood chipset supporting AGP and DDR memory but supports the newer Socket 775 Intel Pentium 4 processors. Today we take a look at the XPC and what has changed (if any) as well as see what type of overclocking performance we can get from the unit."

Gigabyte GV-3D1 video card & GA-K8NXP-SLI motherboard Preview @ HardwareZoom:

"Making use of nvidia SLI technology & the high performance 6600GT GPUs, Gigabyte shocked the computer world with the announcement of the first dual core PCI-Express graphic card : GV-3D1. With two nvidia 6600GT graphic processors & 256MB DDR memory on a single board, Gigabyte 3D1 eliminated the needs for two standalone 6600GT graphic cards to run SLI mode. This may be a more cost-effective solution provided that the 3D1 is cheaper than two pieces of 6600GT"