TESTED &
GEEK
APPROVED
PAIRING UP GRAPHICS cards in SLI is a
high-end endeavor these days, which
is a shame for anyone who remembers
the joy of slamming two GeForce 6600
GTs together for a cheap yet incredibly
powerful solution. Still, if you want
to hit the higher echelons of polygon
processing, it’s hard to argue against
doubling up. The promise of increasing
performance almost twofold is too
much to resist for some.
To get the most out of such a setup,
you need an NVLink bridge, which
hardwires the two cards together.
You can get a basic bridge direct from
Nvidia, but if you want something a
little more exciting, this EVGA NVLink
Bridge may be right up your alley. It
throws RGB into the mix as well, which
could be exactly what you need to show
off your expensive graphics setup.
Available in three-slot and four-slot
models, these colorful bridges look
good in a variety of builds.
There is a small problem, though,
and it isn’t something we can lay at
EVGA’s door: Modern SLI performance
is patchy at best. Grab a selection of
the latest games, and there’s a good
chance that less than half of them
will show any improvement. Indeed,
in some cases, performance can be
much worse than with a single card.
It depends on the game in question,
of course, with some behaving better
than others, and if you want the very
best, you need one of these bridges,
but it isn’t an option for anyone looking
for good value for money. –AD
$90, http://www.evga.comEVGA GeForce
RTX NVLink
Bridge
WARFR AMEWhat have I been doing
this month? Getting
sucked back down
the rabbit hole that is
Warframe. This free
indie title about heavily armed space
ninjas recently hit its sixth anniversary,
and I’ve been playing on and off since
release, but when the game’s open-world
Plains of Eidolon update launched in
2017, the user numbers were catapulted
into the stratosphere, and it hit 50 million
registered users following the release
of the huge Fortuna update. Props to the
fantastic dev team, Digital Extremes, who
hosts regular events and livestreams to
keep in touch with its community.
Why do I keep coming back to it?
Warframe just has the magic a game
needs. Yes, it’s grindy as hell, often
crushingly difficult, and the learning curve
is more like a learning cliff. But there’s a
moment when it clicks—you take control
of the complex movement system, and
fly through the air to slash an enemy
soldier in two, before spinning around and
unleashing a hail of bullets and magical
projectiles. It does a flawless job of making
you feel powerful but rarely overpowered.
Do I recommend it? Sure. Just don’t be
afraid to ask for help in the chat.
Free, http://www.warframe.com
ATOMIC HE ART
TECH DEMOI’ve been rocking an
Asus ROG Strix RTX
2080 Ti since the start
of the year, and I’ve
really enjoyed not having to worry about the
settings for pretty much any game I throw
at it. Even though I’m connected to a 4K
screen, everything just works, and looks
awesome. There are always exceptions, of
course, and bizarrely the only time I have to
dial things back is w ith r ay-tr acing titles—I
simply can’t set everything as high as they
will go and expect smooth frame rates in
Metro Exodus, Shadow of the Tomb Raider,
or Battlefield V. Which is slightly galling
given that each one only demonstrates one
aspect of the ray-tracing arsenal—global
illumination, shadows, and reflections.
The tech demo for Atomic Heart dropped
into this environment, and reignited my
interest in ray tracing. Not only does it
show off the full range of effects in its
spin around a fictional laboratory-cum-
museum, but it also hints at a game that
may genuinely benefit from such effects.
It is just a tech demo, of course—the final
game may be some way off, and it may not
live up to its full potential—but I can’t help
but hope that real-time ray tracing has
more to offer than we’ve seen so far.
Free, https://mundfish.comStaff writer, Christian Guyton, and executive editor, Alan
Dexter, discuss what’s been entertaining them recently
Editors’ Picks:
Digital Discoveries
maximumpc.com JUN 2019 MAXIMUMPC 93