One of the main reasons people will look at buying the LanParty UT NF4 SLI-DR motherboard is the ability to run an Scalable Link Interface graphics setup. This is a method developed by NVIDIA to allow two identical graphics cards to be linked together and work at rendering the graphics on both to boost performance. While it sounds great in theory, it has a lot of drawbacks in practice.
The picture itself shows the internal SLI bridge connector that is supplied with the motherboard. This allows a data path to exist between the two graphics cards so that they can communicate with one another without sending data through the PCI Express bus. Without this connector, the SLI interface will not properly function. Since this connector is only provided with the purchase of an SLI compatible motherboard and not with the graphics cards, it is important to not lose the connector.
Actual use the SLI interface produces mixed results. The first problem is that the highest end graphics cards produce a lot of heat. By placing two of these in the same case, the heat problems can just get worse and eventually produce a thermal shutdown of the graphics cards in poorly ventilated cases. Another problem is that both graphics cards must be of the same brand, model and even BIOS. If the two cards do not match up properly, it can cause the SLI to not function.
