SLI Junkies

Welcome to SLI Junkies. SLI, AA and other Nvidia inspector profile info..

SLI
Scalable Link Interface (SLI) is a brand name for a multi-GPU technology developed by NVIDIA for linking two or more video cards together to produce a single output. SLI is an algorithm of parallel processing for computer graphics, meant to increase the processing power available for graphics.

Aliasing

Aliasing is any artifact that appears when lowering the resolution of an image. These artifacts typically appear as jagged and flickering lines and edges.

Temporal aliasing

Temporal aliasing refers specifically to the flickering or shimmering effects that aliasing causes when objects move in a scene.

AA
Anti-aliasing

Anti-aliasing is any technology that is designed to minimize aliasing and temporal aliasing artifcats.

Anti-aliasing is relevant in a 3D graphics rendering pipeline because part of the pipeline handles graphics as geometry of essentially infinite resolution. In a late stage in the pipeline, known as ROP, Raster Operations, the color of each pixel on the screen is determined based on the geometry. It is in or after this stage that any anti-aliasing is performed.

Sampling

Sampling is a term borrowed from signal processing. Sampling is the process of selecting a single value from a continuously varying series of values. The result of a sampling is a single value called a sample. In some instances, the term is used somewhat loosely.

In 3D graphics, a sample describes a point-sized (infinitely small) area of geometry. When rendering 3D graphics, the challenge is to use the point sized samples to color pixels, which have a physical area. The more samples are available from the various resources that make up a 3D scene, the more accurately the pixels can be colored.