nVidia today announced the availability of the first official driver set to allow end users to build their own Quad SLI systems. Previously, this was only supported through specific pre-built systems offered by various OEMS. The system requirements for building a SLI enabled system include:

• ForceWare 91.45 graphics driver
• Two NVIDIA SLI-Ready GeForce® 7950 GX2 graphics cards
• An NVIDIA nForce®4 SLI X16- or a new NVIDIA nForce 590/570 SLI-based motherboard
• An AMD® Athlon™ FX- 62 or Intel® Core™ 2 Duo processor

Gamers might be able to slide with a slower CPU, but realistically, if a person has the money to drop on two 7950 GX2 GPUs, then they should be able to afford the fastest processor on the market. HardOCP was able to get a system configured to test this combination; when the games worked with the quad GPUs, the results were great. However, there are apparently some architectural issues with DirectX 9 that prevent games from fully taking advantage of the graphical horsepower. According to nVidia, games powered by DirectX will require DirectX 10 in Windows Vista to shine on these configurations. Right now, Quad SLI seems to be more of a novelty than anything else. Systems based around this hardware are extremely expensive, and very few games can really take advantage of the power offered. Until DirectX 10 becomes mainstream, the majority of game titles hitting the market won’t even be able to push the hardware to its limits.