Did the world just end? AMD and nVidia made up.

[Mehovoric]

Quote from Maximum PC:

"Nvidia has chosen to bury the hatchet with AMD and finally license its SLI technology on AMD motherboards. We'll let that sink in for a moment... This bears repeating, in case you didn't believe what you just read. Nvidia, who became AMD's arch-nemesis when the CPU maker picked up ATI, is going to allow AMD chipsets to support SLI!"

Read the full article here: http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/nvidia_licenses_sli_amd_did_hell_freeze_over

So who'd going to be switching over?
I have the newer AMD 6 core, and have been holding out for an SLI bored since I have a gtx465. But they're pretty rare, but it'll be nice to see some good ones now. Now I don't have to fret about trying to figure out ATI cards.

 

[Supertrucker]

Wait, people who wanted sli on their crossfire only motherboards werent already using the software hack to trick nvidias drivers into allowing sli?

 

[Mehovoric]

I wasn't and I know quite a few others that weren't. I didn't want to break anything. And my current mobo doesn't even do crossfire.

 

[Romanrp]

Nvidia will probably charge premium though.
Or maybe Nvidia know something about bulldozer that we dont so they changed sides before its too late?

 

[TheQuadFather]

well this is good news, i hate having to buy boards and take in mind what the graphics card market may do and which side i will stick to, looks like ill sdkip the 800 chipsets and go straight to the 900.

 

[RADIO_ACTIVE]

Yep I just looked out the window and saw a pig flying.....

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

I didn't see any pig flying, lol. I'm not majorly surprised. Nvidia has has relations with AMD in the past, dates all the way back to 2002 and 2003!

In fact, Nvidia made chipsets exclusively for AMD platforms before 2005!

Thus, it don't feel real strange, despite AMD owning ATI now.

 

[mbigna]

No, this isn't NVIDIA burying the hatchet--it is someone at NVIDIA who finally grew a few more brain cells and figured out that they were ceding half the multi- video card market because of their stupidity. Up to this point, if you wanted to add multiple video cards on an AMD platform, there was but one choice ATI.

 

[TheQuadFather]

No, this isn't NVIDIA burying the hatchet--it is someone at NVIDIA who finally grew a few more brain cells and figured out that they were ceding half the multi- video card market because of their stupidity. Up to this point, if you wanted to add multiple video cards on an AMD platform, there was but one choice ATI.

or a nvidia chipset board that supported sli or tri sli im glad this is sorted, hopefully this will make more boards with more pci-e slots seen as they will be able to take both teams cards, just like intels boards we will see amd boards with 7 pcie slots etc, i look forward to this.

 

[False Christian]

Obviously nVidia sees the upcoming Bulldozer as a viable alternative to the 2500k and 2600k from Intel. I'm surprised that AMD would let them.

 

[SMOKEU]

From memory some of the AM3 boards have an nVidia chipset and they officially support SLI.

 

[TheQuadFather]

From memory some of the AM3 boards have an nVidia chipset and they officially support SLI.

980a 750a boards etc? yeah they were sweet but no unlocking and i think limited overclocking, also no crossfire support, but with this 9** chipsets we will get both

 

[freeagent]

Its good to see AMD getting SLi again. There is money to be made tho, and everyone wins

Remember when Intel had xfire only, no sli? The mods were busy in the AMD/Intel and ATi/nVidia forums trying to put out the flames constantly

 

[SMOKEU]

It's strange how my Intel board supports Crossfire but not SLI.

 

[don256us]

It's strange how my Intel board supports Crossfire but not SLI.

Not strange when you recall that Intel and Nvidia just made up too. They fought over x86, chipset support and SLI support. Each using their patents against the other.

 

[theflyingrat]

With Nvidia's near-exit from the desktop chipset market, I'd have to guess that they're looking for ways to make a bit of extra revenue; they may see that Bulldozer will be a viable enthusiast platform, and are simply looking for another route to sell licensing for SLI to other vendors, so that every multi-GPU Bulldozer machine sold from the get-go isn't guaranteed to be an AMD GPU setup. I'm betting against this being a "pro consumer" choice, as with any other company, they're seeing a way to pull in a few more bucks. There's next to no R&D or monetary investment that Nvidia needs to do in order to get this working for board builders. The board builders simply buy the licenses, and Nvidia gets money and grants the BIOS code needed to do so. Practically free money.

As for AMD, I'm sure they're not totally thrilled about it, but if I understand SLI licensing correctly, it's the board makers to decide whether or not to pay for the licenses and implement it, not AMD. And it's certainly in the motherboard makers' best interest to offer such options in their higher-end platforms.

 

[jason4207]

It's strange how my Intel board supports Crossfire but not SLI.

Asus just didn't pay the licensing fee for SLI on that board; a cost saving measure.

It used to be that to run SLI you had to have a mobo w/ an SLI chipset which added quite a bit to the cost of the mobo. Plus, those mobos ran hot, and didn't OC that well.

Nvidia got out of the desktop chipset business after their 790 chipset, and decided to just license their technology instead. And it worked well for us OCers since the Intel boards OC'd better, and the Intel PCIe controller has always been physically capable of performing SLI...it was just a flag in their drivers that prevented it from working.

Any board capable of crossfire is also physically capable of running SLI. But w/o the license embedded in the mobo the nVidia drivers will refuse to run in SLI w/o a hack.

 

[SPreston2001]

This is good news for everyone. The more options we have the better. Some people love AMD chips and now their not forced to use ATI cards for multi gpu setups.