NVIDIA Announces Native SLI Support for the Intel X58 Chipset

L31mr0d

Just caught wind of this now (catching up on some of my RSS backlog)

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3395

I have a feeling this will kill the nforce chipset altogether. Whos going to buy an nvidia chipset with SLI support or an AMD chipset with Crossfire support when you can buy an Intel chipset with both SLI AND Crossfire support.

While I really did want this I think its a bad move for the consumer, Intel will be able to effectively bully any other competition out of the market.

On the flip side this might be the wake up call nvidia needed to get a better name for its nforce chipset.

Opinions?

uberpixie

L31mr0d wrote: »

I have a feeling this will kill the nforce chipset altogether. Whos going to buy an nvidia chipset with SLI support or an AMD chipset with Crossfire support when you can buy an Intel chipset with both SLI AND Crossfire support.

High end system builders, benchmark whores, extreme overclockers, rabbid fanbois :-)

L31mr0d wrote: »

While I really did want this I think its a bad move for the consumer, Intel will be able to effectively bully any other competition out of the market.
On the flip side this might be the wake up call nvidia needed to get a better name for its nforce chipset.
Opinions?

Nforce chipsets have been fairly dodgy for a while and most people are on Intel chipsets, top that off with aggressive ATI price cuts, more people are considering crossfire.
If Nvidia want to maintain SLIs market share, supporting the X58 chipset makes sense.
Most people who go SLI only go for 2 cards anyway. Nvidia still get paid to "certify" motherboards as SLI friendly so they still make money off it.

Anti

I still dont understand why in trifire or trisli you are limited to 1x16 lane and all the others are nocked back to 8x. Surely this must hinder performance hugely ?

BadCharlie

I like whats going to happen. People keep making the mistake of buying a p35 for example. Then put in a nvida card & then ask can i add another nvidia card to it some time later.

Im not a big fan of Nvidia products i have to say. But i do buy my fair share of them.

Cuddlesworth

I can see one very clear thing coming out from this. Hacked drivers to allow non-sli boards to use sli. Think about it, if Asus releases two revisions of the same board, and sli and non-sli. Of course its a simple matter of comparing bios to find Nvidias "bios key" and uses it in other systems.

I just think its funny that they stuck to the sli only function on their nforce chipsets for so long.

PogMoThoin

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

I can see one very clear thing coming out from this. Hacked drivers to allow non-sli boards to use sli. Think about it, if Asus releases two revisions of the same board, and sli and non-sli. Of course its a simple matter of comparing bios to find Nvidias "bios key" and uses it in other systems.

I just think its funny that they stuck to the sli only function on their nforce chipsets for so long.

You don't understand, Sli is disabled at driver level at the moment, any Xfire mobo can do Sli with a modded driver, this has been proven. But a Nvidia driver is encrypted, de-crypting this is expensive and takes time, lots of it. This is why we don't see modded drivers and the ones I've seen are really old and don't support newer gpu's.

DanGerMus

Meh. until i become stupidly rich i'll never build a two card setup and it will only be because i can and not because i need it, cant honestly say i wouldn't like to or havent considered it, it's just the nerdy need for e-peen in me .

Very large monitors when you get down to it are completely unnecessary for gaming and there will always be a decent single card that will max things out on 99% games up to 22". Think about it if you have a 30" monitor you know you'll just end up sitting further back from it. Big monitors are for professionals using cad and graphic design software etc.

Even doing the add in an extra card upgrade thing after say a year or two is a waste cos not all games will support multi card setups and varying effectivness. Plus it will probably be hard to find a card and you'll probably get better performance for a reasonably priced new card.

I'm guessing Nvidia are just rolling back there mobo/chipest development so they can concentrate on card development again and try and get the jump on ATI in the next year or so and save money too. Their chipsets have never been great anyway with relatively poor clocking and stability.

Anyway as long as the x58 are good clockers i'll be happy and i guess at the end of the day it's nice to have options.

Would have to agree though that i'd be worried about competition too but really how much market share could nvidia have? i'd say its in the low single figures.

Think about intels attitude for the last few years they really do seem to be more development driven as against profit pushing up the computing power greatly while significantly reducing wattage. Maybe i'm being naive but their "leap forward" slogan seems to be ringing true.

Cuddlesworth

PogMoThoin wrote: »

You don't understand, Sli is disabled at driver level at the moment, any Xfire mobo can do Sli with a modded driver, this has been proven. But a Nvidia driver is encrypted, de-crypting this is expensive and takes time, lots of it. This is why we don't see modded drivers and the ones I've seen are really old and don't support newer gpu's.

I do understand, thats my point. Nvidia are going to be doing the groundwork for the hackers in each driver refresh for unlocked sli for every chipset. If you take 2 x58 chipsets, one sli enabled and one not you have given hackers the difference and already narrowed down what they need to change.

PogMoThoin

But there won't be 2 different x58 mobo's, one supporting Sli, the other not. The x58 chipset will have complete support for Sli at driver level. Nothing to compare

astrofool

Every motherboard can support SLI really, there's no magic to it (as much as nVidia would have you believe), nVidia just chooses not to allow it on non nVidia boards through hardware detection (like a dongle that allows you to use software).

The X58 chipset will have no changes made to it to support SLI, all nVidia is doing is selling a license that allows the mobo maker to include a key that their driver looks for to allow SLI.

Of course they'll do this under the pretence of their SLI certification procedure, but the fact is that nVidia boards are usually the least stable boards out there, so the mobo maker would have to be a complete numbskull to fail this.

SeanW

I was wondering why nVidia and Intel didn't do this a year ago. After all they have a mutual interest. Intel had been limited to Crossfire support, i.e. AMD (ATI) graphics cards, as opposed to nVidia for a multi-GPU solution. My enemy's enemy is my friend, and all that.

Intel can now offer mainboard support of non AMD multi GPU while nVidia might sell more graphics cards now that enthusiasts have the on-board SLi option.

PogMoThoin

SeanW wrote: »

I was wondering why nVidia and Intel didn't do this a year ago. After all they have a mutual interest. Intel had been limited to Crossfire support, i.e. AMD (ATI) graphics cards, as opposed to nVidia for a multi-GPU solution. My enemy's enemy is my friend, and all that.

Intel can now offer mainboard support of non AMD multi GPU while nVidia might sell more graphics cards now that enthusiasts have the on-board SLi option.

How many people use Sli or Xfire, its a very low pwercentage of all sales, only enthusiasts. Nvidia will loose out as nobody will want their crap chipset, I can clearly see why Nvidia have held out till now. Its Intel who win from this.

Intel are themselves entering the graphics card race (they have always been producing onboard graphics) by producing their own larabee.