Nvidia’s SLI May Disappear

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/video [...] r_Bus.html

Nice find and if this does occur I would think Intel would be the big loser. 1.5% is a huge amount when you note gamers buy the higher cost mobo's, CPU, and GPU's. Nvidia based video cards can only be so big thus this would mean a big limiting factor. This would also limit Nvidia's bandwidth to at least half of ATI 2 card crossfire.

Nvidia will suffer on the GPU side but Intel's mobo and cpu will see the full force of this loss. Nvidia may switch to only making AMD based mobo's for their GPU's. For Nvidia to compete against ATI they must have the option of using the same number of graphics cards. Intel will no longer have a gaming market to speak of as 2 cards will always out perform just 1.

Worst case for Intel is Nvidia drops all their Intel base mobo's and starts making their own CPU. Intel's GPU's are crap so this is a risky move by Intel to say the least.

I look at this from a different viewepoint, and it is one that sees Nvidia in a high danger area. For many years, Nvidia supplied most of the mobos for AMD, but following AMD's aquisition if ATI, Nvidia choose to cause some problems for AMD. Many people, myself included, have found numerous features, including Ntune, unusable on our AMD powered computers. The reason is specified in the release notes from Nvidia, which is that Nvidia decided to change its base programing starting with the 8800 series GPUs. To succesfully use a 8800 card, an AMD owner must change the registry concerning how the instructions for the AMD chip, thus changing its performance. The effect of this is irritating to say the least. I have two nearly identical computers, one using a 7800 GTX and the one a 8800 GTS 640. The 7800 machine runs without a problem, but the 8800 machine will crash instantly if I try to use Ntune or one of the other Nvidia programs. The only way I've successfully been able to tune the 8800 card is to use Rivatuner.

With Nvidia and Intel declaring war on each other, Nvidia is distancing itself from the only other major company producing CPUs. A sidelight of this is that I find amusing is that Intel's new chipsets support ATI cards and Crossfire, which is made by its rival, AMD. Back to Nvidia, with its idea of supplying video cards of 2, 3, or even 4 GPUs on a single card, the last company that I remember doing this was 3DFX with its VooDoo line. How many people remember 3DFX? If Nvidia does try to enter into CPU production, they must have a specific license to produce x86 chips. I don't know if they have that license already or not. If they don't, I'm unsure that Intel would sell them a license at this point.

Unless Nvidia is willing to patch things up with AMD/ATI and start selling video cards again that are fully functional with AMD CPUs, Nvidia may be painting itself into a corner, at least concerning SLI. Steam may presently report that of the people using two video cards, Nvidia presently has the lead. Arguably, Steam's report may not represent the real use, but it should be close. If Nvidia ends SLI, then the only route left will be Crossfire for those of us who have large monitors, thus Crossfire will become the major two card solution by default.

If this article is true, it may be a blessing in disguise for AMD/ATI. Admittedly, I could be wrong about my speculation. But on the other hand, Nvidia may be signing its own death warrent.

I have Nvidia cards in all three of my computers, so don't mistake me for a ATI fanboy. To me, its more like a nightmare. Then again, many years ago, I had VooDoo cards from 3DFX when they were considered the top company and I wouldn't have believed that they could disappear back then.

Haha, this is what nvidia gets for not letting nvidia have SLI on their mainstream and high-end boards.

Erm yeh, sorry, my bad lol

AMD/ATI and Intel on the same side? Now that's the funniest thing I've read in a long time.

Intel's current IGP's are crap compared to ATI and Nvidia's IGP's, let alone stand alone GPU's. However, Intel is coming out with discrete graphics cards, so I think we'll see a 3 way race in 2009 with multi-GPU cards at the high end.

Ask TC and others, I'm not an Intel fanboy, I just think they're going to do a good job with discrete GPU's. Eventually, they'll have their own version of fusion, with low end GPU's as cores in a multi-core CPU. Rather than create their own standard, I expect Intel GPU's to be Crossfire compatible, and their fusion's to be hybrid Crossfire. After all, AMD and Intel share quite a bit of tech and Intel needs AMD around.

Nvidia isn't needed by either company. If Nvidia bought Via and got a valid x86 license, they have the money to develop their own CPU's but I'd be afraid that AMD and Nvidia would cannibalize each other's sales without hurting Intel. What I want to see is Nvidia dump SLI and accept a Crossfire standard that we all can live with, so that ATI, Intel and Nvidia cards are all on the same playing field despite differences in core design. That would be a win-win situation.

I see it playing out like a game of Risk. Intel, having the biggest army and most territory, teams up with the weak link, AMD. Now the AMDtel team can easily squeeze out the other good player that is a threat to both of them, nvidia. Once AMDtel eliminates nvidia, Intel stabs AMD in the back and severs all ties and then takes over the world in a snap. Mwahahahahahah

Aww man, tell me you have played Risk.

Maybe this can be seen as a Bluray vs HD DVD comparison and maybe Intel will just buy out the market. Or Nvidia?

What is difficult about it? If you want to do SLI or xFire you have to choose between Intel or nvidia chips. Did you not plan on going with an xFire setup when you got the x38 board?

Do research, Crossfire scales well with the 3xxx series. Still, if you can wait till June, the 4xxx series is expected, with a $299 4870 being 50% faster than a 3870 (my 3870x2 scales to 46% faster than a 3870 with the current drivers). There will also be a 4870x2 at $499, if Nordic Hardware's article is accurate.

Nvidia and ATI leapfrog in tech and performance. Don't judge ATI by the 2900XT anymore than you should judge Nvidia by the FX series; particularly the 5200. The thing that bothers me with Nvidia is the "The way it's meant to be played" program paying developers, insuring that Nvidia cards do better than ATI in initial release benchies, and the fact that Nvidia fudged image quality on the 7xxx series for a few extra fps and also fudged the Crysis demo.

It's been years since ATI fudged a demo or benchmark with optimized drivers, but Nvidia still does it. That does not mean the 9800gtx or 9800x2 won't be great cards for framerates, but ATI won't be far behind in most games, and Crossfire scales much better than SLI. Can't wait to see how CrossfireX scales compared to Triple SLI, as I'm likely to go CrossfireX on my next motherboard and CPU upgrade.

ATI was on top before the 8800 series was released...
AMD was on top, before the Core2 Duo was released...

How soon we forget.

You may be right that Intel is coming with their own high end GPU but who would buy? Not I as they have never show driver support for their IGP's. Drivers for Intel IGP's have lagged back over a year. Even the tech was old compared to ATI and Nvidia's. Just look at when Intel added T&L support compared to ATI and Nvidia. Intel's thoughts was the CPU should do the T&L. The end result is many Intel's IGP are worthless on systems up to P4 CPU's.

I dont trust Intel to make IGP's for my systems I sure am not trusting them on high end GPU's.