[Solved] NVIDIA Licenses SLI for Upcoming AMD Chipsets

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=21496

NVIDIA and AMD have been battling it out in the graphics arena ever since the latter acquired ATI back in late 2006. Since then, the two companies have not only waged a war of words, but they've continually duke it out to produce the industry's fastest graphics cards.

But even the fiercest competitors can make amends when there's money to be made. NVIDIA today is having a change of heart when it comes to licensing out its SLI graphics technology, and will allow upcoming AMD chipsets to support SLI.

The capability will extend to AMD's 990FX, 990X and 970 chipsets -- existing AMD chipsets won't be eligible for NVIDIA's newfound generosity.

"We’ve been recently hearing chants of “SLI for AMD CPUs”, and figured that now is a great time to do it," said NVIDIA's Tom Peterson in a blog post. "After all, we want to make sure gamers can benefit from the new CPU competitive landscape and ensure they have NVIDIA SLI – the highest performance, most stable multi-GPU solution - to game on!"

But being that NVIDIA and AMD are still rivals, Peterson couldn't help but get a little dig in at AMD's expense. "Long term gamers probably remember that for a long time AMD offered great high-end CPUs, but in recent years, AMD’s stature as the preferred gaming CPU fell by the wayside and Intel CPUs have been the gamers’ choice."

But in the end, this is good news for gamers and it's nice to see two companies put aside their differences for a change. You can expect to see SLI-capable AMD motherboards in the near future from ASUS, Gigabyte, ASRock, and MSI.

Hi Mal,
The sticky post already in the bulldozer already has word on this.
Sorry mate a bit too late.

I haven't really been around lately..

I dislike nVIDIA with a passion. They just had to take a dig at AMD which is ridiculous because they'll turn around after and take a dig at Intel.

nVIDIA is like a gossiping annoying 13yr old Justin Bieber fan.

how's tricks mouse.?

waiting for the next technology to 'blow my mind'.
still rockin' 8800 GT's, when and what is to be the upgrade.?

so you went ahead and got the 2 GTX 560's,,,, nice.
which ones and have you clocked them or running stock.
I run my cards @ stock but I have been itching to tweak..

it make sense more since I read you quoted statement.... LOL
where are the reports that AMD Bulldozer destroys Intel SB in gaming, thanks.?

Where is the evidence for your statements? And no you didn't tell us but rather "leaked" sources suggested it. You could be reading too much into that statement. I mean the statement could mean nothing like it could mean that Bulldozer is better than Phenom II and thus offering a more competitive landscape. All it takes is for Bulldozer to outperform Phenom II for it to quantify that statement in the way you're interpreting that statement.

Read between the lines huh? So sorta like invading a foreign nation based on "reading between the lines" only to find out that there are no weapons of mass destruction? This whole endeavor costing an exorbitant amount of treasury (not to mention the sheer cost in human life). I think you rely on "feelings" too much but that's my opinion.

Are these the same "people" who had seen Barcelona in action and pointed to it being "very special"?

I'm not going to give up my sources sorry. If I did they would be more careful which would be bad for me. These people are also under NDA and don't need me pointing out their mistakes.

If you can't follow the very many statements on a variety of tech forums then that's not my problem however. Have you seen anybody with a BD chip saying anything bad about it? I mean a reliable source and not some chinese guy with an A0 btw.

All I have ever asked on ever thread that I have been on about: nVidia, AMD, Intel, AM3, AM3+, Bullozer, SLI and so on,,,
I just want to see benchmarks.!
Proof of performance please..

nice.
I do not know too much about Palit, I have the same clocked EVGA version @ 900MHz.
I too do not feel the need to push it but would like to push my phys-X (GTS 240 - OEM) up a little.

^+100 agreed!

Well it should be clear

Tom Petersen just said that Nvidia stopped licencing SLI on AMD because AMD fell behind. That was rubbish, Nvidia stopped licencing SLI on AMD because AMD bought ATI.

The 2nd comment is all that really matters. Think about Nvidia's and AMD's big partners. Gigabyte, Asus I mean. Now think what happens when Bulldozer arrives at Asus/Gigabyte HQ and is 30% faster than SB in games. And Nvidia isnt offering SLI on that?

I'm sure you can work it out.

We could argue all day about this I'm sure, but we both know that wasn't why Nvidia stopped SLI on AMD.

And we both know that Nvidia wouldn't go running back to AMD with their tails between their legs unless they HAD to.

I just love the competitive banter..

They do have to go back to AMD as AMD is eating their lunch in terms of overall marketshare.

https://www.trefis.com/articles/446 [...] 2011-03-25

I'm a little surprised NVidia is going around promoting Intel. Maybe they have finally made amends, as there was quite a bit of anger between the two. Intel still likes to deny NVidia's existence (especially in the HPC area, where NVidia loves to bash Intel as well). Maybe in the gaming market they have agreed on a common enemy.

Well to all this speculation and debate, only time will tell, and the proof will be in the pudding. But i do hope BD gives intel a good run for its money as it means us the end user should see more competitive prices from intel.

basically tells me nothing yet..
and I thought this was more about nVidia SLI and not AMD X-Fire..

Let me rephrase that for you.

Nvidia: We hate people always buying ATi for their AMD platforms. It's annoying we can't get chipset business from those value-minded, socket-change-hating people.

I guess we can always do the next best thing. We'll license SLi to them. What do we have to loose? It's not like we need to physically make the chips, besides we get a commission on every SLi chipset AMD sells, regardless of whether someone actually uses it or not.

How much can we lose?

You seem so sure it was Nvidia who made the move but in all the articles that I've seen there doesn't seem to be any clear indication of who approached who.

Or AMD have been watching sales go to Intel because they have been giving customers the choice of which dual GPU setup they wish to run.

Either way, Nvidia will get paid whether the end-user that buys the board uses Sli or not.

How can Nvidia lose?

They can't lose.

IF this rumour is true, it shows what kind of company AMD is because I'm sure they could screw over Nvidia while screwing over Intel too. But with this they are saying "If you want to be a serious gamer you can only do it on AMD", with either AMD or Nvidia cards.