Gigabyte: Enable SLI On X58 Boards

[exfileme]

Late last night, motherboard manufacturer Gigabyte said that SLI mode can be activated on many of its X58 boards.

Gigabyte: Enable SLI On X58 Boards : Read more

 

[kyeana]

Good news!

 

[kyeana]

Edit double post

 

[tester3000]

This is awesome... SLi on a $185 board!!! Might be going i7 this year and this really helps me make my decision.

 

[Cache]

Any bets as to how long before nVidia sues over copyright breaches or something similar?

 

[Eggrenade]

As soon as their lawyers finish with Intel, so never. Or they'll just hire a bunch more, so it could be soon.

 

[baseline]

Sure I'll take that bet. It's not going to happen because Gigabyte went to NVIDIA and got certification.

 

[radiowars]

Yay Gigabyte. Now I think I HAVE to buy their board. Good move

 

[Inktfish]

So now they are giving native SLI support on those boards or are they just admitting that their BIOS can be altered illegally very easily?

 

[Inktfish]

So does that mean:
SLI support legally on the 6 Gigabyte boards
OR
are they admitting that it can be done easily
?

 

[kyeana]

^they have provided a BIOS update to allow SLI on those boards

 

[kingnoobe]

Its all legal read all of the article. They just had to get certification for it. Or of course they just wanted to make money, and hoped more people would buy the more expensive board, but when the article broke they figured "hey might as well now, it'll make us look good".

 

[mirazh1976]

This kind of gives a clue on per board production costs if they can undercut their own higher market boards. Also, I am sure they would stipulate that this bio's tweak voids the warranty as well?

 

[bounty]

"It's probably safe to assume that Gigabyte planned to release an SLI-certified BIOS all along, but that the Taiwanese magazine stumbled upon the ability before Gigabyte could get the official Nvidia certification."

I don't know if I'd call that safe to assume. Not with that wording anyways. I'd call announcing your motherboards support SLI and that there is a bios patch, different than official Nvidia certification. Also it may not be the same as official Gigabyte support. In other words, you can dl it and try it, if it doesn't work for you for some reason I doubt they'll send you another board. They'll probably tell you if you want official SLI support, but the official SLI mobo.

 

[martel80]

I thought nVidia would collect some small fee for SLI support on a per-board basis. If this was the case, Gigabyte would be in trouble (evading fees).

 

[marraco]

I don't get why Nvidia allowed the existence of crossfire-capable motherboards without SLI. Taking itself away from the market does not make sense.

 

[kyeana]

Its not nvidias choice what mobo manufactures do, gigabyte decides what features will go into their product