Nvidia Intros Beta Driver Supporting SLI on AMD 900 Series
Although SLI-certified AMD motherboards have been available for some time, Nvidia just released a set of beta drivers to unlock the requested feature.
Back in April, Nvidia's Tom Peterson revealed that the company was officially supporting SLI on motherboards playing host to AMD's 9-Series chipsets. Asus, Gigabyte, ASRock, and MSI were said to be among the first motherboard manufacturers to offer SLI support, with others arriving shortly.
"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," Petersen explained. "For this reason, we’ve only licensed SLI for motherboards with Intel chipsets. We’ve been recently hearing chants of 'SLI for AMD CPUs,' and figured that now is a great time to do it."
Following the post, SLI-certified motherboards with AMD's 990FX, 990X and 970 chipsets began to appear on store shelves and online retailers, but the coveted feature still remained "locked" due to a lack of compatible drivers. That has now changed with the release of Nvidia's new GeForce 275.50 beta drivers, available starting Monday (release note - PDF)
As indicated, the new driver enables SLI technology on SLI-certified motherboards with AMD's 990FX, 990X and 970 chipsets. The new driver set also improves 3D Vision performance with Duke Nukem Forever with 3-way SLI and Quad SLI technology.
"With Release 275 drivers, the 3D Vision Controller driver is now included with all GPU driver installations," the notes read. "This driver package includes v275.33 3D Vision Controller driver. Users are no longer required to install a separate 3D Vision Controller driver or CD driver. For more information, please view this knowledgebase article for more information."
New 3D Vision game profiles were also added to the beta release including the Duke Nukem Forever demo, the Mars benchmark, Rise of the Immortals and Rusty Hearts. The Alice Madness Returns profile was also updated with a rating of "Good."
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Kevin Parrish has over a decade of experience as a writer, editor, and product tester. His work focused on computer hardware, networking equipment, smartphones, tablets, gaming consoles, and other internet-connected devices. His work has appeared in Tom's Hardware, Tom's Guide, Maximum PC, Digital Trends, Android Authority, How-To Geek, Lifewire, and others.
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warmon6 dormantreign8xx series chipset, any chance?Reply
dont quote me on this but if memory serves right, i dont think SLI was coming to the 8xx chipsets for amd. I think it was sticking just in the 9xx's.
Thats last i heard anyways. -
shin0bi272 Yesterday I saw a womans name on a medaical record of "kha, ha bich" So yeah some names are jacked up... but back to my original comment.Reply
I like the idea that they are adding sli support to amd boards but why they refused for so long is beyond me. They said they didnt do it recently because amd wasnt the gamers cpu anymore... so what? If an amd guy wants to buy a pair of your exorbitantly priced cards WHY WOULD YOU STOP THEM? This move just says to me that Nvidia finally woke up to the fact that they were dissing a good sized chunk of the gamer market who might be willing to spend over a grand on 2 video cards (or more) and the income that would bring them. -
verbalizer giving this to the 800 series would have been awesome....Reply
I'll be going 900 series very soon.
I personally like nVidia over AMD/Radeon.. -
fir_ser Nvidia is just taking advantage of an opportunity since Bulldozer is coming soon and it may prove to be a successful platform.Reply -
clonazepam fir_serNvidia is just taking advantage of an opportunity since Bulldozer is coming soon and it may prove to be a successful platform.Reply
When I read it, I did wonder if they knew something about BD, that the general public didn't. I'm sure they realise regardless of how the performance stacks up, many will embrace BD for fanboism and the love for an underdog. I'm almost set to buy a sandybridge setup... but somethin' keeps telling me to wait..just a bit...longer. I think I will wait. -
If this driver is for SLI-certified motherboard then why is this needed? Any driver will work with SLI for SLI certified motherboard. If you have a SLI-certified AMD motherboard then why do you need this to run SLI??? Doens't make sense. Unless this driver works with CROSSFIRE-CERTIFIED (not compatible with SLI) motherboards to run SLI with Nvidia cards then this is something new.Reply
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LordConrad Who are they trying to fool? Nvidia is only doing this to fight AMD's Fusion. It'll be cheaper to buy one AMD video card and Crossfire it with your Fusion APU than it will to buy two discrete Nvidia cards.Reply