News - Crisis averted, NVIDIA SLI coming natively to Intel's X58

[HEXUS]

Remember the hoopla about an nF200 bridging chip being required for SLI on X58? Well, that's all a thing of the past.

Read more.

[shaithis]

That's pretty well annoyed me. We have all known for a while that no additional hardware is needed to support SLI, yet nVidia have forced us to buy their motherboards if we wanted it.

Now they finally have accepted that people do not want to buy their boards and a number of manufacturers have told them they will only use the nf200 chip "sparingly", they decide to do a complete U-turn yet STILL want to vet each board (I bet they have to pay to have the board vetted).

Just give out a universal key to the board manufacturers for crying out loud. The more people that can run SLI, the more graphics cards they can potentially sell. This under-handed way to try and make money off of the technology before anyone even buys a nVidia graphics card really me off. The cost of vetting the board gets picked up by us at the end of the day.

[pauldarkside]

I think that's fair enough really. If you want to develop a board which utilises my technology and name, at least allow me to ensure it's up to my standards. If it's not, you're potentially lessening the value of my name.

[Biscuit]

agree with shaithis. Why on earth are they asking manufacturers go through this ridiculous procedure to put SLI on their motherboards? surely the extra hassle, cost and the fact that AMD+crossfire is selling so well atm will discourage them from even producing the boards and then the added final cost of the boards that i assume will be passed onto the consumer will change nothing with regards to the difference between any new chipsets featuring SLI and the existing Nvidia ones.

Not been impressed with NVidia at all recently all they seem to do is make products that are overpriced and offer the consumer very little more over the alternatives available... and then brag about it and openly slate other companies.

[shaithis]

Originally Posted by pauldarkside

I think that's fair enough really. If you want to develop a board which utilises my technology and name, at least allow me to ensure it's up to my standards. If it's not, you're potentially lessening the value of my name.

Normally I would agree but this is a technology that only exists to sell more of that manufacturers technology.......

[pauldarkside]

Originally Posted by shaithis

Normally I would agree but this is a technology that only exists to sell more of that manufacturers technology.......

So what's wrong with that? Seems like good business sense to me - enlarging the market potential for your product whilst recouping some of the costs (licensing and/or accreditation) for use in additional R&D, for example.

[badass]

Using the word Crisis in a title about overpriced graphics technology and no puns about a certian computer game?
Dissapointed TBH

[Steve]

Assuming all you need is a valid key, and not a valid key tied to a particular motherboard, then I don't see why you couldn't disassemble a certified BIOS, extract the key and reassemble it into one that isn't... with some asm skills of course.

If we assume this happens, then Nvidia would have to revoke the key in subsequent drivers, forcing legit users to obtain a new key via a BIOS update, perhaps.

Or you could go at it the other way and hack the driver to validate without a key... probably easier

All of the above is supposition, of course.

[2Cold Scorpio]

Originally Posted by pauldarkside

So what's wrong with that? Seems like good business sense to me - enlarging the market potential for your product whilst recouping some of the costs (licensing and/or accreditation) for use in additional R&D, for example.

Makes sense to me. Sounds like good business, and heck, it could potentially open the door to lower prices on other thinks like video cards (pure wishful thinking speculation at the end. lol). But seriously, it sounds like a good move on nVidia's part.

[Biscuit]

Originally Posted by 2Cold Scorpio

Makes sense to me. Sounds like good business, and heck, it could potentially open the door to lower prices on other thinks like video cards (pure wishful thinking speculation at the end. lol). But seriously, it sounds like a good move on nVidia's part.

Yeah its good business as a general outline but NVidia already are having to be extremely aggressive with pricing to even compete with AMDs products. Their solution to crossfire being a cheaper solution to SLI is to allow the X chipsets to use them if they go through an excessive quality assurance process that will add cost to the end product. Where is the sense in that?

Surely its in the chipset builders interest to make the chipsets up to a good quality as much so if not more than NVidia? Their brand name, logo and reputation are on the line just as much as NVidia's is and its a damned competetive market as we can see with the exit of ABIT.