Hell Freezes Over: NVIDIA Announces Native SLI Support for the Intel X58 Chipset
by Anand Shimpi & Laura Johnston on August 28, 2008 4:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
Why is NVIDIA doing this?
NVIDIA was clear in mentioning that it will continue to design chipsets for Penryn based platforms, but it will not be making any QPI enabled chipsets for Nehalem. Thus, with Nehalem, the only way to get SLI support would be to use an Intel chipset.
Note that NVIDIA will be making LGA-1160 based Nehalem motherboards (dual-channel DDR3) for the low end and mainstream markets, but that platform isn't expected to debut until late 2009. LGA-1366 based Nehalem systems (dual/triple-channel DDR3) are the ones launching this year and the ones that NVIDIA won't have a chipset for.
NVIDIA originally expected OEMs to use its nForce 200 chips to enable SLI support on X58, however we heard from the very start that most motherboard manufacturers weren’t going to use the nForce 200 + Intel X58 combination. If NVIDIA wanted to offer SLI on Nehalem, it would have to open it up to all X58 motherboards, otherwise AMD could actually gain a multi-GPU advantage by being the only multi-GPU technology natively supported by Nehalem.
The timing of the announcement is very last-minute. Most motherboard manufacturers weren’t even aware that NVIDIA was opening up SLI to X58 until tonight, they received phone calls shortly after NVIDIA briefed us earlier this evening.
NVIDIA is committed to enabling X58 SLI motherboard support by the time Nehalem launches later this year. We were also told that while Intel’s own X58 motherboard isn’t currently on the certified list, Intel is more than welcome to submit it for certification.
NVIDIA went even further to say that if we were previewing any X58 motherboards that hadn’t yet made it through certification, that it would work with us to get our hands on a driver enabling SLI on the motherboard. It remains to be seen how easy it will be to simply hack in support for SLI on any X58 motherboard, regardless of certification status.
And there you have it: in response to the complaint of no-new-news out of NVISION 08, NVIDIA dropped the biggest bombshell of them all - native SLI support on X58. While I’d like to see top-to-bottom SLI support regardless of chipset, this is most definitely a good start.
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AssBall - Thursday, August 28, 2008 - link
Why does getting beaten violently with an unusual rodent have to be inclusive with cleverness? Who is the "shrewed" one here?Basilisk - Thursday, August 28, 2008 - link
Tsk, tsk... time to tame your comments -- they're all shrewed up! :) Ain't a rodent. And ain't unusual -- rather prolific and common, in fact.That aside, this Plan is all too nVidia's [pardon the meager pun] for me: I won't pay -extra- for nVidia SLI support -- that should be what you get by buying the graphics board and by its manufacturer working with industry standards. This is just a last effort by nVidia to wring bucks out of the customers: they aren't providing anything material for the cost increase.
JarredWalton - Thursday, August 28, 2008 - link
Basilisk++AmberClad - Thursday, August 28, 2008 - link
So what about SLI support for subsequent, non-enthusiast Ci7 chipsets? Like something more mainstream oriented (P55?)Pedro80 - Thursday, August 28, 2008 - link
And how long until someone comes up with some kind of patcher for various bios files?This would make anyone able to enable SLI on their X58 system as long as the HW supports it..
Targon - Sunday, August 31, 2008 - link
Why would anyone need to patch the BIOS when the drivers can be patched to enable SLI without a BIOS key? Remember, the drivers are the things that care about SLI support on the motherboard, so this is another example of a manufacturer removing functionality just to make money. This is similar to Creative Labs refusing to enable fully functional features under Vista just to force people to buy new sound cards with Vista support.JarredWalton - Sunday, August 31, 2008 - link
Last I heard, the drivers had some encrypted files that made it difficult if not impossible to hack in SLI support on non-NVIDIA chipsets. That's why we had SLI-hacks about two years back and nothing since. I haven't looked into it lately, though, so if you have info on hacked SLI drivers post a link.Calin - Thursday, August 28, 2008 - link
Patcher for BIOS files or "improved" driver - some of the hardware-inclined people would find that improving that driver would be a very interesting jobmindless1 - Thursday, August 28, 2008 - link
The hacked bios is obviously a better alternative if/when possible, because bios files are released less often than drivers, people tend to update drivers far more often when they're gamers.Polynikes - Thursday, August 28, 2008 - link
Yeah, I can definitely see hacked BIOS images being the easier choice.