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Very poor reporting - Nvidia is not licensing SLI to AMD. AMD has its own technology (Crossfire) which is similar to SLI. All Nvidia is doing is enable Motherbo

by dman 16y ago

Very poor reporting - Nvidia is not licensing SLI to AMD. AMD has its own technology (Crossfire) which is similar to SLI. All Nvidia is doing is enable Motherboard that make AMD based motherboards to include SLI support on their motherboards. AMD graphics card will not be using SLI technology to get multicard support.

wccrawford 16y ago
Not sure where you get your info from. Here's the horse's mouth: http://blogs.nvidia.com/2011/04/you-asked-for-it-you-got-it-sli-for-amd/ http://blogs.nvidia.com/2011/04/you-asked-for-it-you-got-it-... "So today, we are pleased to announce that SLI has been licensed to the world’s leading motherboard companies for integration onto their upcoming motherboards featuring AMD’s 990FX, 990X and 970 chipsets." Yes, that says they licensed it.
- dman 16y ago
  Not to AMD - to motherboard makers that make motherboards for AMD chips.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - Symmetry 16y ago
    No, the licensed it to AMD. Motherboard makers that make boards that accept AMD CPUs due so with a chipset that AMD provides (Nvidia used to provide them too, but no longer does). It might in theory be possible for mother board makers to hack things so that you can run NVidia graphics cards in SLI when using an AMD chipset but I've never heard of that happening. All of the relevant liscensing was between AMD and NVidia. There might be some certification process that motherboard manufacturers need to go through before they can claim that their boards support SLI, but the technology license was definitely to AMD.
- jbooth 16y ago
  You missed his point, he said that they haven't licensed SLI for use with AMD/ATI graphics cards, because those work with crossfire. They did license SLI to motherboard manufacturers (not AMD, think Asus) for use with AMD CPU chipsets.
  - wccrawford 16y ago
    His point was something completely other than what happened, and what was reported on. It doesn't surprise me that I missed it. The reporting matched the event exactly.
    - jbooth 16y ago
      I usually abstain from "No, you're wrong" responses, but re-read this thread, particularly dman's longer explanation in reply to himself. He's accurate. Your attempted nit-picking is not. 990X et al are CPU chipsets. Not GPU chipsets. This is about the integration between the graphics cards and the CPU, not about inter-graphics card protocol. EDIT: A better way to put this is that they're not licensing SLI to AMD, AMD has no use for SLI, they have crossfire. They are providing a chip that integrates with AMD CPU chipsets to motherboard manufacturers. I hope that's more clear.
      - wccrawford 16y ago
        The reporting matched the event exactly. He declared that it doesn't, and went off on a side rant. Yes, it's CPUs. That's what they were talking about. Everyone. Right up until he posted, talking about GPUs instead.
dman 16y ago
I think I need to elaborate a bit - Nvidia has a technology which allows users to use multiple graphics cards simultaneously for better performance, the name of this technology is SLI. AMD has a similar technology for their own graphics cards which is called Crossfire. Crossfire and SLI establish similar functionality but are completely different implementations with their own tradeoffs and performance scenarios. All this licensing allows is for companies like ASUS and Gigabyte to add the Nvidia specific circuitry for making SLI work on AMD motherboards. Going forward - AMD graphics cards continue to use Crossfire for multi gpu support, Nvidia cards continue to require SLI for multi gpu support, a mix of Nvidia and AMD cards continue to be incompatible for multi gpu scenarios (unless you use something like Hydra which I havent tested). This announcement should instead read - "Nvidia lifts restrictions preventing motherboard makers from offering SLI support on AMD based motherboards"

by dman 16y ago

wccrawford 16y ago

Not sure where you get your info from. Here's the horse's mouth: http://blogs.nvidia.com/2011/04/you-asked-for-it-you-got-it-sli-for-amd/ http://blogs.nvidia.com/2011/04/you-asked-for-it-you-got-it-... "So today, we are pleased to announce that SLI has been licensed to the world’s leading motherboard companies for integration onto their upcoming motherboards featuring AMD’s 990FX, 990X and 970 chipsets." Yes, that says they licensed it.

dman 16y ago
Not to AMD - to motherboard makers that make motherboards for AMD chips.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- Symmetry 16y ago
  No, the licensed it to AMD. Motherboard makers that make boards that accept AMD CPUs due so with a chipset that AMD provides (Nvidia used to provide them too, but no longer does). It might in theory be possible for mother board makers to hack things so that you can run NVidia graphics cards in SLI when using an AMD chipset but I've never heard of that happening. All of the relevant liscensing was between AMD and NVidia. There might be some certification process that motherboard manufacturers need to go through before they can claim that their boards support SLI, but the technology license was definitely to AMD.
jbooth 16y ago
You missed his point, he said that they haven't licensed SLI for use with AMD/ATI graphics cards, because those work with crossfire. They did license SLI to motherboard manufacturers (not AMD, think Asus) for use with AMD CPU chipsets.
- wccrawford 16y ago
  His point was something completely other than what happened, and what was reported on. It doesn't surprise me that I missed it. The reporting matched the event exactly.
  - jbooth 16y ago
    I usually abstain from "No, you're wrong" responses, but re-read this thread, particularly dman's longer explanation in reply to himself. He's accurate. Your attempted nit-picking is not. 990X et al are CPU chipsets. Not GPU chipsets. This is about the integration between the graphics cards and the CPU, not about inter-graphics card protocol. EDIT: A better way to put this is that they're not licensing SLI to AMD, AMD has no use for SLI, they have crossfire. They are providing a chip that integrates with AMD CPU chipsets to motherboard manufacturers. I hope that's more clear.
    - wccrawford 16y ago
      The reporting matched the event exactly. He declared that it doesn't, and went off on a side rant. Yes, it's CPUs. That's what they were talking about. Everyone. Right up until he posted, talking about GPUs instead.

dman 16y ago

I think I need to elaborate a bit - Nvidia has a technology which allows users to use multiple graphics cards simultaneously for better performance, the name of this technology is SLI. AMD has a similar technology for their own graphics cards which is called Crossfire. Crossfire and SLI establish similar functionality but are completely different implementations with their own tradeoffs and performance scenarios. All this licensing allows is for companies like ASUS and Gigabyte to add the Nvidia specific circuitry for making SLI work on AMD motherboards. Going forward - AMD graphics cards continue to use Crossfire for multi gpu support, Nvidia cards continue to require SLI for multi gpu support, a mix of Nvidia and AMD cards continue to be incompatible for multi gpu scenarios (unless you use something like Hydra which I havent tested). This announcement should instead read - "Nvidia lifts restrictions preventing motherboard makers from offering SLI support on AMD based motherboards"