Nvidia and AMD Hug It Out, SLI Coming To AMD Mobos 120
MojoKid writes "In a rather surprising turn of events, NVIDIA has just gone on record that, starting with AMD's 990 series chipset, you'll be able to run multiple NVIDIA graphics cards in SLI on AMD-based motherboards, a feature previously only available on Intel or NVIDIA-based motherboards. Nvidia didn't go into many specifics about the license, such as how long it's good for, but did say the license covers 'upcoming motherboards featuring AMD's 990FX, 990X, and 970 chipsets.'"
Seems a smart move (Score:5, Insightful)
Since all the exclusion did was hurt nVidia in sales for people who stay loyal to AMD and refuse to go intel just for SLi. Allowing SLi on AMD boards will boost nVidias sales a bit.
Re:Seems a smart move (Score:3, Insightful)
Since all the exclusion did was hurt nVidia in sales for people who stay loyal to AMD and refuse to go intel just for SLi. Allowing SLi on AMD boards will boost nVidias sales a bit.
It works both ways. nVidia has loyal customers, too, and with CPUs and mobos so much cheaper than a good GPU these days, there are plenty of people who buy the rest of the system to go with the GPU rather than the other way around.
In any case, more choices are good for everyone, customers most of all.
Re:Seems a smart move (Score:5, Insightful)
Interoperability is particularly good for everyone. Choice just follows naturally.
Not all that surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
nVidia and AMD got along great before AMD bought ATi. nVidia really helped keep them floating back when AMD couldn't make a decent motherboard chipset to save their life. nForce was all the rage for AMD heads.
Well it is in the best interests of both companies to play nice, particularly if Bulldozer ends up being any good (either in terms of being high performance, or good performance for the money). In nVidia's case it would be shooting themselves in the foot to not support AMD boards if those start taking off with enthusiasts. In AMD's case their processor market has badly eroded and they don't need any barriers to wooing people back from Intel.
My hope is this also signals that Bulldozer is good. That nVidia had a look and said "Ya, this has the kind of performance that enthusiasts will want and we want to be on that platform."
While I'm an Intel fan myself I've no illusions that the reason they are as cheap as they are and try as hard as they do is because they've got to fight AMD. Well AMD has been badly floundering in the CPU arena. Their products are not near Intel's performance level and not really very good price/performance wise. Intel keeps forging ahead with better and better CPUs (the Sandy Bridge CPUs are just excellent) and AMD keeps rehashing, and it has shown in their sales figures.
I hope Bulldozer is a great product and revitalizes AMD, which means Intel has to try even harder to compete, and so on.
Re:Simple reason really (Score:5, Insightful)
So long as they are confident that AMD's CPUs will be good enough not to bottleneck SLI configurations, trying to sell multiple cards to people who purchase AMD CPUs seems only reasonable. If, of course, they think that the CPUs will be even better than good enough, the approach is even more reasonable, so it doesn't tell us too much about which it is.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Simple reason really (Score:4, Insightful)
However, as you say, AMD has plenty of more-than-fast-enough offerings that are dirt cheap, and tend to be supported by slightly cheaper motherboards. Given that many modern games tend to be GPU bound much of the time, gamers on budgets are generally pretty well served by cheaping out a bit on the CPU and going up a model or two on the GPU side. Since NVIDIA sells no CPUs(barring Tegra, which is irrelevant here) and no longer has a chipset business worthy of note, they'd be fools not to try to scoop up the "good enough AMD rig and enough cash left over for a slightly ludicrous video card" demographic.
Now, given Intel's strength, they aren't about to cancel SLI support on intel, despite being fucked over on the chipset side; but ignoring AMD doesn't make much sense.