SLI done for?

Strife212 · 5 Jun 2008 at 02:26

Got this from motherboard forum but I think its worth posting here.

http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7713&Itemid=1

Intel has banned nVidia from making nForce for the Nehalem. This means no SLI for the next generation of CPU's, unless nVidia gives intel the SLI licence. They've been extremely reluctant to in the past, but I guess they have to now. It's either that or SLI is killed off.

tutu · 5 Jun 2008 at 02:30

Strife212 said:
Intel has banned nVidia from making nForce for the Nehalem

I don't really care about SLI but Intel withholding the license/information required sounds very anti-competitive. I'm guessing this will be resolved long before it goes to any court however.

Perfect_Chaos · 5 Jun 2008 at 02:43

looks like intel want to go bankrupt imo, first they screw over overclockers and now this.

Slashiem · 5 Jun 2008 at 02:57

I thought that, that guy from intel has made enough money by now surly. Whats next he wants to buy Mars, and then move onto the Sun and harness the power of the Sun, and then threaten the world that if they don't all buy Intel stuff there are going to cut off all sun light which preserves the very life in which we live.
Complete bunch of ********, pardon my french of course.

~Slash

Scania · 5 Jun 2008 at 06:10

Perfect_Chaos said:
first they screw over overclockers

Excuse my ignorance, but what's this about then?

PhillyDee · 5 Jun 2008 at 08:07

R124/LA420 said:
Excuse my ignorance, but what's this about then?

Locking the FSB and Multi on the chips so you cannot overclock. The NB is getting integrated into the chips, hence the LGA1400ish

p) package.

Though personally, I think its so they can sell their extreme models for twice the price and leave them unlocked for people to overclock.

Greebo · 5 Jun 2008 at 08:51

PhillyDee said:
Locking the FSB and Multi on the chips so you cannot overclock. The NB is getting integrated into the chips, hence the LGA1400ish p) package.

Though personally, I think its so they can sell their extreme models for twice the price and leave them unlocked for people to overclock.

Ditto on that. The high end overclocking market is a very small percentage of their turnover so as long as they have extreme chips which are unlocked, people will buy them as they do now. It will be the unlocked mulit/fsb chips which will top the benchmark/performance charts and make people want to buy them.

It has always amazed me that anybody bought any extreme chips in the past but they did to get the best and I suppose if you have the money, then why not?

So the days will be gone where you can buy a cpu like the q6600 and overclock it to 3.6Ghz and get a 50% for nothing.

What the hell will we have to talk about on here anymore?

Of yeah, AMD overclocking

thegoonden · 5 Jun 2008 at 08:55

Perfect_Chaos said:
looks like intel want to go bankrupt imo, first they screw over overclockers and now this.

But PC gamers are 10% MAX of the market.

Maybe only 1% of those would be red-eyed MHz Obsessive SLI-deulded overclockers.
And those are optimistic figures if you ask me.

For every Q6600 they sell to be clocked into the stratosphere, they shift 200 celey-m's to OEM's.

Intel probably only even bother with the gaming stuff because some of the product steering team play games, if not they'd turn into IBM in a flash.

Perfect_Chaos · 5 Jun 2008 at 09:17

thegoonden said:
But PC gamers are 10% MAX of the market.

Maybe only 1% of those would be red-eyed MHz Obsessive SLI-deulded overclockers.

for one i am not a deluded overclocker, my system fails to overclock

and im not MHz obessive either, im just simply stating that intel are digging their own grave. Plenty of people are going to be annoyed, not just me.

and if that 10% is true that you state then that is a hell of a lot of cash to intel on its own.

I rest my case

Janesy B · 5 Jun 2008 at 09:30

Perfect_Chaos said:
looks like intel want to go bankrupt imo, first they screw over overclockers and now this.

Hahaha no chance, the enthusiast market is one of the smallest sectors for intel, enterprise IT is where they make all their money so i dont think they'll be too worried.

Strife212 · 5 Jun 2008 at 09:32

Apparently Nehalem slaughters Core 2 though, which is nice.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17882920

Single Card nVidia setups obviously won't be affected either, and im sure the license will be sorted out anyway. nVidia wouldn't let SLI just vanish.

-iceblade^ · 5 Jun 2008 at 09:43

Perfect_Chaos said:
looks like intel want to go bankrupt imo, first they screw over overclockers and now this.

we (enthusiasts) make uup a SMALL portion of the market: the majority of the chips they sell go to OEMs, and get uised in offices, etc, half of the time by chaps who don't even know what a processor is, and wouldn't be able to OC it if they did know, because the boards the chips are in are BIOS locked...

neither of these options will make them bankrupt - just force us to go to AMD if we want to OC easier. it won't make any difference to OEMs

Greebo · 5 Jun 2008 at 09:56

-iceblade^ said:
neither of these options will make them bankrupt - just force us to go to AMD if we want to OC easier. it won't make any difference to OEMs

Yeah but will you? Why buy an AMD just so you can overclock if you can buy a "cheap" Nehalem running at 2.66Ghz which is faster than a 3.2Ghz q9450 and still probably faster than an overclocked AMD?

AMD just had better come up with the goods or it's game over really.

PCZ · 5 Jun 2008 at 10:12

I'm on intels side on the SLI issue.
I use SLI but it is a PITA having to use an NV chipset to do it.

I am convinced that a lot more people would give SLI a go if they could run on intel chipsets and NV would sell more top cards.

What would NV lose by removing the restrictions in the driver ?
Way i see it the increased VC sales would far outway any loss in there chipset sales.

However does it really matter, there are only a handful of PC titles released these days and as a gaming platform the PC is dead.
Most of the time my SLI rig is idle, how many times can you play bioshock or crysis all the way through ?

Crunch time will be when the new cards are released and i have to decide if it's worth putting down a pile of cash for a pair of 280's to play 2 or 3 premium titles in the next 12 months.

So is SLI dead ?
Not yet but it's on life support.

-iceblade^ · 5 Jun 2008 at 10:14

you're right... In my post i'm assuming AMD's offering will compete with nehalem, but that is not so certain...

semi-pro waster · 5 Jun 2008 at 10:22

Greebo said:
Ditto on that. The high end overclocking market is a very small percentage of their turnover so as long as they have extreme chips which are unlocked, people will buy them as they do now. It will be the unlocked mulit/fsb chips which will top the benchmark/performance charts and make people want to buy them.

While this is true I've never quite understood why they put so much effort into trying to stop it. If it really is such a tiny part of their turnover (and I've got no real reasons to doubt) then it seems rather like the old sledgehammer to crack a nut. It seems somewhat unlikely they are losing huge sums from people overclocking since it is such a small part of their market.

Businesses aren't likely to want to overclock much since stability is the prime concern normally so it looks like a disproportionate effort to annoy/halt a relatively small number of consumers.

Strife212 · 5 Jun 2008 at 10:25

It probably won't be a case of only "Extreme Edition" overclocking, thats a bit far surely?

I was thinking it would be bargain chips that were locked like E2xxx and Celeron

RizlaKing · 5 Jun 2008 at 10:25

Intel wouldn't have done this if Nvidia had not been so stubborn about sli on only nforce chipsets so Nvidia have caused a problem themselves. Intel suffer because of this er no because as long as when it comes out nehalem wipes the floor with everything else people in the enthusiast market will lap it up. End of the day i don't really care about sli or Nvidia and am a bit stunned anyone is surprised that things have got a bit unpleasant between Nvidia and Intel given the posturing thats been going on lately in a battle that Nvidia can't win.

Strife212 · 5 Jun 2008 at 10:28

I just thought, imagine if AMD takes advantage of this and takes the Crossfire license away from Intel leaving them with no multi card setup at all.

kylew · 5 Jun 2008 at 10:32

PhillyDee said:
Locking the FSB and Multi on the chips so you cannot overclock. The NB is getting integrated into the chips, hence the LGA1400ish p) package.

Though personally, I think its so they can sell their extreme models for twice the price and leave them unlocked for people to overclock.

Apparently of course

Realistically, I don't think they would do this. There's a lot of motherboard manufacturers that build and sell boards FOR overclocking. If they disabled it there realistically wouldn't be any need for "performance enthusiast" motherboards since the over specced nature of them would redundant. This would result in most motherboards being extremely similar with not much to choose between them other than smaller features not everyone cares about. IF they were to introduce some sort of lock, I'd guess it would be on those bottom ended 1.6-1.8Ghz chips that overclock to 3Ghz+ type of thing not their more "enthusiast" chips which is what I would class the Q6600/Q6700 as at the moment.