Why are there not many amd sli boards?

liamcrane · 26 Sep 2009 at 06:57

hi i have been looking around lots of sites and to me there is a real lack of amd sli boards, this is the first time i have used amd (spec in sig below) i have never used sli b4 but its something im interested in and reading a lot about thru the ocuk forums. I have a gigabyte 260 gtx i take it for the best performance it would be best getting the same card to avoid any issues, so really what im looking for is some advice on an sli board really, anything inparticular i should be looking for?

thanks again

Liam

Phil2008 · 26 Sep 2009 at 09:26

Cos sli is rubbish

.... No idea but you wouldnt catch me going down that route again. not after my 6800gt cards, Was a total waste of £600.

pageboy81 · 26 Sep 2009 at 09:42

I believe the reason is that NVIDIA charge manufacturers a license fee to put SLI ability on their boards. I heard from PCper.com it is about $5 a board which is a big production cost. That is why you only tend to see SLI on more expensive boards. Crossfire ability is free for anyone to include.

mdjmcnally · 26 Sep 2009 at 10:35

I would imagine that a lot has too do with the fact that Nvidia haven't really had a good chipset since the nForce4 for AMD. Tended to overheat quite badly and be power hungry.

That and most enthusiasts seem to have jumped back to Intel with the intro of of the Core2 series, along with the revival of ATI with the 4xxx series cards means that there is probably too little demand from people now for them.

I think only Asus released a board on the 980a chipset which was basically a warmed over 780a, and they used a DDR2 ram with that as well rather then develop a new PCB for DDR3.

That along with the purchase of ATI by AMD and seeing a closer link between chipset and cpu making the ATI chipsets such as the 790FX/SB750 a more attractive combination, for people sticking with the AMD processors.

liamcrane · 26 Sep 2009 at 10:45

makes sence really i guess, i have never really thought of sli, i dont really see the benifits of it imo apart from costing you an arm and a leg!! i mean i ran crysis on my phenom II at stock 3.2 with max settings and had a stable steady 30fps with my single 260gtx, towards the end it went a bit funny but crysis is a pc'c worst nightmare anyway! if i can run a game of that graphical intail with smooth gameplay why would i want to add another card which then uses more power which produces more heat, seems silly to me anyway