are we ever going to see something that can do sli and crossfire

[lozaning]

i am just wondering if some company like gigabyte who makes both ati and nvidia cards would ever come out with one. i would think that is someone came out with a good stable one they would pull in the cash, as people wouldnt be as cemented into an upgrade plan

 

[Dillusion]

VIA K8T900 chipset will do it, but its not as fast as the custom-tailored counterparts from their respective companies. About 2-3% slower, but ide say that on the driver level.

 

[HighTest]

Actually, and here's the irony, all existing Dual PEG (PCI-E Graphic Slot) chipsets such as the nForce4 SLI, the ATI CrossFire chipsets and the VIA mentioned above all have the ability to be used for either "IF" the drivers changed.

All they do is provide the necessary PCI-E x16 slots as two x8 slots or two x16 slots (new X16 SLI boards), there isn't any additional hidden circuitry beyond that, it's part of the advantage of the PCI-E specification.

What is the limiting feature is none other than the respective card makers video drivers. If nVIDIA and ATI would open up their drivers to work with more chipsets than their own (such as the Intel chipset that had received CrossFire support recently) then you could use SLI or CrossFire on any of these boards. So the only thing holding back is, the..... software...

So Motherboard makers are stuck with producing multiple boards with the competing chipsets and customers have to purchase the respective boards for their chosen method (X-Fire or SLI) only because of the card makers greed and unwillingness to open up their drivers to work with the competing chipsets.

So there's the irony and the reason you'll likely never see a single SLI & CrossFire capable board, because the software won't change and if it did, there would instantly be a large market of boards that could do either SLI or X-Fire.

 

[Chilly]

Actually, and here's the irony, all existing Dual PEG (PCI-E Graphic Slot) chipsets such as the nForce4 SLI, the ATI CrossFire chipsets and the VIA mentioned above all have the ability to be used for either "IF" the drivers changed.

All they do is provide the necessary PCI-E x16 slots as two x8 slots or two x16 slots (new X16 SLI boards), there isn't any additional hidden circuitry beyond that, it's part of the advantage of the PCI-E specification.

What is the limiting feature is none other than the respective card makers video drivers. If nVIDIA and ATI would open up their drivers to work with more chipsets than their own (such as the Intel chipset that had received CrossFire support recently) then you could use SLI or CrossFire on any of these boards. So the only thing holding back is, the..... software...

So Motherboard makers are stuck with producing multiple boards with the competing chipsets and customers have to purchase the respective boards for their chosen method (X-Fire or SLI) only because of the card makers greed and unwillingness to open up their drivers to work with the competing chipsets.

So there's the irony and the reason you'll likely never see a single SLI & CrossFire capable board, because the software won't change and if it did, there would instantly be a large market of boards that could do either SLI or X-Fire.

ATi actually has an internal beta driver that makes cf work on the nf4, but theres 2 problems with releasing it, nvidia wouldn't like it, and b, ati wants to push there own shipset, thing is thgou, inside ati there ARE CF cards running on nf4 motherboards