nForce4 and CrossFire?

N

natermeister

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 26, 2005
Messages
463
The lack of a dual video card standard is a really shitty deal. I'm guessing that you feel the same way. That said, the nForce4 SLI chipset is easily the best performer in the land of AMD. It creams ATI's chipset. As of now, as you all know, ATI's X1900 series of cards is on top, at least for a few months. My question is this. Can dual ATI cards be made to work on an nVidia nForce motherboard? My guess is that nVidia, being all businesslike, would try to prevent this. Whether through hardware or more likely the BIOS. That said, I don't see how it could stop manufacturers from releasing BIOS updates that allow CrossFire. I couldn't see ASUS not wanting people to spend big bucks on their A8N32-SLI just because they couldn't run the two fastest GPUs in it.

Thanks,

Nater
 
Actually, I think that the new 975 Intel chipest is capable of SLI and CrossFire, though nVidia will never support it. ATI I believe made the core logic.

There really isn't a technological reason why they can't exsist side by side i believe, its simply a marketing thing. Why would either company help the other sell cards?

My guess is that sooner or latter some mobo maker will make an enthusiast board that will do it, unless ATI or nVidia decide to put something in their chipsets that would prevent it.
 
intel's new 975X chipset can't work with dual nVidia cards. It was reported to be able to do so before it came out, but nVidia wasn't too keen on that. The 975 only does CrossFire. Even if it did do both, I wouldn't want an intel CPU anytime soon. Maybe a Pentium M/Core Duo mobile chip for a non-gaming PC, but not in a gaming box.
 
afaik, it's a driver issue. The nvidia video driver checks to see it is running on an nforce4 sli platform, and if it isn't won't enable SLI. I imagine the ATi drivers do the same before enabling crossfire.

There is an old, old nvidia driver (6x.xx series) that allowed sli on the uli chipsets, but after nvidia bought ULi, I don't think we'll be ssing any more of them ;)

 
There is, I repeat, is no hardware limitation for the chipsets to run either SLI or CrossFire, it's all in the "drivers".

If nVIDIA opened up their driver to not look "specifically" for their SLI chipsets, you could do SLI with an ATI chipset motherboard and vice versa.

nVIDIA started this trend as people found that they could wire up the dual PEG (PCI-E Graphics) slots and offer a SLI capable board without the pricer SLI chipsets I'll include links to DFI's boards that show this.

After the driver change, some found that they could use the pencil mod on their Ultra chipset and have it look lik e the SLI (a pin change provides the chipset registry response of "I'm an Ultra" or "I'm an SLI", supposedly this has changed to a location you can't access easily to make the changes now).

So the difference between the DFI LANPARTY UT nF4-D and the DFI LANPARTY UT nF4 SLI-DR is the Ultra chipset for the nF4-D and the SLI for the nF4 SLI-DR (along with the SLI bridge PCB). So those that purchased the nF4-D and did the pencil mod and then purchased an after market SLI bridge PCB have a full fledged SLI board!

nVIDIA is being restrictive in their drivers to try and enforce the purchasing of their more expensive chipsets, that's all, period on the technical side.

ATI also does this, but with cross-licensing to Intel, has opened it up for their chipset as well (no they were not involved in the core at all, just opened up their driver after an agreement). nVIDIA can do the same thing.

The only two questions are:

1. How do we encourage nVIDIA and ATI to open their drivers to ignore the chipset and detect the presence of two cards that are ready for SLI or CrossFire.

2. Barring the above, a Rivatuner or nTuner application that finds the locations in the driver and opens them for us (a grey area of course, but allows us to accomplish our goals).

Seriously, they make more money selling to GPU's than a single MCP. I'd open it up and watch more people purchase dual GPU's without worrying that they are restricted to a single maker for all future GPU plans. I could purchase SLI setup GPU's this gen and then CrossFire GPU's next gen without having to replace my motherboard every single time.

ArrrrrrGGGGGHHHH :mad:
 
HighTest said:
Seriously, they make more money selling to GPU's than a single MCP. I'd open it up and watch more people purchase dual GPU's without worrying that they are restricted to a single maker for all future GPU plans. I could purchase SLI setup GPU's this gen and then CrossFire GPU's next gen without having to replace my motherboard every single time.

ArrrrrrGGGGGHHHH :mad:
Click to expand...

But they make even more money by selling both :D :D
 
Stoly said:
But they make even more money by selling both :D :D
Click to expand...

You'd think :confused: But the reality is that there are several that have stated they don't know which platform they really want and therefore will only stick with single card solutions and motherboards.

Remove the worry and these individuals will also purchase more GPU's, 2xGPU's rapidly have a higher profit margin than 1xMCP.
 
After the driver change, some found that they could use the pencil mod on their Ultra chipset and have it look lik e the SLI (a pin change provides the chipset registry response of "I'm an Ultra" or "I'm an SLI", supposedly this has changed to a location you can't access easily to make the changes now).
So the difference between the DFI LANPARTY UT nF4-D and the DFI LANPARTY UT nF4 SLI-DR is the Ultra chipset for the nF4-D and the SLI for the nF4 SLI-DR (along with the SLI bridge PCB). So those that purchased the nF4-D and did the pencil mod and then purchased an after market SLI bridge PCB have a full fledged SLI board!
Click to expand...
Yep only because the NF4 ULTRA and SLI are the same chipset, just with different traces connected. The DFI LANPARTY still can be modded. they didnt change change the traces u connect for the mod, just put a bigger blob of resin/glue over them that still can be removed for the mod
 
HighTest said:
There is, I repeat, is no hardware limitation for the chipsets to run either SLI or CrossFire, it's all in the "drivers".

If nVIDIA opened up their driver to not look "specifically" for their SLI chipsets, you could do SLI with an ATI chipset motherboard and vice versa.
Click to expand...

Exactly right. Though I've never been able to get most people to acknowledge this. The i975 Chipset was made by Intel and Intel alone. The reason ATi's Crossfire works with it is because ATi allows it. They passed the i975 chipset for Crossfire certification. Nvidia on the other hand did not pass the i975 chipset for SLi. Likely because they didn't want the board to be able to run Crossfire or SLi together. Which is stupid in my opinion.

Older 71.xx drivers will run SLi on the i975. So it is definately a driver issue.
 
Sir-Fragalot said:
Nvidia on the other hand did not pass the i975 chipset for SLi. Likely because they didn't want the board to be able to run Crossfire or SLi together. Which is stupid in my opinion.
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I think it's because they didn't want it to compete with their own enthusiast-level SLI chipset, because they would probably have lost. If there's one thing Intel does well, it's make very stable chipsets. I think Intel also had the lead in price, performance and featues as well (975 vs Nforce4 sli.) :)

 
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