SLI On Life Support For the AMD Platform

JoshMST writes "For years AMD and Nvidia were like peas and carrots, and their SNAP partnership proved to be quite successful for both companies. Things changed dramatically when AMD bought up ATI, and now it seems like Nvidia is pulling the plug on SLI support for the AMD platform. While the chipset division at AMD may be a bitter rival to Nvidia, the CPU guys there have had a long and prosperous relationship with the Green Machine. While declining chipset margins on the AMD side was attributed to AMD's lackluster processor offerings for the past several years, the Phenom II chips have reawakened interest in the platform and they have found a place in enthusiasts' hearts again. Unfortunately for Nvidia, they are seemingly missing out on a significant revenue stream by not offering new chipsets to go with these processors. They have also curtailed SLI adoption on the AMD platform as well, which couldn't be happening at a worse time."

Comments

Re:Well...

[SplashMyBandit]

ATI is right up there in performance when compared to it's rival Nvidia GPU's. The problem is, Intel's Core i7 blows anything AMD has out of the water. Even the aging Intel quad-cores rival with AMD's brand new Phenom 2's.

True, but only if system cost is not factored into the equation.

• At the same price-point the AMDs are actually better performers (which is why many are interested in them again). That is, the AMDs have better performance-per-dollar (or whatever your local currency is, clams anyone?).
• The high end i7s give impressive benchmarks but they are in the same price range as Xeon or Opteron.
• Same with the Nvidia cards, great benchmarks but for twice the price they might give as little as a 10% performance increase on the ATI 'equivalent'. If you are counting your pennies (or whatever your local currency sub-unit is, shiny beads anyone?) then the AMD and ATI actually give you better performance, which I found surprising when I started looking at the benchmarks and costs of getting a new system.

Mandatory car analogy: Yes, the $500k ferrari might win against my $100K porsche, but how many people are gonna pay the extra megabucks for them (or whatever your local currency is, electrum pieces?).

Unimportant.

[Jartan]

Really the article makes it sound like Nvidia is abandoning AMD chipsets but it's just SLI support. When they started making this decision it looked like AMD was totally dead in the enthusiast market. Even die-hards were switching to Intel chips. It seemed for a while there that the market for dual graphics cards on AMD was nearly dead. Now that AMD has a good chip again Nvidia will probably be scrambling to get a new chipset out for enthusiasts.

Single card, Dual GPU

[dr_wheel]

There are single-slot dual GPU offerings from both camps. If you actually need/want SLI/CrossFire, what's the point of running 2 cards when you can have 1?

Re:Who cares?

[hab136]

Maybe he actually meant "I could sloppy", although that sentence no verb.