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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."
Why on earth if you're NVIDIA do you make it harder to find mainboards to leverage your tech? I'd have expected this move by AMD first, you'd think NVIDIA would be wanting to have their tech available everyplace possible.
The fact is that a very marginally small portion of people actually use more than one video card. And why should anyone really, when modern day consoles cost about the same amount as one would spend on a moderately high end processor + video card, why the hell would most people want to spend an extra 300 bucks or so to have an extra video card at only 25% or less extra benefit in framerate? Only the hardcore ones with the extra wallet is who. As for me, I'm more than happy with my $1000 system with ONE video card, and I know its going to last me at least and extra year or two anyway.
Anyway all I'm saying is AMD has the ability to tie in their own processor + GPU combo, plus let the consumer buy a separate GPU, thus getting their own "SLI". If they play their card right, they can just give the finger to NVIDIA and provide some real competition that this market really needs to prevent us all from paying $200-300 for a decent GPU these days.
Asus has jumped in bed with Microsoft as of late. With AMD's purchase of ATI and promise of open source drivers and Nvidia's failure to move forward in open source, Nvidia and Asus has seen the last dollar of mine.
I think the answer is a lot simpler and more pedestrian. Nvidia seriously got the snot kicked out of them for the whole "bad solder" bit and the covering up they and the OEMs tried to do, and simply don't have the cash to keep up with both AMD/ATI and Intel.
Somebody higher up probably said "go with the most market share" but of course now that Intel isn't giving them a license to produce for the 1366 pretty much leaves Nvidia with no chipset market at all if they lose the suit against Intel. Meanwhile the AMD/ATI chips have become pretty decent and run nice and cool compared to what my friends said about the last couple of Nvidia chips which according to them were space heaters.
Personally I think if Larrabee turns out to be good Nvidia is gonna be in serious trouble. I know a lot of folks right now that won't touch an Nvidia GPU because of the whole bad solder fiasco, and the new chipsets from ATI do all the tasks that most everyday folks use their PCs for. So unless they buy out Via and it ends up a three way, with Intel/Larrabee, AMD/ATI, and Nvidia/Via, I could foresee a future where Nvidia slowly gets squeezed out of the market. Which is probably why they are trying to push Ion and Tegra, to get some much needed traction in the mobile spaces.
But I personally don't think it is some big conspiracy, I just think Nvidia was hurt a lot worse by the bad solder fiasco than they are letting on and are having to prioritize their resources. But switching to Intel without a license for LGA1366 in place was a seriously dumb move, and I wouldn't be surprised if they end up out of the chipset market altogether.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.