"SLI patch" author interview

[Geo]

http://www.pcper.com/#NewsID-2170

I'm always amused when guys act surprised and hurt to discover that companies are not thrilled about them breaking their monopolies. . .

 

[Sobek]

You know...there are just some days where I really, really hate Nv.

I would be willing to bet money that if this had been some patch for ATI based systems (in an alternate reality gimmick), they would have spoken to Regen and congratulated him, than asked if he'd like to team up with them to create the perfect patch...or something. Not just 'Ceast and Desist you bastard, this is our monopoly!'.

Sigh times at graphics high.

 

[Nelsieus]

PCPer: From your responses I get a sense that a major motivation is to allow people with limited money access to better performing technology. It is a noble cause, but software like yours can be easily abused by others. Do you think it's possible to balance/regulate this? Is it a concern for you?

You can see people abusing stuff everywhere. But when you receive positive emails and you see posts in forums that your work helped people and you see letters like: "You saved my LAN party" then you don’t care about the "abusers". It’s my only motivation. There is a negative side in everything, but you just learn to look at the positive side and appreciate it.

I have a concern with his response.
While it's good that this guy wants to help people out, he seems to overlook the potential "abusers" as he mentioned, and thus why should nVidia ultimately be the one to pay for it, or should I say, loose from it?

 

[Arun]

From a certain POV, it's a bit sad that it had to go that far, because this mostly implies that next-gen, IHVs might add technical reasons (bad ones, but they'd be there) which would make sure that couldn't happen anymore. In practice, I'd suspect it's hardly such a big deal to NV; the big deal would be if OEMs started using that patch, which just isn't going to happen. After all, the whole SLI thing is how they managed to get their motherboards into DELL's PCs...

Uttar

 

[trinibwoy]

Well if this caught on it would be a direct and significant threat to Nvidia's bottom line. They currently sell their SLI enabled chipsets at a premium which no doubt boosts margins. I don't see why they would turn a blind eye to unsanctioned competition which leverages their own proprietary technology. Remember, SLI tech is something they are "selling" so this "patch" is analogous to a software "crack" that allows you to use software for free.

And that's before you consider all the chop shops that would start building SLI boxes on unsupported chipsets that could cause undue grief to Nvidia in the future.

He himself made a salient point - "Just to remind you that if you want to go with SLI, you’ll need a very powerful power supply, SLI motherboard and two 3D cards. Most of the people can’t afford even a single card."

So the motivation to help the "poor" doesn't really hold up unless he has a bank account patch too

 

[Geo]

My early read on Tritium is that one of the attractive features to NV there is further locking in of the proprietary platformization.

 

[Sxotty]

I think Nvidia is being incredibly stupid by doing this.

If ATI has a better motherboard, then they will sell two ati GPUs along with it to those with money to burn. If nvidia allowed sli on any board, then they would sell more graphics cards.

Now honestly where is the bigger margin? Graphics cards or chipsets? I would imagine graphics cards.

I understand the idea though is sell a bunch of SLI chipsets, people pay a premium for them just incase, but never actually get another GPU...

I suppose that is the customers Nvidia was afraid of losing.

 

[AlexV]

Hmm...I think both IHVs are anal about this, with nVidia refusing to use even a bit of oil, so that it`s hugely painful. At least ATi have some sort of support for Intel chipsets...but consider this:aside from the 975, which is quite expensive for it`s worth(at least in my experience), there`s no high-end chipset providing Crossfire for Intel platforms, and there`s no news if the 3200 Xpress will also show up in Intel form. Would it have killed ATi to allow Crossfire on nVidia boards, so that one could buy a nice nforce4 32x Intel edition board?

End of rant.

 

[DOGMA1138]

I think Nvidia is being incredibly stupid by doing this.

If ATI has a better motherboard, then they will sell two ati GPUs along with it to those with money to burn. If nvidia allowed sli on any board, then they would sell more graphics cards.

when you're talking about multi GPU solution the bottom line is which one can give you the best preformance. gamers want higher FPS, period. if an IHV can supply the best solution overall then why not force the consumer to buy more of their own products? they're not losing any sales by doing that, on the other hand they're increasing them. NV had the only multi GPU solution for a long time, so why not use it to increase your chipset sales aswell? puting a SLI tag on a chipset and cockblocking all the others using software didnt and wont hurt their sales, it only increased them, especialy since they can charge higher revenues on the enth market range. thats if they can put a superior overall solution in terms of preformance on the market ofc.

 

[Blazkowicz]

I think SLI is really about selling (overpriced) chipsets, a good number of people buy a SLI motherboard, telling themselves "I'll add another 7800GT one year later" (which is uninteresting, and the card won't even exist anymore).

And even more often, they only buy an asus "premium" or such high end motherboard to get a bigger e-penis, and because they wrongly believe it'll be a better buy than some mobo at half the price. even if they'll never do SLI, or they even put an ATI card.

 

[poopypoo]

I think SLI is really about selling (overpriced) chipsets, a good number of people buy a SLI motherboard, telling themselves "I'll add another 7800GT one year later" (which is uninteresting, and the card won't even exist anymore).

Q
F
T
!!!

 

[Geo]

Features tend to be not just about SLI tho on the high-end boards. It seems if you want the most fully-featured board, with the most doo-dads, add-ons, and higher-quality bits and pieces. . .it's going to end up being an Nforce SLI board (at least on the AMD side). My A8N-SLI Premium is certainly an example, and it doesn't even have an NV board riding the PEG.

So, sure, there is a premium involved with SLI, but its not all SLI that you get for that premium. . .

 

[trinibwoy]

If ATI has a better motherboard, then they will sell two ati GPUs along with it to those with money to burn. If nvidia allowed sli on any board, then they would sell more graphics cards.

Your assumption is that a person interested in building an SLI rig will be dissuaded by the lack of support on a higher quality board from another chipset vendor. That's not going to happen since the competition for Nforce4 is no where strong enough to dissuade such a person from purchasing an Nforce4 motherboard.

Nvidia is too strong in the chipset and multi-GPU space right now to care. If ATi were to do something compelling in the motherboard space to catch the eye of SLI fans then they might take another look. Until then it's Nforce+SLI and Xpress+Crossfire.

 

[Geo]

Win-win is always when you have your best chance to make something good happen. Right now I suspect that neither side likes their own win enuf to give the other guy his win.

And, the thing is, with things like Tritium popping up, even if greater numerical parity starts to make win-win from that pov look more attractive. . .we might really have hard technical platformization issues (rather than "just" marketing/financial ones) in play to make it difficult-to-impossible.

 

[dizietsma]

From what I read that Uli patch did not work very well anyway, it hardly took off like wildfire did it before the heavy cosh of nvidia came down on them.

 

[trinibwoy]

Win-win is always when you have your best chance to make something good happen. Right now I suspect that neither side likes their own win enuf to give the other guy his win.

Yep, and from ATi's perspective they would do well with sales I think given the large installed base of Nforce+Radeon users, but they need to promote and establish their entire Crossfire "platform" to really stand a chance.

 

[_xxx_]

My early read on Tritium is that one of the attractive features to NV there is further locking in of the proprietary platformization.

Well it's not like there's a load of open platforms doing this stuff out there...

And you won't expect a company to hand it out to the competition just like that, SLI is a clear holy grail of marketing for them, being the "smoother" solution atm.

 

[dizietsma]

There's a thread I'm watching at the moment which is testing some SLi cards on an Intel chipset. No results posted yet but should be pretty good. This is a surefire hack unlike the one mentioned at the top of this page.

 

[Guden Oden]

Remember, SLI tech is something they are "selling" so this "patch" is analogous to a software "crack" that allows you to use software for free.

WTF you mean "free"? Are buying two video cards in any way to be considered "free" in your opinion? I don't see how that could be even remotely possible, these things DO cost quite a bit of money.

Way I see it, NV ought to have its ass slapped by a court for anticompetetive and monopolistic behavior by not enabling any two-slot mobo to be able to use SLI. Any possible fee associated with SLi is already bought and paid for from where I stand once I get that second video card.

NV are just being a bunch of greedy bitches as usual, like when they advertized their on-chip video processor which was supposed to do decoding AND encoding but in reality turned out to not be able to perform the latter and barely the former even after 2 years after the announcement. ...And NEITHER unless you pay them even MORE for their stupid MPEG2 video codec package I might add.

 

[_xxx_]

Way I see it, NV ought to have its ass slapped by a court for anticompetetive and monopolistic behavior by not enabling any two-slot mobo to be able to use SLI. Any possible fee associated with SLi is already bought and paid for from where I stand once I get that second video card.

I don't agree. First, they were the only company with the tech when it appeared, so nothing anti-competitive in there. Nothing stops the competition from producing SLI-capable cards with licensed tech, for example (pure sensless theory, of course). nV was the first company with dual PCI-E slot mobos, so that's not anti-competitive either. The fact that they don't want to enable it with every dual-slot mobo is just because the performance is inferior to real SLI (with the connector and all), as seen in diverse benches with and without the connector and that would let them look worse, performance-wise. And also, which company on this planet would ever go out and scream "Hey everyone, here's our IP and moneymaker, please use it to compete with us!"?

NV are just being a bunch of greedy bitches as usual

Like any company which _can_. As usual