Ati equivalent to GTX 460

[f4phantom2500]

I see that way too. I mean.. if it is all about board makers, I cannot think of a single reason for them NOT to buy the SLI license.. if they are buying license for Intel based boards.. what is stopping them from buying license for AMD boards? The only possible explanation is that its Nvidia that is blocking the license for AMD boards.


Also, I guess unless Nvidia explicitly states that it does not sell license to AMD.. no one can point finger at them, especially JFAMD. And since AMD is not losing anything by Nvidia's actions they are not terribly worried about this.

i think it's just nvidia being dicks; they don't want their customers to buy 2 nvidia cards to use in an amd system, as this would give money to amd...not that nvidia would be inherently better off were intel to end up with the money instead, but intel doesn't sell radeons, so it's different...besides, any money that intel has is that much less money that amd has to put into R&D for the next generation of radeon gpus. it's just a roundabout way that nvidia is trying to "push" amd out of business. not that they have anything wrong with amd cpus, but the success of amd's cpus directly affects the resources available to their gpu division, which does affect nvidia.

...i know it doesn't make a lot of sense...but this is a large corporate entity we're talking about, so all they care about is dollars, not sense.

 

[drizek]

I feel like nvidia will act like dicks whenever they get the opportunity to do so. They're kind of like Sony.

 

[Concillian]

Well why dont the boaqrd makers just start offering SLI on AMD boards? with or without Nvidias permission, just add the bios string and call it a day.

Its not like Nvidia can just pull SLI licensing from them(board makers) because since nvidia dont make chipsets themselves anymore they need the boardmakers for SLI support. If they pulled licensing then NO boards would support it and they would be screwed. I think the board makers if a few of them did this at the same time and started supporting SLI on AMD then Nvidia would be helpless to stop them.

If you're going to collude to do something, you would do the opposite, you would drop SLI support on everything, forcing nVidia's hand on the pricing of licensing.

 

[ViRGE]

Well why dont the boaqrd makers just start offering SLI on AMD boards? with or without Nvidias permission, just add the bios string and call it a day.

Its not like Nvidia can just pull SLI licensing from them(board makers) because since nvidia dont make chipsets themselves anymore they need the boardmakers for SLI support. If they pulled licensing then NO boards would support it and they would be screwed. I think the board makers if a few of them did this at the same time and started supporting SLI on AMD then Nvidia would be helpless to stop them.

SLI support requires a crytographic table in the BIOS. If mobo makers started shortchanging the system like that, NVIDIA would cut off support starting with the next driver release (after all, the mobo maker is the one that broke their contract). The end result is that nothing supports SLI without NVIDIA's consent.

Though I'd consider it somewhat of a moot point right now though given AMD's CPU situation. At least until Bulldozer comes, SLI doesn't make much sense on an AMD platform - the cards that most people will want to SLI cost as much each as AMD's best CPUs. And if you're really dying to do SLI, NVIDIA does have an AMD chipset of their own...