- Mar 17, 2011
- 1,777
- 76
- 91
I edited this to be more in the spirit of discussion rather than me just ranting.
[Original; skip unless you're interested in the full context] I'm running into a lot of titles that do not natively support SLI. That's cool. I knew that SLI support would be spotty at best, expected to have to play with it, and get progressively less supported as it would be an aging and niche technology. In the past, this wasn't that big of a deal since there would be a compatibility bits and settings that can be attempted with NvidiaInspector. However, now it seems more and more development teams have been forcefully removing SLI compatibility from their graphics engines with the majority, if not all of the compatibility bits and settings (Anthem did this and I'm seeing similar, but not as heavily, behavior from The Division 2). (To clarify, I had discovered several compatibility bits that would at least attempt to run both of my cards in SLI if set with NvidiaInspector. Not always well, but the bits would allow SLI to at least attempt it. Then, after patching was done, those same settings wouldn't even attempt to run SLI at all, and the engine/drivers would only allow 1 GPU to function.) Tweaking the settings to get an unofficially supported working SLI profile has become impossible.
Why would a company forcefully remove SLI from even attempting to function on their game unless specifically requested to do so from Nvidia? Is there some egregious issue with running a SLI compatibility bit, when it doesn't function very well? Does it cause explosions? (I haven't seen one yet.) I'm failing to see why a gaming company would deny an engine from even acknowledging SLI compatibility settings and attempt to use it unless expressly requested to do so from Nvidia.
Nvidia's lack of support for SLI makes sense in terms of development support and running a business, but it is none-the-less disagreeable as an end user. Nvidia Link certainly has a lot of advantages over SLI, and I'd really love to use it, but right now that's a minimum of $1400. That's insane.
I'm not oblivious that the market has been trending away from multiple GPU setups for many years now. NVLink I think offers a viable rebirth of it. The problem is Nvidia seems to realize this and wants to capitalize on profits far more than allowing end users to configure their systems more cost effectively as they see fit.
(Focused topic) I'll wait for the next line-up to see if NVLink is offered on anything but the 2 most expensive GPUs. What are the chances this will happen?
[Original; skip unless you're interested in the full context] I'm running into a lot of titles that do not natively support SLI. That's cool. I knew that SLI support would be spotty at best, expected to have to play with it, and get progressively less supported as it would be an aging and niche technology. In the past, this wasn't that big of a deal since there would be a compatibility bits and settings that can be attempted with NvidiaInspector. However, now it seems more and more development teams have been forcefully removing SLI compatibility from their graphics engines with the majority, if not all of the compatibility bits and settings (Anthem did this and I'm seeing similar, but not as heavily, behavior from The Division 2). (To clarify, I had discovered several compatibility bits that would at least attempt to run both of my cards in SLI if set with NvidiaInspector. Not always well, but the bits would allow SLI to at least attempt it. Then, after patching was done, those same settings wouldn't even attempt to run SLI at all, and the engine/drivers would only allow 1 GPU to function.) Tweaking the settings to get an unofficially supported working SLI profile has become impossible.
Why would a company forcefully remove SLI from even attempting to function on their game unless specifically requested to do so from Nvidia? Is there some egregious issue with running a SLI compatibility bit, when it doesn't function very well? Does it cause explosions? (I haven't seen one yet.) I'm failing to see why a gaming company would deny an engine from even acknowledging SLI compatibility settings and attempt to use it unless expressly requested to do so from Nvidia.
Nvidia's lack of support for SLI makes sense in terms of development support and running a business, but it is none-the-less disagreeable as an end user. Nvidia Link certainly has a lot of advantages over SLI, and I'd really love to use it, but right now that's a minimum of $1400. That's insane.
I'm not oblivious that the market has been trending away from multiple GPU setups for many years now. NVLink I think offers a viable rebirth of it. The problem is Nvidia seems to realize this and wants to capitalize on profits far more than allowing end users to configure their systems more cost effectively as they see fit.
(Focused topic) I'll wait for the next line-up to see if NVLink is offered on anything but the 2 most expensive GPUs. What are the chances this will happen?
Last edited: