SLI-Fire: Nvidia and ATI on the same board?

[d3aths3rver]

About a month ago I read an article from the Inquirer telling us all that a company has developed the technology to support both ATI and Nvidia Graphics cards on the same motherboard in a hybrid like SLI-Fire configuration, it has been talked about rarely but was hoped for, if theoretically it could offer better performance than 2 identical graphics cards in the same configuration. This company claims that an Nvidia GTX275 and an ATI 4890 in "SLI-Fire" can offer better frame rates than 2xGTX275's or 2x4890's (having your cake and eating it too). If this was truly the case, we could all benefit from this, There wouldn't be ATI vs Nvidia wars, it would be someone boasting that: "my GTX 395 in SLI-Fire with a 5970 kills anything out there and it runs faster than 2 of the same VGA's in SLI or CrossFire" this will then become a race to find the best combination of cards to put in a mobo especially if there are 3 or 4x PCI 2.0 slots.

You can find the article below, but Im not too sure if ATI and Nvidia will play nice and encourage motherboard manufacturers to integrate this "hydra" chip into their mobo's (royalties and all that for this new company) only time will tell, but this will take time to come into production if it ever does come to pass


Lucid makes multi-gpus easy - The Inquirer

This is Lucid's website for those a bit sceptical about the article on the Inquirer
http://www.lucidlogix.com/index.html

 

[skunksmash]

About a month ago I read an article from the Inquirer telling us all that a company has developed the technology to support both ATI and Nvidia Graphics cards on the same motherboard in a hybrid like SLI-Fire configuration, it has been talked about rarely but was hoped for, if theoretically it could offer better performance than 2 identical graphics cards in the same configuration. This company claims that an Nvidia GTX275 and an ATI 4890 in "SLI-Fire" can offer better frame rates than 2xGTX275's or 2x4890's (having your cake and eating it too). If this was truly the case, we could all benefit from this, There wouldn't be ATI vs Nvidia wars, it would be someone boasting that: "my GTX 395 in SLI-Fire with a 5970 kills anything out there and it runs faster than 2 of the same VGA's in SLI or CrossFire" this will then become a race to find the best combination of cards to put in a mobo especially if there are 3 or 4x PCI 2.0 slots.

You can find the article below, but Im not too sure if ATI and Nvidia will play nice and encourage motherboard manufacturers to integrate this "hydra" chip into their mobo's (royalties and all that for this new company) only time will tell, but this will take time to come into production if it ever does come to pass


Lucid makes multi-gpus easy - The Inquirer

i know ''Hydra'' is in the works & does look promising, i did hear somewhere ATI have agreed to this in principle, but Nvidia are having none of it.....

 

[d3aths3rver]

A crying shame it would do so much for the consumer, but not for the fat cats i guess. But this could even be a good thing for Nvidia (and the only way that it would really get sales until the GT300 series) For everyone out there to buy an ATI graphics card, and instead of getting another for X-fire, get an Nvidia one to go with it so that it could render phys-x and still give it some added horsepower too. (This is the only way Nvidia will make a profit this quarter and perhaps even the next)
But I guess this is why they say ATI and Nvidia are at "war".

 

[archie123]

so you have an NVidia card drawing the gun model and the grass (for example) and the ATI drawing the rest , what happens when you throw anti alaising and anisotropic filtering in ? when both cards with differant architecture have differant ways of implementing AA and AF , who will write the drivers? will you need two sets of drivers running together? how will this be implemented in windows? I dont think this is meant to be cross platform , just a way of adding anthr perhaps slower card of the same manufacturer (ATI OR NVidia)if you wanted to , without having to worry abot an sli bridge or crossfire mobo

it all sounds a bit complicated to me i cant wait to see how it works , im not convinced yet

 

[d3aths3rver]

I think we all need to read up a bit more on how the technology works, but I think its a long way off. It might mean that all the drivers are supplied by lucid and then their chips organise the rendering in certain ways, either way its a complicated process, i just hope that they can get it off the ground

 

[smarteyeball]

who will write the drivers?

If this ever came to fruition, that would be the big question. It sounds like a recipe for bug induced rage

And if nvidia has already said no to using their cards for physx with an ATI card being the primary display - I doubt they'll get on board with this.

They say they are losing money - they only have themselves to blame.

It's a good idea in theory, but only time will tell whether that theory becomes ever becomes a reality.