X-bit labs

NVIDIA’s Multi-GPU Platforms Getting Popular.

Category: Chipsets

by Anton Shilov

[ 04/20/2005 | 10:39 PM ]

NVIDIA Corp. said the popularity of its core-logic aimed to support the company’s multi-GPU technology had been growing rapidly. This may indicate that the firm’s position in the graphics processors market has also improved.

The Santa Clara, California-based chipset designer said it had shipped 750 thousand of its nForce4 SLI core-logic components for AMD Athlon 64 systems. The figure is up significantly from about 350 thousand of appropriate units proclaimed to be supplied to mainboard partners by early March, 2005. By mid-February, 2005, NVIDIA Corp. had shipped approximately 1 million of its nForce4 chips in total.

According to the company’s probes in March, 80% of systems equipped with mainboards based on the nForce4 SLI actually featured two graphics cards. Furthermore, the most successful Multi-GPU configuration on the market was relatively expensive dual NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT setup, which was installed in the majority of the SLI-enabled systems, according to NVIDIA.

According to the results of a recent poll by X-bit labs, roughly 77% of respondents would choose a mainboard based on NVIDIA’s nForce4 chipsets if they had to pick up a PCI Express-supporting platform for AMD64 processors just now. Approximately 12% of surveyed would choose ATI RADEON XPRESS 200-series mainboard, whereas VIA K8T890-based solution would be chosen by 6% of hobbyists, which is well below the company’s historical share in the AMD market in general and acceptance among enthusiast market in particular. Platform solutions from SiS and ULi are also not popular among X-bit labs readers and only about 3% and 2% of those participated in the survey respectively would buy them or something similar.

The success of NVIDIA’s nForce4 series chipsets is conditioned by multiple factors, among which are high performance, rich feature-set, wide availability, sufficient stability and support for installation of multi-GPU graphics solutions, a capability popular among gamers and enthusiasts and currently available only on the nForce4 SLI chipset. At the same competing products from companies like ATI Technologies, VIA Technologies and others are either not presented on the market widely, or do not match feature-set or performance of comparable NVIDIA nForce4 offerings, especially in the high-end segment.

According to another poll, which was conducted early this year, only 5% of users recently were planning to get a mainboard powered by NVIDIA nForce4 SLI core-logic and a couple of graphics cards to get increased performance in graphics processing-demanding games. Approximately 15% of surveyed expressed interest in NVIDIA nForce4 SLI platform and said they would buy the second graphics card afterwards, 25% said they would wait for ATI Technologies to release its multi-GPU technology and then make up their minds. 54% of users said multi-GPU setups were not economically feasible.

NVIDIA’s technology dubbed Scalable Link Interface allows end-users to combine two identical graphics cards based on certain GeForce 6 GPUs within one system to get higher performance in modern computer games, up to 75% higher compared to single-GPU setup, according to NVIDIA estimates. The technology requires a special mainboard as well as a quality power supply unit to function properly.