X-bit labs

Monday, May 1, 2006

SLI on ATI RD580 Chipset in Action. ATI + Nvidia = Love

When the SLI technology was first announced to the world, Nvidia’s policy regarding the support of this technology implemented in the third-party chipsets was not so severe. The first demo systems with SLI support were built on one of Intel’s server chipsets, and some time ago you could even find a photograph with an ATI-based mainboard running two graphics cards in SLI mode on Nvidia’s web-site.

A lot has changed since then, and Nvidia has got full control over the SLI technology. They were determined to eliminate even attempts to have graphics cards working in SLI mode on Nvidia nForce4 Ultra, Intel and ULi chipsets, and all the patches for the officially ForceWare drivers were continuously removed from circulation. Only ATI chipsets remained that untouched field until a well-known hardware enthusiast aka Coolaler decided to enable SLI mode on an ATI RD580 based mainboard, which was reported in the XtremeSystems.org forums.

He took DFI CFX3200 DR mainboard based on CrossFire Xpress 3200 (RD580) chipset and installed two GeForce 7600 GT graphics cards from MSI. The SLI mode got mysteriously enabled, and the drivers were absolutely sure that they were working with an nForce 4 SLI X32 Intel Edition chipset. Looks like he used some special patch here:

Although the CPU was the Athlon 64 FX-60 overclocked to 3.0GHz, the system didn’t reach any record-breaking performance tops. Of course, you’d better use chipsets that are specifically optimized for SLI technology and are supported by official drivers. Nevertheless, we couldn’t help reporting this news about one more platform offering simultaneous SLI and CrossFire support.