You Asked for It, You Got It: SLI for AMD

By Tom Petersen
On Apr 28 2011 in Gaming
74 Comments 74 Comments

With new DX11 games coming out, lots of you guys (and gals) are building new gaming rigs and trying to decide what CPU to use. When you’re deciding what to build, finding the best CPU price performance ratio is key. After all, PC hardware doesn’t grow on trees!

Long term gamers probably remember that for a long time AMD offered great high-end CPUs, but in recent years, AMD’s stature as the preferred gaming CPU fell by the wayside and Intel CPUs have been the gamers’ choice. For this reason, we’ve only licensed SLI for motherboards with Intel chipsets. However, we’ve been recently hearing chants of “SLI for AMD CPUs”, and figured that now is a great time to do it. After all, we want to make sure gamers can benefit from the new CPU competitive landscape and ensure they have NVIDIA SLI – the highest performance, most stable multi-GPU solution - to game on! According to Steam, 93% of all multi-GPU systems in use today use SLI.

So today, we are pleased to announce that SLI has been licensed to the world’s leading motherboard companies for integration onto their upcoming motherboards featuring AMD’s 990FX, 990X and 970 chipsets. ASUS, Gigabyte, ASRock, and MSI are among the first motherboard manufacturers to offer this new capability, with more coming on board shortly.

We hope you enjoy GeForce GTX gaming in SLI on motherboards featuring either Intel or AMD CPUs.

Let us know what you think by responding below.

Thanks, and happy gaming!

Tagged: AMD, sli

74 Comments Post a Comment

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http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=698457141 Ramazan Uyar

very nice ..
http://www.facebook.com/general295 Eirik Hovland

finally, i have a 6 core amd cpu, and i’m now upgrading my 470gtx with 2x 590 ftw hc2 gpu’s. so now i don’t have to upgrade to sr2 with 2 xeon’s like i thought of or intel i7 for that matter!
http://www.facebook.com/v.for.vaan Tou Vaan Ara

AMD CPU lovers would be really pleased with this……
Since AMD is cheaper than intel,
AMD CPU + Nvidia GPU (SLI) will make a perfect combination…….
http://profiles.google.com/peter.bezemer Peter Bezemer

thanks!
http://www.facebook.com/mattsusy.sokolow Matt Sokolow

This is fantastic news! I have been waiting for this announcement for years…welcome back I have always been and will always be a loyal nvidia consumer.
http://twitter.com/GuncannonNJ Timothy Frierson

…now I can finally replace my 500 series m2n-e sli board…
http://www.facebook.com/Geekgod420 Alex Lowe

I wish you would have did this 6 months ago when I built my new gaming rig. I went AMD cause I cant afford Intel but found out no SLI. Guess I’ll buy a new MoBo with SLI.
http://twitter.com/GuncannonNJ Timothy Frierson

…now I can finally replace my 500 series m2n-e sli board…
http://www.facebook.com/people/Suwandy-An-an/1143292288 Suwandy An-an

very nice and amazing ^^
http://www.facebook.com/mahmoodadeel Mahmood Adeel

The main problem was that Intel kicked out Nvidia form chipset business and nvidia has losing market to Readeons thats why they open the sli for amd chipsets. Now they are behaving as if did in the favor of customers lol.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=708722917 Paul Lerwill

I wonder if this means Nvidia might also include support for older AMD chipsets with dual/triple x16 PCIe lanes? This is great news though, and long overdue! Hail to Nvidia/AMD!
http://www.facebook.com/people/Amerson-Yip/1348119760 Amerson Yip

This is fantastic. Albeit made better if Nvidia would make their prices more competitive vis-a-vis AMD GPUs.
Been using Nvidia until the Radeon HD 4890 poped out and offered better performance/price ratio. Hope to use Nvidia again soon because their GPUs are more programmable and compatible with CUDA utilising software.
http://profiles.google.com/skwirrulz82 Daniel Pfeiffer

This…..is…..fantastic. Now my only regret is just getting a new motherboard with the 880X chipset on it.
http://profiles.google.com/saint19 German Lopez

Yeah!!!, not more hack SLI for me!!!
http://twitter.com/PCMoDKiiD Thomas Crayford

Will they have UEFI Bios and PCI 3.0?
http://www.facebook.com/Name0 Gen McCarthy Mitilev

YES!
http://www.facebook.com/MetotheMAX Shawn Wilson

Umm..Could you explain in what way how is this “new?”
Ive enjoyed my AMD-Nvidia SLI rig for over 3-4 years now!!!
My motherboard is the ASUS M2N-SLI with the NVIDIA nForce® 570 SLI™ MCP chipset.
http://twitter.com/AlfredoLeReveur Alfredo Le Rêveur

Great news to hear from you guys, but I have a question.. This implementation is only going to come on AMD based new motherboards? or is it going to come on old chipsets (like 890GX,FX) as well?
I Hope you can clear this up.
http://www.facebook.com/enikmaster Filipe Trigo

well this is news because nvidia doesn’t have to create chips for SLI anymore. with this, we can have Crossfire and SLI in the same board without a nvidia chip because AMD’s 900 chipset series will do the job.

if you try to do crossfire in your board, you can’t. this way you can have nore choices.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Eliot-Loney/100000969967682 Eliot Loney

I`m still rocking my AMD NVIDIA combo on my ASUS M4N98TD-EVO. I haven`t wanted to upgrade because I love AMD CPUs and Nvidia GPUs but there was no way to upgrade my motherboard, and Intel CPUs where just to expensive for me. I am glad to see that when the new AMD 8cores come out I`ll finally have an upgrade path for AMD NVIDIA Combo. It`s also great news for consumers who want more choices in there gaming rigs.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_KH6B6XZVRQTZJEHKUKHGSTZ4RQ Mohan

Intel CPU’s are for peoples who want to feed the power; AMD CPU’s are for people who want to feed a family. I’m glad to hear that we’ll be seeing Mobo chipsets that allow SLI with an AMD CPU that aren’t like decades old. nforce 980a chipset? More like rebranded 780.
Anonymous

Not sure I agree with that statement about AMD not being the preferred gaming CPU. I know plenty of gamers who have preferred AMD CPUs for years. If by preferred you mean fastest, then that makes sense, but AMD has offered gamers on a budget great products for many years. You don’t need the latest and greatest Intel CPU to be a gamer.
http://profiles.google.com/jborage Jeremy Borage

“NVIDIA SLI – the highest performance, most stable multi-GPU solution”? Not according to reviews:

“AMD Radeon 6990/6970 Tri-Fire is better in terms of value, efficiency, and gaming performance than GTX 580 3-Way SLI”
http://hardocp.com/article/2011/04/28/nvidia_geforce_3way_sli_radeon_trifire_review/3
http://www.facebook.com/jorge.dmrb Jorge Dmrb

I loved my SLI+AMD combo years ago… i love this news!! go go Nvidia!!! i liked nForce+AMD too!
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_RVJQ7HHDOB4H5PIKHRJSIVOETQ alex

Nvidia officially dropped AMD support prior to the release of the AM3 socket. thus anything released before AM3 supported SLI using a nvidia chipset.

yes there were still AM3 boards that had nvidia chipsets, but this was done by the motherboard manufactures using a 2 year old chipset that was a rebrand of the 780a which was released 2 years prior to that. the AM3 980a boards were never officially supported by Nvidia.
http://www.facebook.com/ColePep Coleman Rasof

This is awesome!
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_RVJQ7HHDOB4H5PIKHRJSIVOETQ alex

it will only be on the boards in the article. it will not be supported on older generation boards even though the AMD chipset can still run SLI using a hacked chipset driver but the performance is lacking since theres only so much they can do with the hack. may change though if some one can figure out how to hack the new 990 chipset code to get it to work on the 800 series and older boards but i doubt it will happen.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_RVJQ7HHDOB4H5PIKHRJSIVOETQ alex

UEFI bios and no PCI-e 3.0. theres no reason to support PCI-e 3.0 for the foreseeable future.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_GRNDIIVTNLDILLILGV2QRL5HAU DarkHart

Sounds to me like Nvidia is scrambling. Fermi is a disappointment with its still lingering driver and gpu usage issues,AMD GPUS have become quite attractive with more bang for you buck and less headaches than the current Nvidia offerings.

Seriously,What incentive do they have to allow their competitors have SLI? It aint for the users benefit thats for sure.

P.S. I wont ever forgive you for EOL’ing older cards via drivers Nvidia. Bad form.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_GRNDIIVTNLDILLILGV2QRL5HAU DarkHart

This is EXACTLY what is going on here!!!!
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_GRNDIIVTNLDILLILGV2QRL5HAU DarkHart

You only need the latest and greatest intel chip to mask the poor fermi performance, Thats it!
http://chieftain20.wordpress.com/ chieftain20

Cheap AMD CPU’s + Cheap nVidia graphics cards = Win.

I hate to say it but that’s all I run. Still using my old M4A79T Deluxe AM3 mobo with 1055t X6 with a GTX 460 SC. Would love to SLI, but can’t I’m definitely not a big fan of ATI cards. I’ve always had driver issues for some reason.
http://www.facebook.com/katmai2 Rares Dumitrescu

great news here. i like nvidia cards a lot, but i am not much of a fan of intel cpu’s they seem just too overpriced, so i am inlove with the current phenom 2 from amd.

sli for amd is a great thing, and it will help gamers with more options. thanks for that nvidia.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Ca-Grimes/100001625262509 C.a. Grimes

Save the environment use Fermi to cook your weenies instead of charcoal.
Anonymous

woot, 93% use SLI ?
that much be far back… seeing mostly amd cards around nowdays( hope you do gtx600 right!)
But congrats on sli for amd, your chipsets have been holding back alot of amd cpu’s for a long time now, was about time!
http://www.facebook.com/hodgoes2001 Tom Hodgins

EPIC!!!

should be good…

since Nvidia surround 3d vision for amds !!!
http://twitter.com/exenter exenter

Anyone who is loyal to one brand are idiots. People like you are ruining the competition in the marked.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_WGH4DAW7PYP7MC6WMSB2HRR53E Matthew Holt

100% agree. I have a quad core phenom 955 black edition and It’s more than suitable for every game i’ve played. I really hope Nvidia isn’t downplaying their power potential, especially with the new 6 core phenoms out which are less than half the price of the new intels.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Sudah-Nggak-Bernama/761012436 Sudah Nggak Bernama

There is no new AMD chipset until Q4 2011. Bulldozer will be supported by current 800 chipset series.
http://profiles.google.com/davidgx David Grantham

Buying an AMD 6990 soon. I used to like Nvidia GPUs but that day is long gone. Too late, guys.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_7HRU6ZSK62LKH6N47FPRHKWRIM Artem

Seems that nVidia knows something good about the upcoming bulldozer…
Otherwise there’s no reason to add support for non-gaming platform.
http://profiles.google.com/saltygrin Brian Herron

“… but in recent years, AMD’s stature as the preferred gaming CPU fell by the wayside…” ??? Surely you mean recent months, as in since the release of Sandy Bridge, and it’s only a clear choice for the rabid or brainwashed. Your whole “announcement” has a bad tone and causes me to wonder at your bias.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Bjoern-Haeussermann/100000642085570 Bjoern Haeussermann

Fantastic, that is a really good news!
Sound like the new AMD Scorpius Platform will be very fast.

I allready have two GTX580 in SLI with the old nForce 780a pushed by a OC 6 Core AMD.
So I can upgrade from AM2+ direct to AM3+.

Let´s get ready to rumbel!
http://www.facebook.com/psolord Lefteris Psolord

I have to say this is great news!

I would prefer less downplay on TOM’s text, but I guess this is one of the reasons he is being paid for. A nice, “Nvidia is stepping out of the chipset business, so we wouldn’t like our AMD customers to be left without a SLI solution, blah blha” would be better imo.

Regardless, great news as I said. What will be even greater, is Bulldozer turning out to be a bomb and not a flop! My 570 SLI and next year’s 670 SLI will certainly need the power!
http://www.facebook.com/people/Ingo-Nachnamen/100000927135377 Ingo Nachnamen

Just read the news from ASUS REPUBLIC OF GAMERS Facebook, I think this is relly cool….
http://profiles.google.com/zobisch Brandon Zobisch

I think its awesome… some of my friends prefer Nvidia GPU’s but love AMD and everyone is sick on Intel changing boards and pins/chipsets every 6 months and now no Overclocking without a K processor on a P board but then no integrated GPU usage and so on and so on.

Bulldozer will rock, so I think they only thing left for NVIDIA is to allow AMD GPU;s and NVIDIA Physx to play together and you’ll have made us all that much happier.

Thanks,

Brandon
Anonymous

After owning both an nVidia SLI setup (2 actually) and an AMD Crossfire, I’ll never use SLI again. Crossfire is 10 times more stable than SLI.
Anonymous

Always nice with more options.
Rui Pereira

Love the news. I thought that since I run SLI, I would have no choice but to go Intel.

Now I have a choice!
http://profiles.google.com/departed666 Ace Strife

First heard it on techspot a few weeks back.

If this news came earlier I wouldn’t have jumped ship to Sandy Bridge.

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