Thursday, June 9th 2016
NVIDIA GeForce "Pascal" 3-way and 4-way SLI Restricted to Select Non-Gaming Apps
In a move that's set to not go down well with gamers looking for 4K 60 Hz gameplay with eye-candy maxed out; NVIDIA has changed the way it approaches 3-way and 4-way SLI support for the GeForce GTX 1080 and GTX 1070. While out of the box, you can enable 2-way SLI using either an SLI HB bridge (recommended for certain high resolutions), or even a classic 2-way SLI bridge; 3-way and 4-way SLI support will be restricted to a select few non-gaming apps.
At the launch of the GTX 1080, NVIDIA told the press that it will officially not support 3-way and 4-way SLI for GeForce "Pascal" GPUs, however, it will provide a recourse for enthusiasts, by setting up an "SLI enthusiast key" webpage, from which enthusiasts can obtain a software key that unlocks 3-way and 4-way SLI support using classic bridges. NVIDIA would have merely optimized its drivers up to 2-way SLI, and the odd lucky gamer would be able to take advantage of 3-4 GPUs if a game developer got generous. That's no more to be.NVIDIA has reportedly removed the entire "software key" process of unlocking 3-way and 4-way SLI support. You should be able to enable SLI for 3-4 GPUs, but only a list of apps selected by NVIDIA will be able to take advantage of >2 GPUs from your setup, for now. These include popular 3D benchmarks such as Unigine Heaven, 3DMark FireStrike, and Catzilla. NVIDIA may expand this list with future driver updates.
The idea behind this appears to be to appease overclockers who mostly score on synthetic benchmarks, while not having to deal with complaints of choppy display output from gamers. Overclockers only care about the numerical score a benchmark spits out, and not the fluidity of the benchmark's 3D scene. Gameplay, on the other hand, relies on smooth output.
At the launch of the GTX 1080, NVIDIA told the press that it will officially not support 3-way and 4-way SLI for GeForce "Pascal" GPUs, however, it will provide a recourse for enthusiasts, by setting up an "SLI enthusiast key" webpage, from which enthusiasts can obtain a software key that unlocks 3-way and 4-way SLI support using classic bridges. NVIDIA would have merely optimized its drivers up to 2-way SLI, and the odd lucky gamer would be able to take advantage of 3-4 GPUs if a game developer got generous. That's no more to be.NVIDIA has reportedly removed the entire "software key" process of unlocking 3-way and 4-way SLI support. You should be able to enable SLI for 3-4 GPUs, but only a list of apps selected by NVIDIA will be able to take advantage of >2 GPUs from your setup, for now. These include popular 3D benchmarks such as Unigine Heaven, 3DMark FireStrike, and Catzilla. NVIDIA may expand this list with future driver updates.
The idea behind this appears to be to appease overclockers who mostly score on synthetic benchmarks, while not having to deal with complaints of choppy display output from gamers. Overclockers only care about the numerical score a benchmark spits out, and not the fluidity of the benchmark's 3D scene. Gameplay, on the other hand, relies on smooth output.