NVIDIA Will Stop Creating SLI Driver Profiles After January 2021

[silentbogo]

So it has use cases and nvidia is taking it away in 2021.

I think people always get confused about "end of support" notifications. NVidia ain't taking anything away, since all the games that had SLI support will continue to have SLI support. What Nvidia did, is simply give a heads-up that there will be no new SLI profiles on per-game basis (e.g. they won't be wasting time on optimizing SLI perf for each specific game individually, and put it all on shoulders of lazy game devs that should be doing it in the first place). That was the case pretty much for the past 3-4 years (e.g. since DX12 finally started to pickup)... now it simply became official.

For the end-user it means.... khm... nothing.
For game developers it means 3 options:
1) Not to implement SLI support
2) Use UE4 or any other sli-capable engine
3) Move on to DX12/Vulkan and do explicit multi-GPU instead
...so, once again, the same thing as 2, 3 or 4 years ago.

IMHO, nothing is going to change from technical perspective - NVidia gave up on the old SLI implementation a long time ago.
DX12 is over 5 years old right now, Vulkan is formally a bit younger. Neither supports SLI or CF, but both can do mGPU just fine without proprietary interconnects and platform-restricted APIs.
Also, multi-GPU ≠ SLI... so the "hypothetical" end of one barely translates to the end of the other.

 

[LiquidTrance]

I think people always get confused about "end of support" notifications. NVidia ain't taking anything away, since all the games that had SLI support will continue to have SLI support. What Nvidia did, is simply give a heads-up that there will be no new SLI profiles on per-game basis (e.g. they won't be wasting time on optimizing SLI perf for each specific game individually, and put it all on shoulders of lazy game devs that should be doing it in the first place). That was the case pretty much for the past 3-4 years (e.g. since DX12 finally started to pickup)... now it simply became official.

For the end-user it means.... khm... nothing.
For game developers it means 3 options:
1) Not to implement SLI support
2) Use UE4 or any other sli-capable engine
3) Move on to DX12/Vulkan and do explicit multi-GPU instead
...so, once again, the same thing as 2, 3 or 4 years ago.

IMHO, nothing is going to change from technical perspective - NVidia gave up on the old SLI implementation a long time ago.
DX12 is over 5 years old right now, Vulkan is formally a bit younger. Neither supports SLI or CF, but both can do mGPU just fine without proprietary interconnects and platform-restricted APIs.
Also, SLI ≠ multi-GPU... so the "hypothetical" end of one barely translates to the end of the other.

Think about what you are saying though, do you think people bought a pair of 2080s to play games in the past on sli or do you think they bought them for the newer more demanding titles coming out?

For end users who use sli, it means they probably won't get sli profiles for any games 2021 and onward. Devs don't get anything extra out of running SLI profiles, which is why nvidia had to do it in the first place. What incentive do devs have to do it now? Zero. See what i'm saying now?

3 month notice on discontinued SLI support for new titles, AFTER they rolled out more powerful cards. The least they could have done was announce end of SLI support way before the new cards came out to give users the chance to "opt out" and sell their extra card(s) before the secondary market takes a dive. Now that the newer cards are much stronger, the secondary market is MUCH different. The timing of the decision as well as the decision as a whole to discontinue SLI was kind of arse, ya feel me now? It's a double wammy. They'd have made more money off consumers THIS YEAR padding their q3/q4 numbers if the end of SLI decision was announced months earlier. If nvidia would do whats best for the company AND consumers, they could actually walk away with more money at the end of every fiscal year AND build stronger brand loyalty. They should think about these types of things more as intel will be entering the gpu market eventually.

 

[silentbogo]

Think about what you are saying though, do you think people bought a pair of 2080s to play games in the past on sli or do you think they bought them for the newer more demanding titles coming out?

Once again, read carefully. I'll even put it in large letters:
multi-GPU ≠ SLI
So, to answer your question - yes, these 10 people that had spare $2000 to buy a pair of 2080Ti's for games will get their money's worth as long as UE will keep supporting DX11 and grandfathered-in SLI support.
And, I'll repeat myself once-once more, even if this "legacy" support ever ends - there is and will be a bunch of DX12/VK games that can do it without SLI/CF on either red or green platform.

Remember, AMD ditched crossfire almost 3 years ago, yet no one fussed or even talked about it that much, cause they did a good job of explaining one thing: CF is old, it's a remnant of DX11 era, it's time to move on to DX12&VK and focus on Async Compute and other better things.

 

[bug]

If they do really help devs to support SLi in DX12 or Vulcan, does this also mean that it will support Crossfire also. I don't expect it will work well without AMDs help, but there will be the option. Or do you think Nvidia will force devs to exclude the AMD GPUs from it.

Again, mGPU is not SLI and it is not Crossfire. It's a set of standard DX12 or Vulkan API calls. In order to make use of that, the work that drivers did (mostly) behind the scenes, is now on the developers. No Nvidia (or AMD) support required; maybe some Microsoft and Khronos support instead. Once implemented, mGPU is supposed to work pretty much the same across all vendors. But with SLI+Crossfire sitting at under 5% market penetration, guess how many developers are scrambling to support that?

mGPU is not there to make life easier for developers. mGPU is a way to put SLI and Crossfire to rest, while letting those that really need that (e.g. professional software) still have a way to put multiple GPUs to work.

 

[Rob94hawk]

More signs forcing you to go gaming on console or something similar. It's coming. Whether you like it or not.

Never gonna happen. PC’s have way more functionality than a console will ever have.

 

[moproblems99]

"But all muh games still work, SLI is fine"

Mhm

But did they really?

SLI makes more sense now than ever, higher resolution requires more memory

Except you mostly don't get double the memory with SLI or crossfire.

chances are now that nvidia or a partner will get that money from the consumer.

Or that same user buys sells their current card and buys a more powerful used cars again.

For end users who use sli, it means they probably won't get sli profiles for any games 2021 and onward. Devs don't get anything extra out of running SLI profiles, which is why nvidia had to do it in the first place. What incentive do devs have to do it now? Zero. See what i'm saying now?

Anyone that has bought cards for SLI/CF have been living with their heads in the sand.

 

[Vayra86]

But did they really?

Obviously not that's why I worded it like that It was always like that. Not all games get SLI love, quickly turning 50% of your investment into just, well, noise really. Anyone saying it has always ever worked for them is either lying or plays just the games that get a profile, or just simply never even noticed only half the performance was on tap (seen it many times...)

I've seen my share of SLI and while 90% worked just fine, the remaining 10% is a deal breaker, especially on top of the heat, noise and power.

 

[Easo]

RIP, I suppose. Then again, it rarely worked properly anyways, as far as I remember.

F
I always wanted to try SLI/Crossfire. Since it was announced in 2004.
Alas I was never able to afford it since its inception.

I won't really miss it, but it did serve for good entertainment on Tech channels that had GPU's to spare.

Are you me?

 

[CandymanGR]

It does with Nvlink. Which is one reason why I am so surprised that nvidia is making this call. Consumers just bought nvlink gpus within the last 18 months and now nvidia wants to get rid of SLI support with 15 months. I think they should have given consumers 5 years out and not offer any SLI on any new products coming out, that way if for example if someone had bought into two 2070 supers etc in nvlink/sli, they'd at least get 5 years of drivers.

Only for 3d apps like Blender or 3dsmax and only with specific drivers, not with gaming drivers and not in games in general. And it is being used with a method of memory paging segmentation to render a single large file/image in 3d, it cannot be used for games and fast rasterization in general. And that is not SLI. SLI works with sli bridge. That's NVLINK, not sli. it is not exactly the same protocol anymore, nor it does work in the same principal.

 

[Lycanwolfen]

Like I said on HardOCP twitter account. Nvidia is turning a company that hates gamers. SLI was a nice cheap option for the little guys to get great performance. I running 2x 1070ti's in SLI and 4k and everything works great. Now there going to drop support. Nvidia is only allowing the super rich to have nice things.

 

[silentbogo]

Like I said on HardOCP twitter account. Nvidia is turning a company that hates gamers. SLI was a nice cheap option for the little guys to get great performance. I running 2x 1070ti's in SLI and 4k and everything works great. Now there going to drop support. Nvidia is only allowing the super rich to have nice things.

Jesus fucking christ. Can't you people read? Just scroll through this thread - we've already explained everything. Multi-GPU isn't dead. Nvidia is simply nudging game devs to do it natively in DX12/VK.

Here's one more thing @Uskompuf can add to OP, so that people won't get confused or angry for no reason:

With the emergence of low level graphics APIs such as DirectX 12 and Vulkan, game developers are able to implement SLI support natively within the game itself instead of relying upon a SLI driver profile. The expertise of the game developer within their own code allows them to achieve the best possible performance from multiple GPUs. As a result, NVIDIA will no longer be adding new SLI driver profiles on RTX 20 Series and earlier GPUs starting on January 1st, 2021. Instead, we will focus efforts on supporting developers to implement SLI natively inside the games. We believe this will provide the best performance for SLI users.
Existing SLI driver profiles will continue to be tested and maintained for SLI-ready RTX 20 Series and earlier GPUs.

Source: https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/ans...ort-transitioning-to-native-game-integrations

 

[bug]

Jesus fucking christ. Can't you people read? Just scroll through this thread - we've already explained everything. Multi-GPU isn't dead. Nvidia is simply nudging game devs to do it natively in DX12/VK.

More to the point, it's out of the drivers (where the ROI wasn't worth it) and into the hands of developers that really need it.

 

[fodder]

Pushing DX12 native mGPU support? Awesome! My SLI 980 Ti cards will continue to have an extended use other than mining when DX12 comes in full swing instead of being obsolete.

 

[zardWi]

You aren't reading what I'm writing. SLI is literally not possible in many games, and this will only get more common as newer engines' rendering pipelines continue to grow in complexity. Further, consoles only having a single GPU disincentivises developers from writing engines that are amenable to multi-GPU. To put it bluntly, apart from bragging rights or tech demoes, there's zero economic incentive to code mGPU support into your engine.

None of that is true. SLI can be used with anything. Its not implemented correctly because developers just don't want to bother. It simply has to do with money. It's too expensive to implement and there's not enough people willing to buy more than one GPU. It's not complicated.

 

[Vayra86]

None of that is true. SLI can be used with anything. Its not implemented correctly because developers just don't want to bother. It simply has to do with money. It's too expensive to implement and there's not enough people willing to buy more than one GPU. It's not complicated.

Yep. SLI was going the way of the dodo way before DX12 was the native API for development. Fingers have been vanishing from GPUs ever higher up the stack and today we have nothing.

Its dead, as is mGPU. No single dev is going to bother and single GPU is fast enough. Note the post you've responded to is from 09-2020 A year in tech is long, imagine defending the 'Nvidia nudging devs' argument today lol. Imagine buying another GPU, even...

 

[Assimilator]

None of that is true. SLI can be used with anything. Its not implemented correctly because developers just don't want to bother. It simply has to do with money. It's too expensive to implement and there's not enough people willing to buy more than one GPU. It's not complicated.

Holy thread necromancy Batman.