![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Monday , January 07, 2008
- Author:
- Kyle Bennett
- Editor:
- Steve Lynch
- Google +1
NVIDIA Hybrid SLI Technology
NVIDIA today shares with us their Hybrid SLI Technology. And while it has a ways to go just yet, there are some very promising features that will hopefully pique the enthusiast's interest.
Introduction
“Hybrid” technology is nothing new when it comes to video cards. AMD showed us ATI’s Hybrid CrossFire technology working in 2007. But NVIDIA is showing off an important twist that AMD has yet to show us in a working demo; and that is the ability to fall back on the integrated GPU to fulfill your 2D desktop needs while shutting down the “3D” video card that uses so much power.
And the fact of the matter is that most [H] readers are going to care more about power savings in respect to their high end video cards rather than “SLI’ing” an integrated GPU with their expensive video cards. The fact is that Hybrid SLI will have very little return for gamers on the high end of the spectrum, and is therefore not very attractive.
Below you will find NVIDIA’s Hybrid SLI, and HybridPower presentation in its entirety and it is certainly worth looking through, but before you get to that, let’s discuss what is really important to the enthusiast.
Turn Off Your Video Card
NVIDIA has done something here that is truly amazing, from what we are told, and are promised a full demonstration of Hybrid SLI and HybridPower later this week. There are a number of us that use our computers for applications other than gaming. Many of us utilize our computers the majority of the time for non-gaming applications. But still many of us have one or two high end NVIDIA video cards installed in our systems that are “idling” all the time. This means that every second of every day that the computer is turned on, we are powering that “gaming” video card. The simple fact of the matter is that we don’t need to be doing that, but until now there has been no way to get around that easily.
Using NVIDIA’s HybridPower Low Power Operation feature, we can fully turn off our discrete GPUs in our systems. Yes, turn off the video card(s). When we turn off our video cards, the motherboard chipset uses an integrated low power GPU to drive your display. Pretty nifty eh? No more sitting through the work day with 150 watts of idling video sitting under your desk heating up the office.
Better Hybrid Performance
On the flipside of this, NVIDIA’s Hybrid SLI technology will allow you to implement GeForce Boost as well. GeForce Boost is tantamount to SLI’ing the motherboard’s integrated GPU with a single discrete GPU or a pair of GPUs in SLI. Of course, the rate of returns for this technology will diminish greatly as the GPU scales. For the most part GeForce Boost will be better off in the low end of the market. Think of GeForce Boost being your friend if you are looking to purchase a video card for less than $100 or so.
What’s Not to Like?
Currently this is a Vista only feature, but for many hardcore gamers, this is the reality for DX10 anyways, so it is sort of expected. As to what video cards are supported by this Hybrid feature, we are a bit unsure. I would guess that all new 65nm GPUs from NVIDIA would be supported, but I would not count on it being backwards compatible with the older 90nm GPUs that have been on the market for a while now.
This technology is to be supported first on AMD processor based motherboards; the 780a SLI, 750a SLI, and 730a. We should see all of this in Q1 of this year. The fact of the matter is that AMD is not the most exciting platform for the computer enthusiast currently, and Intel processor based mother boards from NVIDIA with this technology will not be seen till Q208, or so we are told.
The last pitfall of the current status of NVIDIA Hybrid SLI is the fact that it currently does not support multi-display setups. If you are only running a single monitor and want to silence your video card while you are not gaming, NVIDIA Hybrid SLI looks very promising right now. Like myself, I know many of our readers are using two, three, or even four monitor configurations. We are out of luck for the moment. Hybrid SLI will NOT support even dual monitor setups as you might have guessed from the single DVI output on the motherboard pictured above. We did ask NVIDIA if it was possible to use a additional low power video card alongside Hybrid SLI so we could support and extra display or two, but that is currently not an available configuration.
Conclusion
We will get the chance to spend some hands-on time with an NVIDIA Hybrid SLI system later this week and we will certainly be reporting back on that. Until then, we know one thing, and that is that NVIDIA’s Hybrid SLI Low Power Operation profile is extremely attractive to us. Being able to turn off a high power GPU that is not needed is an exciting option. The simple reason I do not SLI in my own system is because I do not want the heat or noise associated with it sitting under my desk all day and night. NVIDIA’s next steps need to be Intel processor based motherboard support that will allow multi-display configurations either through another DVI out on the motherboard, or allowing the end user to install a low-power video card alongside their high power gaming card that can support a couple more displays while the gaming card is turned off.
Kudos to NVIDIA, we know that this solution is not an easy engineering feat, but intriguing enthusiast features such as this are exactly what is needed to keep their motherboards attractive to the high end marketplace.
Discuss
