Back in the day when GPUs were just starting to get good, it was a dream for us, PC nerds, to buy at least two of them, and pair them up. AMD had CrossFire, and NVIDIA had its famed SLI. After many years, NVIDIA has now decided to let SLI rest and is introducing a new system for multi-GPU configurations.
In recent times, we have had new technologies emerge, especially low-level graphics APIs like DirectX12 and Vulkan, which make it possible to use multiple GPUs without needing a physical connection or a dedicated driver profile. As such, NVIDIA has decided to retire SLI. The NVLINK connector has been missing from the new RTX 3080 as well, so this is not a surprise announcement.
“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. For GeForce RTX 3090 and future SLI-capable GPUs, SLI will only be supported when implemented natively within the game.”
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Via Guru3D
