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SLI Drivers for OS X?

Has anyone heard of an SLI driver or hack for OS X? I've read people stating that you need an Nvidia Motherboard to run SLI so it wont work on a Mac Pro, but I have also read about people using SLI under windows on Mac Pro's so that isn't entirely true.

Why doesn't Apple enable SLI for OS X? I want to buy another 8800 GT, and run them in SLI mode in OS X. Unreal Tournament 3 is coming out, and if were lucky Crisis will come to the Mac too. It's an EA game.

3.2GHz DP Mac Pro (Early 2008), Mac OS X (10.5.1), Nvidia 8800 GT

Posted on Jan 19, 2008 7:14 PM

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8 replies

Jan 20, 2008 8:14 AM in response to Freddie Herbst

Ah... I was wondering if those two PCIe 2.0 slots which are both capable of 16x lanes, could be "bound" together with two compliant graphics boards (obviously standard 8800s aren't SLI compliant either are they?).

And that really is a lot of processing power. I wonder if a Cell processor or something could be run? even NuBus was once used for 2nd DOS PC as well as for a RAM card decades ago.

Jan 20, 2008 8:15 PM in response to Freddie Herbst

Uhm, this is actually think this a bit of a misinformed explanation.

There are people running SLI on Windows based PC's that DO NOT have Motherboards with nVidia Chipsets on them. They simply bridge the two cards together, install drivers and voila, they're running in SLI mode, one Intel and AMD based PCs. What you're referring to is a PROJECT that nVidia and some other company who got together and placed chips sets into the motherboard to improve SLI performance. There is also a project that they are doing that implies that they are going to MAKE their own CPUs [note that I don't think that this has caught on yet].

But, SLI is not specific to motherboards with only nVidia chipsets built into them. Nope. I've seen AMD and Intel based machines running nVidia cards in SLI mode. SLI is, so far, specific to Windows based PCs.

I think the reason why we're not seeing SLI on Mac OSX is because we don't really need it. Between all the "Core" technology built into OSX, Processor, RAM and Graphics cards, Apple can create serious performance without using SLI. The other thing to be aware of is, SLI is not something that will be around in two years. If it is, then maybe we'll start to see it be more ubiquitous. But it seems to me that with the way technology changes, SLI'ing two graphics cards will eventually be a thing of the past. For instance, what if I could create SLI performance on one card. What then would be the point of SLI?

Feb 9, 2008 3:48 AM in response to CorePunk

Actually SLI Technology is as old as the first Voodoo Cards from 3DFX. SLI was invented by the legendary 3DFX Specialists and doesnt require any special type of chipsets. The only real problem with the SLI on Mac is that you would require for full performance tow 16x lane PCIe 2.0 slots, wich the Mac Pro has but, one is only 16x lane the others are 8x lane. So if you do get SLI running under OSX wich could be resolved with some good programmer. You are still bound to half the Speed on one Card, wich creates a type of bottleneck, So I think its wiser getting a Physix Engine Speratly to Work together with the GPU. Its wiser becasue in a sense thats what true SLI is and was about. Not getting 2x GPUS to perform only Graphic related Tasks. One is for Graphic output the other is for Animation, Physics and basic mathematic calculations. That put together with 8 or more cores on the CPU then hey you get yourself the most advanced and powerfull Workstations in 3D Animation. I would suggest if somebody at apple had the time and influence, then get together with Nvidia, wich did buy all the Technology from 3DFX to give this awsome performance to High End 3D Cards, and Create a Mac compatible add on card or Even a Graphics Card with a PPE Cell based Physics Engine to give that type of Performance to the Mac Community, Wouldnt that be great. I'm still dreaming of the Day that Apple annouces the comeback of the PPC based Macs with some radical PPE subsystem. That would kill all Intel Systems forever. Think of what could have happend if IBM came sooner with 3.0 Ghz G5 Quad or Even Six core. Think that a G5 is in a sense a Xbox or PS3 Workstation with the same base, IBM PPC and PPE Cell based G5's.

Feb 9, 2008 4:13 AM in response to CorePunk

To use SLI, u need a SLI ready mother board ( some SLI ready mother boards take AMD cpu's and other uses Intel CPU's), then you meed 2 SLI ready display cards, do not have to be the same make but the GPU's must be the same. I have never seen a SLI ready mother board that do not use nVidia chipset. All the SLI ready boards have nVidia chipset on as fars as I know and what I have seen.

SLI Drivers for OS X?

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