NVIDIA has been good at filling any potential product gaps it might have to make the consumers pick their products over the competition. It has once again made a counter move to one of ATI/AMD’s technologies. This time it’s Hybrid CrossFire, which makes it possible to connect integrated graphics chips with discrete graphics cards for better performance and optimized power consumption. NVIDIA has launched Hybrid SLI and the technology is more or less identical to Hybrid CrossFire; pairing the integrated GPU with a discrete one. The first information on Hybrid SLI was revealed back in June 2007, but as the first nForce 700a have arrived, the technology has now been unveiled. Equivalent chips for the Intel platform is expected Q2 2008.
“NVIDIA Hybrid SLI technology is based on the Company’s market-leading GeForce® graphics processor units (GPUs) and SLI multi-GPU technology. Hybrid SLI enables NVIDIA motherboard GPUs (mGPUs) to work cooperatively with discrete NVIDIA GPUs (dGPUs) when paired in the same PC platform. Hybrid SLI provides two new technologies— GeForce Boost and HybridPower™—that allow the PC to deliver graphics performance for today’s applications and games when 3D graphics horsepower is required, or transition to a lower-powered operating state when not.”
As expected there will be a variety of settings for choosing between optimal performance or saving power. We should clarify though that this is no way a high-end solution, no matter how much you try. It’s namely just the GeForce 8500GT and 8400GS that support Hybrid SLI, together with NVIDIA’s coming nForce 780a/750a/730a chipset for the AMD platform.
We can only consider it a good thing that both NVIDIA and AMD are paying attention to the low-end and mid-range markets with its multi-GPU technologies, which we know hope to see some tests with.
There is more information on Hybrid SLI at NVIDIA’s website.
