It appears that NVIDIA is distancing itself even further from its multi-GPU technology. According to a new support article, the company won’t be providing new SLI (Scalable Link Interface) driver profiles for GeForce RTX 20 Series and earlier graphics cards starting on January 1, 2021. Instead, it’ll simply work with developers on implementing SLI natively inside of games.
What this probably means is that SLI gaming is on its last legs. Dual-GPU setups are relatively unpopular these days, so we’re guessing that the majority of developers won’t even bother with the implementation going forward. Additionally, NVIDIA’s NVLink – the high-speed interconnect that enables multi-GPU configurations – has largely been omitted from the GeForce RTX 30 Series (only the $1,499 GeForce RTX 3090 supports it).
“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,” NVIDIA wrote. “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.”