SLI, for those who don’t know, is the process of taking two Nvidia graphics cards and allowing them to work in parallel to render to a single monitor. In theory this doubles the power, getting more FPS for video games. Great right? Except due to encryption, only a limited amount of motherboards can actually support SLI.
That is, until now. Russian hackers at xDevs discovered that the newer encryption is based around string identifiers. This can be modified within the operating system itself, so in theory any motherboard could work. Be wary, this could brick your system; but if successful, you’ll have more power without shelling out for an officially SLI supported motherboard.
thats awesome, except I own an ATI board with crossfire =P
When is it not Russian, Chinese, Portuguese, Turkish, or German hackers? These days American hackers just sit behind desks doing boring stuff most kids can do.
That’s pretty cool, But isn’t the price difference marginal especially anything with a x8 or x16 pcie slot most all have SLI anyways. I have ice cream waiting :) So I won’t look it up right now. But I’m pretty sure It’s probably only $15 – $20 am I right?
i actually am thinking about buying a few SLI cards now. thanks hackaday!
“When is it not Russian, Chinese, Portuguese, Turkish, or German hackers? These days American hackers just sit behind desks doing boring stuff most kids can do”
I think it’s more like American hackers can get paid to do it, instead of hiding underground so the government doesn’t throw you in a dark hole for the next century.
I don’t think I would ever make use of this, for good SLi you would want 2 PCI Express x16 2.0 slots and most boards that have those support SLi in the first place.
Finally, took us long enough. I hate when companies waste our time by encrypting when eventually it WILL be broken. Such bullshit when they do that….
Shouldn’t the motherboard standards prevent such preventions? I mean seriously wtf!?
@tripp the P5B supports ATI crossfire rather than SLI so that may be a reason to want the hack.
Parallel processing doesn’t usually yeild twice the speed. Does SLI? I haven’t looked at it since it came out, but I doubt it.
Have hacked nVidia Drivers not been allowing SLi on boards without an nVidia chip for quite some time now?
@tjhooker Because we typically don’t say “American hackers” when the reader is assumed to be American themself.
@Anonymous: It was obviously symbolic of hackers in America. The only other way was to say: in this country. The average reader doesn’t know I’m American nor do they probably care.
SLI motherboards are sooo cheap now I hardly see why this hack was worth it. Seriously, I got my P5N-E on eBay for 25$ free shipping. Nothing to it.
On the other hand, it’s still a great hack, I wouldn’t want to imply otherwise.
Has anyone ever seen a mobo with two 16x pci-e slots that ISNT SLI? what would be the point of it… if any. A real challenge would involve modding the mobo to allow two cards when it originally only accepted one.
p5q-pro. Like i have. But i don’t care cause theres a nice grey apple on my screen :D
Great hack, pretty useful to anyone wanting to make a budget SLI system. Definitely long overdue though, I remember a few years back when choosing your motherboard was literally choosing between whether you wanted SLI or Crossfire
Doesnt the X58 chipset support both sli and crossfire anyways?
Dude
The X38,X48 got both 2 pci-E slots with full 16X speed but they dont support sli
There are many motherboard build on this both chipsets. If you want 2 cards on a mobo that accepts 1 pay a bit more and get 1 with 2 card LOL
Uhm, I know it’s off-topic but: What’s up with that cpu fan? It’s skewed. Looks unhealthy…
@taupan Looks like they rested it on some random heatsink to keep the cpu cool.
Hey that is pretty sweet. I’m a gamer myself don’t get me wrong, but… wouldn’t it eventually put to much stress on the mother board and CPU..due to how fast the CD ROM is moving in the CD drive, and how much heat the computer puts out while playing….
Still, I think it totally rocks!
Or sell those 2 cheap video cards on ebay and buy a faster one that doesnt use 2x as much power
@tjhooker and Anonymous
I always thought it was because Americans developed the technology to begin with. So they didn’t really need to hack it to prove anything.
@djdrewsgrl09
nonsense
I have an AMD 790X (Gigabyte GA-MA790X-UD4P), one of the boards tested. It is an ATI crossfire board by default. I have a 9800 GT because I prefer nvidia cards under linux. The article does not mention any efforts on modifying nvidia’s blobs, or anything else, for linux. It would certainly be wonderful to be able to run SLI mode in the future too.
@Spork
Got a feeling that if you went to the US R&D departments of any major tech company you will see plenty of Indian, Chinese, Nordic, etc etc guys and only a few born and breed Americans. Co-founder of Nvidia was born in Taipei for example.
@hukrepus
one of the method mentioned on xDev is using hacked BIOS tables, they use windows hack to add own table, its easy to add new DSDT to your bios, people on Linux-ACPI list do it all the time to fix bugged ACPI tables. This method however also requires anotehr hack to convince driver that your using “Intel X58”, dont know how its done under linux. you might want to mail guys at xDev and ask. Im sure they will eb happy to take the challenge
@american bashing and americans
lol, at least you got your Arduinos so stop complaining :D
@cantido
Yeah, I know. We are talking about geographic locations, not nationalities.
If I hack something while living in Japan, I am a ‘Japanese hacker’ they would not say ‘an Irish hacker living in japan’.
This makes me think of Lucid Logix’ Hydra chips, which are vendor neutral, and have better scaling than either crossfire or SLi. I’ve been waiting for them to get to the production stage for a while, and now the first motherboard sporting it is due out next month.
Pretty sure this was stolen from some guys at Techpowerup.com. Ive been following it for some time now, as they test it on different motherboards and such…
Ok sorry to double post but i checked it out, the author of that xdevs tutorial is one of the people working on it at techpowerup, however he’s not the original creator. Check out the “discussion” link for techpowerup at the bottom of the page.
@ arduinoneededinthishack
what do you mean…”nonsense” to me it kind of seems like common sense or simple logic..then again we do all think differently. So can you enlighten me kindly on the whole nonsense please?
@Spork
No, you would be an ‘ish hacker in Japan. If you’ve ever been involved in the “hacking” community in Japan you’ll know how different the mindset is, so unless you dream in H8 assembly, post detailed accounts of obscure chips that have no English datasheets on 2ch and have a credit account with AkizukiDenshi you can’t really call yourself a Japanese hacker.
Oh you also need a 通称名 that isn’t some retarded munge up of your western name.
@djdrewsgrl I believe arduinoneededinthishack was refering to the fact you have no idea what you are talking about (my intension is not too offend you). CD drive speed has nothing to do with this. Dual graphics cards do not put any extra stress on the computer.
Computers do not work like cars, i.e running the engine faster = more force on gearbox/wheels ect. If anything daul cars = less cpu stress. Peace
daul cars = *dual cards (appears i also don’t know what im talking about)
The link to xdevs is dead.
Just google the url and view googles cached copy.
All download links within the page should still be good.
Here’s a live link for those of you looking for this: http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?238048-Making-SLI-work-on-ANY-non-Nforce-chipset-MB&s=164701cd840b8e31749c2bfe5be811ee