Don't know if this has already been posted, search came up with nothing.
Anyway much to my frustration I plugged in my new second GTX 470 and initially unable to figure out why no SLi compatabilty message, must be my age and loss of memory, my motherboard is an AMD 790fx chipset, ergo non nforce, I was about to throw a hissy considering what I just paid for the new graphics card, but lo and behold another modder/hacker comes to the rescue with http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=153046 and it really works!

He has two beta versions, I'm using 0.7, the hack uses hardware virtualization which needs to be enabled in your bios, when you first install the hack you have to reboot, you will see a boot menu, one will have "Windows *** HyperSLI"; obviously that's one you need to boot.

This is working with the 290.53 beta drivers.


Hope this helps someone as much as it helped me, suffice to say I'm relieved that the cash I spent was not wasted.

Well... you should have known that the AMD 790FX doesn't support SLI (it's moar liek nVidia's driver makes a check: if Chipset = AMD then FAIL).

The only AMD chipset supporting SLI is the new 990FX, but only because AMD payed nVidia the necessary royalty fee.
nVidia's chipset business has been dead since the introduction of Core i7 btw. They also stopped developing chipsets for AMD when AMD acquired ATI.

yean NVidia does some a lot of jackassiery when it comes to that stuff.

For example buying up companies that were making good products and then immediately killing/preventing existing products from working... lets just say ULi had working SLI and got the NVidia foot to the jewels.

Nvidia has also published numerous PDFs that essentially lie about competitor products using worse case scenarios and then paring them up with average to good case scenarios of their own products. I can dig up articles referring to PowerVR when they were smashing the crap out of NVidia's top tier cards for a fraction of the cost, and with a gpu that was pretty damn "weak" in the specs because it was exceptional in it's efficiency.

While intel doesn't make life very easy, NVidia and intel were like the big bullies trying to bully each other, but i lean towards intel at least in the cases involving NVidia because NVidia has a habit of coming across as the total jerk with the exception of intel in rare cases.

AMD/ATI have been the only ones for the most part not trying to stab other companies or it's consumers in the back.

Getting official support for SLI shouldn't require much and it doesn't actually... But NVidia does the most idiotic things to ensure they are paid something for the most ridiculous things.... a simple driver change and violla... we can set you up to run sli.. but pay me a meaty sum of cash first for OUR products to work PROPERLY on your hardware.

Frankly i would go as far as to say this seems TOTALLY ILLEGAL.... it's like holding something ransom. You buy a product for company A.... like it.. buy a second because they market SLI.. then proceed to prevent a product from company B from working with it INTENTIONALLY, not because it wouldn't work because it would out of the box, but they specifically MADE certain it wouldn't work. Company B then pays the demands of company A, a new driver is released by company A, and your up and running.

IF I bought a Samsung tv for example, and then purchased a Yamaha amp/reciever. and then attatched an hdmi 1.4 cable between each Both of which FULLY support 3D functionality just fine. getting full HD and audio and internet between through that cable.. and then i bought a 3D Blu-ray player from Samsung... attached it to the Yamaha amp... but couldn't use 3D blu-rays because for whatever reason the Samsung player sees that i'm using a Yamaha amp and refuses to send the singnal simply because Yamaha had not paid Samsung for "3D" capabilities... you have any idea how much legal uproar there would be?

Well, the reason I was thrown was because before my motherboard upgrade I was using a motherboard with nForce chipset, so I'd never come across the issue of non compatability until now(Except of course Nvidias lame policy on different graphics cards and PhysX.), I will be looking to upgrade my MB in future.

I think it was just because amd cpu's just didnt sell too well. nForce chipsets were the best, why couldnt AMD develop a better one is the question.

i could debate all day why nforce chipsets are some of the worse ... falling behind even the sis and via chipsets which weren't very good.

The only solution to running SLI on a non-SLI mobo that I know of is to use a card that has two GPUs onboard, either the GTX590 or the the GTX560ti 2Win (the latter only available from EVGA.) Rather expensive either way as a new mobo would quite a bit cheaper.

Did you read OP's post or just the title?

Which is why I suggested he not go that route with his newly purchased card (unless he could return it, sell his old one and upgrade which would probably still be more expensive than buying a new SLI mobo). However, it is nonetheless the only way I know of using SLI on a non-SLI board. This thread will be a heads up to people not to try 2 card SLI unless their mobo (and PSU) are SLI certed.

I stand corrected, i was talking about nforce2. In any case i dont see why anyone must develop anything aimed specifically for a rival (and here the Samsung/yamaha example doesnt apply). And if it wasnt very good, even less reason. Thats pragmatic. I like it more than all the 3dfx and ati dream worlds.

i'm not saying sli is bad... i'm saying that they purposely broke sli support... it's not the hardware that the cards are installed on that is the problem.. it's nvidia's way of flipping the consumer the bird because they wouldn't at the time ALLOW a chipset to work with their cards, meanwhile crossfire has been working beautifully on alternative chipsets since they ditched the x1xxx series cards stupid method of crossfire using interconnects just like sli had been.

Nforce 2 while had an excellent run was a very flawed chipset with massive failure rates, it's rare to see a working board anywhere... they were physically fabbed wrong with the south and north bridges "bubbled" resulting in terrible heat transfer to the heatsinks.