Nvidia SLI - X48 Chipset
 

Has anyone had or heard of anyone having any success applying patches (or just plain driver hacking) to get nvidia SLI working on X48 chipset boards using a linux OS? I know SLI is not officially supported on my board and I've come across a second vid card.

It is 100% possible on windows (link). I just don't know where to start with linux.

Using slackware 13.1
nvidia gts 250
rampage extreme mobo (x48)

I don't know the specifics, since I've never been so fortunate as to have more than 1 video card to play with, but I have seen lots of more generic instructions around the Web (and probably on LQ as well) for getting SLI to work with Nvidia + Linux. Have you tried looking for/at those yet? They might not be specific to your chipset, but they may work with little/no changes on your setup. Often when a manufacturer says that "X,Y,Z aren't supported on this product" they really mean "we don't feel like doing the work that it would take to guarantee YOU/all our other customers can make it work," rather than simply "it doesn't work."

I wish I had more help to give you, but his may point you in the right direction.

--Dane

I don't know the details about that, but I know the basics.
The driver determines if it should show the option for SLI by searching a specific key in the BIOS (I don't know if it is a simple string or anything different). If this key is present it enables the options for SLI.
So you have to options:
1. You have to alter the BIOS. I know that this works for some of Gigabyte's X58 mainboards. The have models with SLI enabled and similar mainboards without SLI. It is somewhat dangerous but I have read reports that flashing the BIOS of the non-SLI models with the BIOS for the similar SLI model enabled SLI on this boards.
2. The safer method, alter the driver so that it doesn't check the SLI-key and just enables the options. Sadly, I don't know how to do that.

Warning: Keep in mind that flashing the BIOS with a BIOS that is not meant for that specific board can damage your hardware and will in any cases void your warranty! Don't do this if you don't exactly know what you are doing!

I have spent quite a few hours checking out SLI/Linux threads DaneM, alas the problem lies in my chipset/SLI combo. I can easily detect both GPUs, enabling them in SLI is, from what I can tell, impossible without the following mentioned methods being employed successfully.

Just to clarify, yes the alteration was essentially changing an existing Gigabyte X48's BIOS (no SLI support) to that of a Gigabyte X58 BIOS (has SLI support).

Yes I had come across this. I do not have a Gigabyte X48, I'm running an Asus Rampage Extreme, so I (perhaps erroneously) assumed that "tricking" my bios into "thinking" it was an X58 chipset on my specific board would be impossible.

Then again, there probably isn't a difference between an X48 chipset on a Gigabyte board compared to an X48 chipset on an Asus board is there...

Dang! This is the method I was going for :P. I opened the nivida-*.run file with emacs and couldn't see anything referencing SLI before the extremely long portion of cryptic text began.

Thanks for trying guys =)
I'll leave this thread un-tagged a bit longer in case of generous genius happening across it :)

Cheers!
Chris

Don't do that, that will definitely not work, the X58 series (for socket LGA1366) is in no way compatible with X48 (for socket LGA775). You will destroy your board.
Not in the chipset itself, but in the peripheral chips (sound and other controllers) and their wiring on the board. So flashing a Gigabyte BIOS on a ASUS board will most likely not work.

Ah my bad, I was confused how they accomplished it. It's not a BIOS flash. It's essentially your method #2:

From http://www.slipatch.com/doc/manual-en.html:

Regardless, the SLI patch is only for Windows :(