Does NVIDIA's G80 Have Problems?
The Inquirer is reporting that NVIDIA's rumored next-generation G80 GPU is experiencing some major issues involving SLI and HDCP support. According to the rumor, editors have already been provided with G80 cards though there are no stable drivers that support SLI. In addition, HDCP is supposedly broken though the "source" does not know whether this is a hardware or software issue. Should this all prove to be true, NVIDIA has an uphill battle of sorts if they are going to make a positive first impression with a new GPU architecture.
The more troubling news is that we hear HDCP is badly borked in the first rev. Since we are not sure if this problem is hardware or software, if you care about jumping on the DRM infection train, you might want to look long and hard before you buy a G80.
Nvidia has something of a history of shipping broken functionality and not so much as correcting it on the box. Wait for independent reviews from people not wearing chastity belts that test this before you buy.
