Gigabyte has just posted a press release announcing that all of its X58 motherboards now have official support for Nvidia SLI multi-GPU configurations, from the more affordable GA-EX58-UD3R model to the full-blown GA-EX58-Extreme. According to the company, users need only upgrade to the latest BIOS to enable SLI functionality on previously unsupported X58 boards from the company.


This was previously achievable using a relatively simple hack that consisted of flashing a non-SLI Gigabyte X58 board with the BIOS from the SLI-certified version – i.e. flashing the Gigabyte EX58-UD4 model with the EX58-UD4P SLI-certified BIOS. However, this method may very well void the motherboard’s warranty or render the machine literally bricked if something goes wrong.

Nvidia requires motherboard manufacturers using Intel's X58 chipset to pay for the company's official SLI certification on a model-by-model basis, so considering the hardware was already capable and an unofficial hack was doing the rounds, it seems Gigabyte simply decided to fork over the extra cash for upgrading all their X58 motherboards to SLI.