puts a bag of popcorn in the microwave.... 

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!
 
Great way to shoot yourself in the foot there, Nvidia. Just let DX12 game devs to add support it (fat chance!) for 3 or 4 way SLI (or technically 3 or 4 Nvidia cards).
 
What a loser of a company.

FAIL! 

Saw this video earlier today and it's no big deal in my book really. Never plan on building a 3/4-way SLI rig, no need or want from me.   Sure, it sucks for that SMALL handful of people that actually do go for 3/4-way SLI, but I get why NVIDIA made the decision.  It's not really going to greatly effect or change anything for NVIDIA in the future by taking away 3/4-way SLI in gaming.. as others have said, there is such a small number of people who would actually use it anyway.  Only benefit I can really see for going 3/4-way SLI for gaming is extreme resolution and/or 4K+ gaming.  But then again, you are entering a very small market there.  Most gamers these days are sticking with 1080 resolution, with some making the move to 1440 since it's becoming more and more affordable.   Keeping 3/4-way SLI enabled for benchmarking software makes sense and I can definitely see why NVIDIA is going that route.. Keeping NVIDIA on the benchmarking leaderboards as stated in the video.  
 
Anywho, I am sorry to those effected by this, but it's not a big loss really.. You can still have your bragging rights on the benchmarking battlefield.  :P

Some of these people are stupid hilarious. Just another something to **** about. As a previous owner of AMD cards 3 and 4 way crossfire NEVER worked except for benchmarks like firestrike. Nothing but stutter. WIth 2 1080's in SLI you do not need anything else for gaming as it handles 4k perfectly. Why would they spend precious resources to develop something for such a small community IE Bench markers. The only people this really hurts are the people with the I have 4 very expensive video card in a more expensive than your PC EGO's. Ultimately they will get there way and a bios will be released and 3 and 4 way sli for the 1080 will get great bench marks but WILL still suck for gaming. I know I know DX12 will fix everything and it will magically make all cards work in perfect unison and NVIDIA will be broken because DX12 fixed everything. NOT. Hasn't happened yet and when it does it still won't work well. Mark my words its another pipedream gimmick for the masses. There aren't going to be many AAA developers configuring games for setups that never worked well when they cane hone in optimization for single and 2 way SLI that is being proven works well.

I think you missed the new news that NVIDIA has just done away with the Enthusiast Key.

I have been an nvidia user over 15 years and don't ever plan on switching to amd. With that siad I think most of you defending nvidia should at least step back and look at the big picture. They said almost month ago when the GTX 1080 was announced that you would need the key to unlock 3 to 4 way sli but that it would work in games,benchmarks etc but if there were issues with it working correclty they would not provide support. Now a month later they change there mind remove game support for 3 to 4 way sli and also you no longer need the key to unlock 3 to 4 way sli. What I do not like about all this is why all the sudden the change. I am pretty sure they new all along they were never going to support 3 to 4 way sli in games from the begining. They just refused to share this news when they announced the gtx 1080 and 1070 sli which is a bit shady. Just cause most of you don't use 3 or 4 way sli does not mean its worthless. While you might not get the same gain in fps as you do with 2 way sli there is still some gain with a thrid card and forth card. They never really supported 3 or 4 way anyways. Hell 2 way sli aupport in games have been dropong each year more and more. I see no reason to remove 3 or 4 way sli whatsoever. Now your investment into 3 or 4 way sli is even more worthless since you can't use it games. It's sad to see the biggest gpu comany remove a feature that has been avaialble for over 10 years just cause they can. It would be funny if AMD all the sudden got there crossfire working perfectly and 3 and 4 way crossfire and it had big FPS gains in games. I bet nvidia would back track in a heartbeat.

Nvidia ditches ‘enthusiast key’, limits 3 or 4-way SLI to specific apps
 
June 9th, 2016 at 7:16 pm - Author Matthew Wilson
Back when Nvidia first announced the GTX 1080 and GTX 1070, we began hearing reports that there would no longer be support for 3-way or 4-way SLI. However, once the review embargo lifted, we learned that Nvidia had plans to introduce an ‘enthusiast key’ which would unlock the ability to use more than two Pascal GPUs. Now, things have changed once again- apparently Nvidia has ditched the ‘enthusiast key’ idea and will only enable 3-way or 4-way SLI for certain applications, like benchmark tools.
This is according to a report from PCPer, who got in touch with Nvidia to find out what was going on with the enthusiast key solution. It turns out, Nvidia no longer thinks that’s a great idea and will instead allow future ‘Game Ready’ drivers to take advantage of 3-way and 4-way SLI in specific applications, like overclocking benchmarks.

In a statement, Nvidia said: “With the GeForce 10-series we’re investing heavily in 2-way SLI with our new High Bandwidth bridge (which doubles the SLI bandwidth for faster, smoother gaming at ultra-high resolutions and refresh rates) and NVIDIA Game Ready Driver SLI profiles. To ensure the best possible gaming experience on our GeForce 10-series GPUs, we’re focusing our efforts on 2-way SLI only and will continue to include 2-way SLI profiles in our Game Ready Drivers.”
However, if a game developer specifically wants to support more than two GPUs then Nvidia is open to working with them to do that: “Some developers may also decide to support more than 2 GPUs in their games. We continue to work with all developers creating games and VR applications that take advantage of 2 or more GPUs”.
For the most part though, 3-way and 4-way SLI support will be limited to benchmarks for the overclocking crowd: “For our overclocking community, our Game Ready Drivers will also include SLI profiles for 3- and 4-way configurations for specific OC applications only, including Fire Strike, Unigine and Catzilla.”

stalinx20

MSim
like 99% of gamers won't be bothered by this. I can see why Nvidia doesn't want to spend the time/resources on supporting 3/4way SLi on DX12 games.
 
 

Exactly. The ones complaining are probably .05% of the entire computer market.

The ones complaining are the ones that don't want to settle for second best. We like to play games at high resolution on big monitors, not 1080p.

uau.... 4 gfx cards....   
and i would just be happy to have just one more gtx760 sc :P

The only reason I have been looking at 3-way SLI is for a surround gaming system that can handle closer to 144hz on 3 of the IPS 1440p monitors that are finally on the market... (4th display for TS or information only) The latest X99 just dropped and it is time for me to upgrade in a normal 2-4 years cycle...  I was waiting for the 1080s to drop, so it looked promising that I could actually build a system that could do this, but WTH NVidia hopefully we can find a way around for the surround gaming community.