This is something you don’t see every day. According to a post on 3DCenter, NVIDIA has enabled a new checkerbox rendering mode on SLI setups. This can be enabled via NVIDIA Inspector if you’re on a multi-GPU NVIDIA (or SLI) setup and using a driver from the r435 branch.
NVIDIA’s Checkbox rendering mode works with all versions of DirectX: 9, 11 and 12, however, there are still some bugs here and there. It’s still in testing phases. Why would NVIDIA be working on a console technology for multi-GPUs? Honestly, I’ve got no idea.
It could be just a rumor, or it could be that NVIDIA is just testing the feature on its GPUs and at present, it can only be enabled on multi-GPU setups. Or they could be working on a special variation of CBR to improve multi-GPU performance. Who knows?
In case you’re curious, checkerbox rendering works by rendering half of the frame and using info from the previous one to fill in the gaps. Of course, it’s more complex than that but that’s the simplest explanation. In reality, the objects and polygons are tracked as they move from pixel to pixel across frames for better quality, but let’s not go into that right now. What you need to know is that CBR rendering one half of frame A, and using data from the previous one to complete it, and then render the missing part of frame A for frame B and then use the info from A to fill in the gaps.
CBR is a pretty innovative piece of tech, and when implemented properly can come real close to native or standard rendering. It’s not surprising that NVIDIA is tinkering with it. However, what I’m interested in knowing is what exactly do they intend to do with it and how.