Intel Licenses NVIDIA SLI Technology For P55 Chips

adeelarshad82 writes "NVIDIA announced that Intel has licensed the company's SLI technology for inclusion in upcoming products — as have a slew of major hardware partners such as ASUS, EVGA, Gigabyte, and MSI. This means the P55 chipsets that power those new socket LGA 1156 motherboards, which are based around the next-gen Nehalem architecture, will let you build systems using two or four NVIDIA-powered GPUs. Specifically, the licensing agreement covers the Core i5 and Core i7 microprocessors."

Comments

Re:Monopoly?

[verbalcontract]

First of all, it's AMD.

Second of all, ATI is owned by AMD. Because of them, AMD makes graphics cards. AMD also sells technology that allows two AMD cards to be used on one motherboard. Therefore, AMD will probably not pay money for the same technology that lets people purchase and use two competitor's products.

Re:Monopoly?

[snowraver1]

I don't know how a crossover cable would help with GPUs, but ATI could definately promote their CrossFire product...

Intel has failed us again

[billcopc]

Frankly, I've been less than pleased with the whole SLI vs CrossFire debacle. It's a friggin PCI-Express bus! This is nothing more than software and/or firmware enforced lock-in, and it stinks. I would have preferred for Intel to reject the SLI tax entirely. NVidia is the small player here, they're the ones who should be bending over backwards to get the big guys to promote their products. I don't want to pay an SLI tax on my motherboard, NVidia should be plenty glad that I'm buying two expensive GPUs instead of one, and they should consider a partnership with Intel like a divine blessing because Intel is 10 times larger and has far greater reach into every single market.

The situation is simple: right now, I own a perfectly fine motherboard that doesn't support SLI (Intel P35). I also have a perfectly fine Geforce 8800 and would have loved to add a second, but I can't because my board isn't on the SLI whitelist. My options are:

A. buy the second card, and replace my motherboard with an overpriced unstable NForce 750 board

B. fuck NVidia and buy two brand new AMD cards

Assuming equal performance, option B would cost me far less, even though I would prefer the NVidia GPU. Their SLI lock in has thus resulted in a lost sale.

Now I'm just one guy, but here's the funny part: I used to sell gaming rigs... lots and lots of 'em. When people heard about SLI, all the hardcore guys wanted it, but when they found out they had to taint their lovingly assembled systems with an NForce board, most of them backed off. It wasn't even about the money, it's about NVidia's awful track record in the chipset biz. They make even SIS look good. They never really fixed the NF2/3/4 disk corruption glitches, and they trashed the one good thing they had going for them: Soundstorm. That was a long time ago, but the way they handled those very public screwups left a bad taste in everyone's mouth.