SLI on X58- official

http://www.nvidia.com/object/io_1216019719164.html

New SLI motherboards will feature the NVIDIA nForce® 200 SLI processor, Intel Bloomfield CPUs, and Tylersburg (X58) chipsets. The nForce 200 SLI processor features patented SLI technology for graphics bandwidth management and multi-GPU peer-to-peer communications, both required to optimize graphics performance.

Click to expand...

Will take a new helper chip, but at least it will be available.

edit: changed the quote to better show the specifics

So it's official we will have SLI support in an intel chipset then?

next-Jin said:

So it's official we will have SLI support in an intel chipset then?

Click to expand...

Sort of. SLI will still require the nForce 200 chip.

Basically, the press release is nVidia saying "We can't make a chipset for Nehalem with SLI because we weren't able to twist Intel's arm to give us a QPI license in exchange for SLI. Quite frankly, we need Intel more than they need us. To our beloved consumers, we still plan on screwing you. If you want SLI on Nehalem, you'll still need a board with nForce 200 + X58."

JackPack said:

Sort of. SLI will still require the nForce 200 chip.
Basically, the press release is nVidia saying "We can't make a chipset for Nehalem with SLI because we weren't able to twist Intel's arm to give us a QPI license in exchange for SLI. Quite frankly, we need Intel more than they need us. To our beloved consumers, we still plan on screwing you. If you want SLI on Nehalem, you'll still need a board with nForce 200 + X58."

Click to expand...

Sounds right to me.

This is the best solution IMO and benefits both Intel and Nvidia. To put it bluntly I dont want an nvidia northbridge/southbridge combination, the NF200 is just PCI-E lanes to facilitate SLI.

This is what was done for skulltrail, Nvidia still makes thier money by charging for the NF200's.

And the NF200s are just a switch that says "hi, it's OK to run SLi here."

If they didn't hard-lock their cards, like ass-hats, none of this would be necessary.

I love being right. So many people said that they would go SLi as long as they didn't have to buy a horrible nVidia based motherboard to do it. After so many problems with the 680i/780i/790i people just didn't want to deal with instability problems that are associated with nVidia chipsets. I was told that big companies don't listen to their customers, but I am positive they were listening this time. Companies HAVE to be more responsive to their customers when the economy is in such bad shape. If they don't they risk selling way less product.

Down8 said:

And the NF200s are just a switch that says "hi, it's OK to run SLi here."

If they didn't hard-lock their cards, like ass-hats, none of this would be necessary.

Click to expand...

The nForce MCP's also add PCI-Express lanes.

Dan_D said:

The nForce MCP's also add PCI-Express lanes.

Click to expand...

NF200's are pure switches, they provide PCI-E lanes which are muxed onto the native lanes provided by the Intel chipset, the nvidia graphics drivers look for these and enable SLI accordingly.

IMO Nvidia should charge Intel a licensing fee instead of implementing extra H/W on the motherboard(H/W that isnt needed) then again H/W locks are better.