CNet retardation?

[Avenger213]

I was reading the Cnet review of the Core 2 Duo 6700, and they listed this as the "con" of the processor:
"The bad: Chipset politics between Intel and graphics card vendors hurt gamers, who now have to pick an Intel board for ATI's CrossFire or an Nvidia board for SLI cards."

I find it funny that these supposed experts are so stupid. Each company has its own proprietary technology, it has nothing to do with politics, we (the consumers) should be thankful that we even have a choice between Crossfire and SLI, IMHO.
Anyone agree?

 

[ptech]

To my knowledge, people have been choosing sides all the time. If you want an ATI graphics card you probably wouldn't want to go with an nForce chipset (it may work fine, but it just sounds funny...). I do think it's all business and politics, but it should just make the competition work harder.

But I think this article was written before AMD & ATI merged, so in a year when the Intel/ATI license expires it will all change. I think that's how it's gonna work, at least.

 

[Avenger213]

I just wished to comment on Cnet's apparent lack of knowledge. How could they miss something so obvious, the fact that ATI and Nvidia are competitors! They way the article is phrased is horrendous. Intel hasn't caused gamers harm with "chipset politics" we are still able to choose from crossfire or SLI, the only two choices that are even presented. So I would love to know how Intel has hurt gamers with it's "politics".

 

[Discostu2120]

It is all about their market strategy and yes politics. This is not an issue of the technology not being available. Its been shown that sli works fine on intel chipsets such as 975x if the NV drivers are hacked to allow it. Chances are sli would work on a crossfire board too.

Nvidia and ATI decide what boards they will enable their multi gpu solutions to work on via the drivers. They want you to buy their mobo and their gpu, so they don't allow their multi gpu to be used on competitors mobos and vice versa. My guess is now that AMD owns ATI, the 'technical obstacles' to running sli on 975x will dissapear in a driver update sometime soon so that nvidia can sell their gpus to the people on intel boards.

If the drivers were unlocked I don't see any reason any board with two pci-e x16 slots would be unable to run sli or crossfire. There might be a slight slowdown if one of the slots is only x4, but it should still function fine.