Hell Freezes Over: NVIDIA Announces Native SLI Support for the Intel X58 Chipset
by Anand Shimpi & Laura Johnston on August 28, 2008 4:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
Why is NVIDIA doing this?
NVIDIA was clear in mentioning that it will continue to design chipsets for Penryn based platforms, but it will not be making any QPI enabled chipsets for Nehalem. Thus, with Nehalem, the only way to get SLI support would be to use an Intel chipset.
Note that NVIDIA will be making LGA-1160 based Nehalem motherboards (dual-channel DDR3) for the low end and mainstream markets, but that platform isn't expected to debut until late 2009. LGA-1366 based Nehalem systems (dual/triple-channel DDR3) are the ones launching this year and the ones that NVIDIA won't have a chipset for.
NVIDIA originally expected OEMs to use its nForce 200 chips to enable SLI support on X58, however we heard from the very start that most motherboard manufacturers weren’t going to use the nForce 200 + Intel X58 combination. If NVIDIA wanted to offer SLI on Nehalem, it would have to open it up to all X58 motherboards, otherwise AMD could actually gain a multi-GPU advantage by being the only multi-GPU technology natively supported by Nehalem.
The timing of the announcement is very last-minute. Most motherboard manufacturers weren’t even aware that NVIDIA was opening up SLI to X58 until tonight, they received phone calls shortly after NVIDIA briefed us earlier this evening.
NVIDIA is committed to enabling X58 SLI motherboard support by the time Nehalem launches later this year. We were also told that while Intel’s own X58 motherboard isn’t currently on the certified list, Intel is more than welcome to submit it for certification.
NVIDIA went even further to say that if we were previewing any X58 motherboards that hadn’t yet made it through certification, that it would work with us to get our hands on a driver enabling SLI on the motherboard. It remains to be seen how easy it will be to simply hack in support for SLI on any X58 motherboard, regardless of certification status.
And there you have it: in response to the complaint of no-new-news out of NVISION 08, NVIDIA dropped the biggest bombshell of them all - native SLI support on X58. While I’d like to see top-to-bottom SLI support regardless of chipset, this is most definitely a good start.
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Pirks - Thursday, August 28, 2008 - link
Are there any AMD motherboards that support both CF and SLI like X58 will?ilkhan - Thursday, August 28, 2008 - link
doubtful. Why would nvidia allow SLI on AMD motherboards?As to why they are doing this, its obvious. The 4850, 4870 and 4870 X2 boards are more than enough price/performance to destroy nvidia's sales for every bloomfield owner for the next 6 months. No SLI, no chance for nvidia to capitalize on those sales.
Pirks - Thursday, August 28, 2008 - link
Why would nVidia allow SLI on AMD mobos? For the same reason they did it on Intel mobos - to sell more nVidia cards.bigboxes - Thursday, August 28, 2008 - link
Intel doesn't own their main competitor in the GPU market. AMD does. It's a catch-22 for nVidia. They had to do this because crossfire works on both Intel and AMD boards. It's really silly not to allow AMD board users the option for SLI, but that's the corner they've worked themselves into. It will really be interesting as it looks like AMD has worked themselves out of their jam on the GPU front.Mr Roboto - Thursday, August 28, 2008 - link
I agree. Now since it looks like Nvidia is going to be exiting the chipset market the real question is why wouldn't Nvidia open SLI on AMD boards. That move would only help them sell more cards.Dobs - Thursday, August 28, 2008 - link
Isn't this old news from August 8?Amiga500 - Thursday, August 28, 2008 - link
Not looking too good right now.I would say they are sacrificing their chipsets for some additional GPU revenue with that move.
I assume Intel will get its way, and soon have a top to bottom coverage of SLI enabled chipsets, after which - who would want to buy an nForce?
AlexWade - Thursday, August 28, 2008 - link
Intel has a better chipset. AMD has a better chipset. NVidia's chipset days are over just like Via. Sure, it won't be overnight, but it is coming. That is why NVidia is doing this, because they know their chipset market is dead and thus they need a way to keep selling their graphic cards. Eventually, they will have to open up SLI on AMD chipsets too.JarredWalton - Thursday, August 28, 2008 - link
You pay them money to "test" (i.e. certify) your board, and they give you a key. It would be nice if they would just open this up to all boards. I wonder how much they're charging for the certification process, and if they get a royalty on each motherboard sold? If it's a one-time per board design charge, I'd be surprised. (I'm also hopeful that some enterprising hackers will be able to extract the key and perhaps allow this to work on non-sanctioned boards.)Now all NVIDIA needs to do is allow the same thing for notebooks, and then get notebooks to run reference drivers. That way SLI on a laptop could actually be something viable rather than something that feels hacked in and somewhat flaky.... Not that there are any laptop chipsets that currently support two PCI-E x8/x16 links. And not like many people actually buy SLI notebooks regardless. Heh. (Can you tell what I'm testing?)
BackFlow - Friday, August 29, 2008 - link
Rumor has it that Nvidia is charging $30.00 per cert and is less than the cost of nForce 200 chip.
IMHO, NVIDA hand was forced because it couldn't get QuickPath license.