NVIDIA Corp. said Friday that its multi-GPU scalable link interface (SLI) technology is not to be supported by applications based on recently released Intel 975X core-logic, which may not satisfy end-users who would like to have an Intel processor and an Intel chipset in their system in addition to powerful graphics processing capabilities.
When asked whether it was possible a multi-GPU personal computer based on Intel 975X mainboard featuring two NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards, NVIDIA's Bryan Del Rizzo said that it was not.
?For those interested in running SLI on an Intel platform, NVIDIA nForce4 SLI MCP-based motherboards are the perfect solution. In addition to SLI capability, the NVIDIA nForce4 SLI MCPs offer a wealth of features not found on other core-logic solutions, including dual X16 PCIe slots, native Gigabit Ethernet, hardware-accelerated security, and advanced RAID configurations,?said Bryan Del Rizzo, a spokesperson for NVIDIA's core-logic business unit.
Intel Corp.'s 955X and 975X chipsets support capability to divide PCI Express lanes for graphics cards between a pair of graphics processing units (GPUs) which allows to install up to two graphics cards per system resulting in higher performance. However, leading developers of graphics chips only enable support for their multi-GPU technology on those platforms that passed rigorous testing. For instance, ATI Technologies enables support for multi-GPU operation on its own ATI RADEON XPRESS 200 CrossFire Edition platforms as well as on Intel 955X platforms, whereas NVIDIA Corp. supports only its own nForce4 SLI-series chipsets with its multi-GPU tech. Apparently, qualifying Intel's core-logic sets is not a priority for the company.
?From the?extensive, top-to-bottom line up of graphics cards, to a myriad of games, power supplies and other components ?including motherboards ?that make up the SLI ecosystem, SLI is a signifcant development effort that requires extensive testing and performance tuning, as well as a massive amount of time and money,?said Mr. Del Rizzo. ?At this point, our focus is on continued development, testing, and QA of SLI on NVIDIA GeForce-based GPUs and NVIDIA nForce4 SLI-based core-logic solutions, for both AMD and Intel CPUs.
Intel 975X chipset released recently supports single-core and dual-core processors with up to 1066MHz processor system bus, dual-channel DDR2 memory at up to 667MHz, PCI Express x16 lanes that can be shared between two slots as well as some other performance-enhancing innovations.
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