INTEL Motherboards Will Receive SLI Support

Remember the moment when AMD announced that they will be buying Ati? Well, that same moment produced an "extra" effect which was totally unexpected at first. As INTEL and AMD were rivals in terms of almost everything IT-related, INTEL could no longer integrate Ati technology onto its boards. Fortunately for them, there was another major graphics solutions producer who could offer them more than that. A lot more.

Nvidia and INTEL were (and are) by no means what you would call "a happy couple" but the unusual marriage had some advantages for both parts. For example, Nvidia received a license for DDR3-1600 support (with FSB 1600 of course) and it also got its hands on VT support (although almost no one uses this particular Core 2 Duo feature).

And now we find out that INTEL will receive SLI support for all its PCIe 2.0 motherboards (running in 2x X8 mode or 2x X16 mode). Nice one, isn't it? Especially if you take into account that INTEL's future motherboards were pretty good all-rounders excepting for the SLI support. And now they have that too. That makes me wonder if Ati's Crossfire license can also be used for PCIe 2.0 Crossfire setups. Because if the answer is yes...

...INTEL will have a "complete" motherboard. Evidently I'm talking about the marvelous X38 and its future development stages. Just imagine how good a motherboard with full DDR3, ICH9R, FSB1333 and Crossfire support would be if it also had the ability to run SLI setups.

On the other hand that could seriously affect Nvidia's motherboard revenues. So I don't see why they did it. Perhaps they are also hiding a motherboard capable of offering a competitive alternative to X38. Judging by the current Nforce 680i lineup, performance and revenues, I'd say not.

We are just a few, but there are many of you, Softpedia users, out there. That's why we thought it would be a good idea to create an email address for you to help us a little in finding gadgets we missed. Interesting links are bound to be posted with recognition going mainly to those who submit. The address is .