SLI with Intel Chipsets?

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GrimR

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 24, 2004
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187
Sorry if this question has an obvious answer but I haven't put together a higher end system in quite some time. Last one was a P4 2.8 and a Radeon 9800....

I had a quick question regarding SLI and the latest Intel processors. Outside of the NVidia 780's (and 790's), are there any other motherboards that support the new 45nm processors and SLI? I know the X38 as two full 16x slots but I thought those only supported Crossfire and I am currently leaning towards NVidia cards.

Thanks in advance!!
 
The only boards that support SLI are boards with an nVidia chipset (ie: 650, 680, 780, etc). There is a patent or technology disagreement between Intel and nVidia and the result of that is no SLI support on Intel chipsets. If you want an Intel chipset and 2 video cards, ATi / Crossfire are your only options.
 
bunglega said:
The only boards that support SLI are boards with an nVidia chipset (ie: 650, 680, 780, etc). There is a patent or technology disagreement between Intel and nVidia and the result of that is no SLI support on Intel chipsets. If you want an Intel chipset and 2 video cards, ATi / Crossfire are your only options.
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That's what I was afraid of. I probably should have mentioned that this new 'puter will be about 2 months down the road. I like the features on the 780 but the pricing is outrageous. I have ordered tons of stuff from Newegg and their prices are usually pretty good but the EVGA website has one of their 780 boards listed at $259 and Newegg is selling it for $339....

Do you think the price will drop below $250 in March/April, especially when the 790 is available?

Also, a little off topic, I'll be upgrading my monitor as well and it looks like a 24" is in my budget. With a 1920x1200 resolution do I even need to go SLI or do you think one 8800GT will last a while?

Thanks again!!
 
In two months time, the 9800GTX will either be available or not more than two more months out, that's pretty certain.

I game at 1920x1200 with my sig rig, and there very few games that I can't run at native resolution. Really the only two I can think of off the top of my head are of course Crysis and Call of Jaurez, which is I think is actually a little more demanding than Crysis, but its a beautiful looking game, though not quite as good as Crysis, IMHO.

Having owened a couple of SLI setups, to be honest, I just don't think they're worth it unless you game at above 1920x1200 as games and GPU's stand today. Multi-GPU setups are just more problematic. Either game support is lacking, or the performance boost isn't worth twice the price.

Of course there are exceptions, but if the 9800GTX is as powerful as it seems, something on the order of 2x the power of an 8800 Ultra, even Crysis will probably run well at 1920x1200 with that kind of hourse power.

My prediction is that for 2008 is that there will be very few games that will even tax higher end 8800's let alone a 9800 at anything at 1920x1200. At that resolution and below, SLI and Crossfire are not only bad purchases, they offer little other than stability and compatiblity issues.
 
NVIDIA will never allow SLI to run on their standard desktop boards. If they did then NVIDIA's high end desktop chipset business would be doomed. No one in thier right mind would spend $300 on a NVIDIA chipset based board when an Intel chipset based board is available to do the same job. NVIDIA knows this and that is why you can't generally run SLI on non-NVIDIA chipsets. However in the workstation market things are different. NVIDIA has never prevented anyone from SLI'ing Quadros or GeForce cards on workstation class motherboards as NVIDIA doesn't compete with Intel in that market.

Supposedly Skulltrail has an nForce MCP onboard allowing SLI to function. This is a load of crap as it isn't needed. All it does is complicate things for Intel and make extra money for NVIDIA. Intel would have to engineer in a useless chip into their motherboard design for the sole purpose of making NVIDIA happy. Hopefully the NVIDIA MCP is actually going to serve a function like providing PCIe lanes or something. Though Intel doesn't need the chip in question for that. The workstation chipsets already have enough PCIe lanes to satisfy most any configuration of motherboard. Any PCIe 1.0/1.0a/2.0 compliant motherboard can be used with SLI if NVIDIA would let only allow it. SLI isn't magic it just leverages a function called peer to peer writes which is part of the PCIe specification. Crossfire for that matter does exactly the same thing.

In short NVIDIA has Intel by the short hairs on this one. But if Intel wants to build the ultimate enthusiast platform that can do SLI and Crossfire, they have no choice. On that note I think Skulltrail is a dick wagging excercise designed to make themselves look better and AMD look more inept than they have been all this last year.

BTW: I want a Skulltrail motherboard and a pair of quad core Xeon's in my own machine. :D
 
I would imagine that the Skulltrail would be out of my budget anyway.

The reason I was interested in SLI was the upgradability. I don't have the cash at the moment for two cards but was planning on adding a second later on. I assume that the 9800 will be in the $400-500 range? I guess I'll be hitting Google after this as I had not heard of this card yet.

Well, the good this is that with only one card the market is wide open. :)

Any recommendations on a sub-$200 board. I'm guessing that the P35 is where I'll end up.
 
GrimR said:
I would imagine that the Skulltrail would be out of my budget anyway.

The reason I was interested in SLI was the upgradability. I don't have the cash at the moment for two cards but was planning on adding a second later on. I assume that the 9800 will be in the $400-500 range? I guess I'll be hitting Google after this as I had not heard of this card yet.

Well, the good this is that with only one card the market is wide open. :)

Any recommendations on a sub-$200 board. I'm guessing that the P35 is where I'll end up.
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The highest end part will probably have an MSRP of either $599.99 or $649.99. Possibly even $699.99. I wouldn't be at all surprised if that was the case. The 8800GTX and Ultra both came out at similar price points. So don't be surprised if they cost that much. Plus don't forget the price gouging if the availability isn't very good right off the bat.
 
How about hacked Nvidia drivers that allow SLi? Anything on that front or is that just a myth?
 
Methadras said:
How about hacked Nvidia drivers that allow SLi? Anything on that front or is that just a myth?
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The newest hacked drivers for SLI on non-NVIDIA chipset based boards were 70 series Forceware drivers for Windows XP. If I recall correctly the latest card those supported was the 7900GTX. The 7950GX2, and GeForce 8 series cards aren't supported. Basically we are SOL on that.
 
Dan_D said:
In short NVIDIA has Intel by the short hairs on this one. But if Intel wants to build the ultimate enthusiast platform that can do SLI and Crossfire, they have no choice. On that note I think Skulltrail is a dick wagging excercise designed to make themselves look better and AMD look more inept than they have been all this last year.

BTW: I want a Skulltrail motherboard and a pair of quad core Xeon's in my own machine. :D
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So, I take it that you are not opposed to dick wagging - mmmmmkay
 
Dan_D said:
NVIDIA will never allow SLI to run on their standard desktop boards. If they did then NVIDIA's high end desktop chipset business would be doomed. No one in thier right mind would spend $300 on a NVIDIA chipset based board when an Intel chipset based board is available to do the same job. NVIDIA knows this and that is why you can't generally run SLI on non-NVIDIA chipsets. However in the workstation market things are different. NVIDIA has never prevented anyone from SLI'ing Quadros or GeForce cards on workstation class motherboards as NVIDIA doesn't compete with Intel in that market.

Supposedly Skulltrail has an nForce MCP onboard allowing SLI to function. This is a load of crap as it isn't needed. All it does is complicate things for Intel and make extra money for NVIDIA. Intel would have to engineer in a useless chip into their motherboard design for the sole purpose of making NVIDIA happy. Hopefully the NVIDIA MCP is actually going to serve a function like providing PCIe lanes or something. Though Intel doesn't need the chip in question for that. The workstation chipsets already have enough PCIe lanes to satisfy most any configuration of motherboard. Any PCIe 1.0/1.0a/2.0 compliant motherboard can be used with SLI if NVIDIA would let only allow it. SLI isn't magic it just leverages a function called peer to peer writes which is part of the PCIe specification. Crossfire for that matter does exactly the same thing.

In short NVIDIA has Intel by the short hairs on this one. But if Intel wants to build the ultimate enthusiast platform that can do SLI and Crossfire, they have no choice. On that note I think Skulltrail is a dick wagging excercise designed to make themselves look better and AMD look more inept than they have been all this last year.

BTW: I want a Skulltrail motherboard and a pair of quad core Xeon's in my own machine. :D
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While we are on the top of dumb nvidia moves (or smart for them bad for us) my work station at work can do multi-monitor SLI... my desktop at home can't.

And I know it could be done. It's mostly a card flash change, and you could do that with older cards, but not now!

Maximus Extreme + crossfire looks better each day.
 
Dan_D said:
The newest hacked drivers for SLI on non-NVIDIA chipset based boards were 70 series Forceware drivers for Windows XP. If I recall correctly the latest card those supported was the 7900GTX. The 7950GX2, and GeForce 8 series cards aren't supported. Basically we are SOL on that.
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So for the sake of a 7950gx2 you can't use them in quad SLI mode? or you can't even use the 7950gx2 in its own SLI mode?
 
Methadras said:
So for the sake of a 7950gx2 you can't use them in quad SLI mode? or you can't even use the 7950gx2 in its own SLI mode?
Click to expand...

You can use 1 card in SLI, it has the controller onboard. You cannot use them in Quad.
 
Methadras said:
So for the sake of a 7950gx2 you can't use them in quad SLI mode? or you can't even use the 7950gx2 in its own SLI mode?
Click to expand...

You can use its' own internal SLI mode on any motherboard. You can not however use them in Quad SLI mode without an NVIDIA chipset based board supporting SLI.

larkin said:
this is a good question --^^
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Not really, this has been beat to death many times. :cool:

stain. said:
Talk about the e-peen from the guy who boasts 3x SLI. I wanna see pics. I've looked but haven't seen any updated pics of your rig.:D;)
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I took pics last night but I haven't uploaded them or posted them anywhere. You must wait!

sd11 said:
While we are on the top of dumb nvidia moves (or smart for them bad for us) my work station at work can do multi-monitor SLI... my desktop at home can't.

And I know it could be done. It's mostly a card flash change, and you could do that with older cards, but not now!

Maximus Extreme + crossfire looks better each day.
Click to expand...

You must have Quadro's at work or something because the consumer market cards have never been able to run multiple monitors with SLI mode enabled. I've been running multiple monitors since the 6800Ultra SLI days and I've never been able to run multiple monitors without deactivating SLI mode first. This problem persists today.

For that matter I've heard the problem doesn't exist with the Quadro's, but I've never tested this myself.
 
sd11 said:
While we are on the top of dumb nvidia moves (or smart for them bad for us) my work station at work can do multi-monitor SLI... my desktop at home can't.

And I know it could be done. It's mostly a card flash change, and you could do that with older cards, but not now!

Maximus Extreme + crossfire looks better each day.
Click to expand...

Are you sure its SLI and not just two cards outputting to two monitors.
 
You must have Quadro's at work or something because the consumer market cards have never been able to run multiple monitors with SLI mode enabled. I've been running multiple monitors since the 6800Ultra SLI days and I've never been able to run multiple monitors without deactivating SLI mode first. This problem persists today.

For that matter I've heard the problem doesn't exist with the Quadro's, but I've never tested this myself.
Click to expand...

Yes it's Quadro's, hence "workstation".
 
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