Intel X38 mainboards might use nForce MCPs to support SLI
Thursday 20th September 2007, 11:11:00 AM, written by Rys
HotHardware are reporting that some Intel X38-based mainboards might
augment NVIDIA nForce MCPs in order to support NVIDIA SLI on those
products.
During his keynote at IDF, Pat Gelsinger demonstrated a dual-socket "Skulltrail" system with two NVIDIA graphics cards running in SLI. The platform provides enough PCI Express 2.0 lanes to support two full x16 slots, or four x8 if that's what the board wants to provide.
However the report hints that it won't be "plain" X38 that supports NVIDIA SLI, but rather a configuration of X38 that pairs it with an nForce MCP processor to ensure the support, with MCP72 the likely candidate for the actual silicon. MCP72 supports PCI Express 2.0.
There's no technical reason why X38 can't support SLI on its own without an augmented MCP, but NVIDIA are definitely more likely to agree to a non-nForce (in the sense that NVIDIA aren't providing all the core logic ICs) platform supporting SLI if they have at least one piece of core logic silicon in there.
There's a small chance that SLI might still be supported on future mainboards with no NVIDIA core logic present, and it's not like there's no precedent for multi-GPU being untied from the vendor's own core logic: Dell have shipped Crossfire systems using non-ATI/AMD mainboards in the past, and HP's Blackbird 002 looks set to do the same with some of its configurations. And let's not forget the first SLI systems ever to break cover used Intel Xeon and Intel core logic.
We wait and see whether NVIDIA will truly open SLI support up to non-nForce, though, since the lock-in to their own mainboard products has been a lucrative one for them so far.
During his keynote at IDF, Pat Gelsinger demonstrated a dual-socket "Skulltrail" system with two NVIDIA graphics cards running in SLI. The platform provides enough PCI Express 2.0 lanes to support two full x16 slots, or four x8 if that's what the board wants to provide.
However the report hints that it won't be "plain" X38 that supports NVIDIA SLI, but rather a configuration of X38 that pairs it with an nForce MCP processor to ensure the support, with MCP72 the likely candidate for the actual silicon. MCP72 supports PCI Express 2.0.
There's no technical reason why X38 can't support SLI on its own without an augmented MCP, but NVIDIA are definitely more likely to agree to a non-nForce (in the sense that NVIDIA aren't providing all the core logic ICs) platform supporting SLI if they have at least one piece of core logic silicon in there.
There's a small chance that SLI might still be supported on future mainboards with no NVIDIA core logic present, and it's not like there's no precedent for multi-GPU being untied from the vendor's own core logic: Dell have shipped Crossfire systems using non-ATI/AMD mainboards in the past, and HP's Blackbird 002 looks set to do the same with some of its configurations. And let's not forget the first SLI systems ever to break cover used Intel Xeon and Intel core logic.
We wait and see whether NVIDIA will truly open SLI support up to non-nForce, though, since the lock-in to their own mainboard products has been a lucrative one for them so far.
Tagging
intel ± sli, without, nforce, x38, idf, skulltrail
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