3-Way SLi support for x58 Tylersburg

no. only nvidia chipsets support sli

intel supports xfire

no

intel will not let nvidia use nehalem if intel can't use the SLI interface on their boards

and dont get 3 gtx 280's... 2 4870 X2's will probably beat it for about half the price to

well a 4870 X2 is supposed to be viewed as a single chip... so in theory the driver will see the 2 cores as 1... and then when you add a second... it will see 2 cores... even though there are really 4... so scaling shouldn't really be an issue

not for long...

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Regarding the deal with nVidia and Intel: nVidia has long refused to grant anyone else the rights to use SLI. If you wanted SLI, you had to use an nvidia chipset to do so. Period, end of discussion.

What happened recently is the folks at Intel apparently got annoyed at nVidia's antics (claiming GPU's will replace CPU's, and other antagonistic behavior), and so when licencing discussions came up so that nVidia could use intel's new socket, Intel basically told nVidia 'You want what? Oh, that? Well, we're tired of your crap. So you're not getting one'.


That put nVidia in a very poor position. The only other large scale producer of PC CPUs is AMD. And AMD own ATi, nVidia's direct competitor. Should AMD say "screw you too", then nVidia's entire chipset business would be effectively shut down, since neither of the main providers of CPUs would be allowing it.

So, in a decision that was patently obvious to even the most casual observer, nVidia went back to the table with Intel. In the end, the deal that was cut grants nVidia the right to engineer chipsets that use Intel's Nehalem based sockets and chips. Regarding SLI, nVidia's concession to get the deal done is that any motherboard maker who chooses to buy the nVidia SLI bridge chip and incorporate it into their products may do so.

So: nVidia get to use Neha/Bloom for their chipsets. And all motherboard makers (not just Intel) can choose to buy chips from nVidia that enable SLI and make boards with them with whichever chipset suits them,

In theory, this would allow any combination. Though a board with an SLI chip will most likely be more expensive since the maker has to pay nVidia to do so.

I haven't seen any actual product announcements yet.