Conclusion
While this motherboard was a very early sample, testing went quite smoothly, despite some difficulties. Gigabyte used a mature chipset and chose a rather limited set of features to create an adequate prototype. Given the difficult conditions - there is basically no driver support available for non-AMD SLI platforms - we cannot complain about the performance the 8I915P-SLI delivered.
We were able to run the system with DDR400 memory at CL2.0-2-2-5 timings and did some benchmarks with one and two GeForce 6600 GT graphics cards. Using the single card setups, the results confirmed that using the x4 PCIe port does not have too much of a negative impact on performance numbers, while the SLI setup boosts the performance of demanding applications such as 3DMark 03, Aquamark 3 and Far Cry. However, we want to avoid drawing a final conclusion until SLI-enabled and optimized drivers arrive. In particular, OpenGL-based benchmarks such as the SPECviewperf suite should be able to benefit quite a lot from SLI.
We assume that Intel's 925XE successor (codenamed Glenwood, and scheduled for Q2 2005) will be flexible enough to allow either one x16 or two x8 ports to provide SLI support. In combination with the 2 MB L2 cache Pentium 4 600 series, Enhanced SpeedStep and a dual core processor architecture, the Pentium platform should finally be back on the road again. Also, NVIDIA's upcoming P4 chipset could bring more competition to this market. Until then, Gigabyte's approach remains a worthy one, considering that tough competition in the motherboard market does not leave much margin for adventurous projects like this.
