Gigabyte GA-8I915P-SLI Brings SLI To Socket 775
The GA-8I915P-SLI is based on Intel's Grantsdale chipset (915P).
As we already said, Gigabyte managed to merge all the PCIe lanes located in Intel's ICH6 chip into one x4 port, operating the secondary graphics card over the Southbridge. There is a patent pending to protect Gigabyte's technique.
This raises an interesting bandwidth question, as the chipset components are linked via x4 PCI Express, too. Is this approach viable or could some Southbridge components - such as PCI devices or storage interfaces - be slowed down as soon as the SLI graphics contend for PCIe bandwidth?
Since even x2 PCI Express can be sufficient for most applications, we don't expect the chipset interconnect to be a serious bottleneck for today's games, though this could change with games of upcoming generations.
The left connector runs x4 PCIe, the right one is the classic x16 one.
