The Dual Graphics Story
Here they are: two x16 PCI Express slots, which every gamer and every real enthusiast will find mouth-watering. The question, however, is: What can we actually do with them? Although Intel and NVIDIA have a cross-license agreement, deployment of an SLI-enabled NVIDIA card to the 975X world seems still out of reach.
Then there is ATI, waiting for this opportunity. On the one hand, NVIDIA is up and away the leader in the dual graphics market, due to its SLI head start of almost a year now. On the other hand, we should not forget that ATI recently became Intel's henchman for supplying entry-level chipsets. Both facts really imply a dual graphics scenario in which ATI sticks close to Intel, and this comes true with the 975X.
Although there have been rumors of ATI possibly eating humble pie by supporting SLI setups in Radeon Xpress 200 Crossfire motherboards - for the sake of market penetration - we believe that the 975X could actually be the first platform to support both ATI's and NVIDIA's multi-GPU technologies. Then again, the partnership with ATI might be too valuable for Intel to risk annoying the partner with SLI support. I guess everyone would agree that support for both ATI and NVIDIA dual card solutions would be the crowning achievement of every motherboard product that is meant to appeal to the gamer.
Isn't this nice? The 975X chipset allows two ATI graphics cards to be run in CrossFire dual graphics mode...
... all you need to do is check the CrossFire box within ATI's current driver set Catalyst 5.1.
