Intel Nehalem Platform To Support SLI
 

That's right folks! Intel and NVIDIA have apparently set aside their differences long enough to agree on a SLI licensing deal for the upcoming Nehalem platform.

SANTA CLARA, CA—JULY 14, 2008—PC enthusiasts, manufacturers, and developers around the world have a lot to be excited about today with NVIDIA Corporation’s announcement that it will be bringing the power and performance of its SLI® multi-GPU technology to Intel’s upcoming line of Bloomfield CPUs. With this winning combination, consumers will have an SLI platform designed for current and future graphics-intensive games and applications; these platforms can be powered by one, two, or even three NVIDIA GeForce® GPUs, including the new, award-winning GeForce GTX 280 and GTX 260 GPUs.

New SLI motherboards will feature the NVIDIA nForce® 200 SLI processor, Intel Bloomfield CPUs, and Tylersburg (X58) chipsets. The nForce 200 SLI processor features patented SLI technology for graphics bandwidth management and multi-GPU peer-to-peer communications, both required to optimize graphics performance.

“With GeForce-based visual computing application, our customers are experiencing exciting new ways to interact with their photos and videos while also experiencing the bone-chilling realism from our latest graphics processors,” said Jeff Fisher, senior vice president of GPU business at NVIDIA. “Our SLI technology allows us to combine the power of hundreds of GeForce processing cores in multi-GPU configurations with Intel’s latest CPUs for platforms that are sure to excite our customers.”

Press Release.

This is some great news. The question is how long we have to wait for these new boards to come out?

I wonder how much of an effect the current vid card market had on convincing Nvidia to finally give some ground on the SLI licensing issue?

So because this is a chip, does this mean that we can now buy a board and then buy 2 of either ATI or nVidia cards? So therefore we can run SLI or Crossfire, whichever suits our tastes better?

Haha, I definitely think Nvidia eased up due to the current market for sure!

I wonder if the eVGA and XFX will be making X58 boards then...

This sure makes it a lot better for the consumers. Although I guess it does somewhat make the choices for motherboards harder than it already is. But considering the Intel chipsets seem to be better overclockers so that should be nicer for people like me that already have the SLI setup.

Can you say goodbye to quad cores and ddr2?..meh

AMD is crying

I seriously hope Intel got some cash from NVIDIA, because if it was a 1:1 licensing trade, then they got the short-end of the stick.