nVidia licenses SLI on Intel P55 motherboards

nVidia reports that its SLI technology will also be available on Intel's upcoming P55 chipset. This makes it possible to use an SLI configuration of two GeForce graphics cards on a system based on a socket LGA1156 Core i5 or Core i7 processor. To provide SLI support, motherboard manufacturers first need to get their models certified, something that's done on a large number of Intel X58 motherboards as well. It's likely that nVidia will charge a small fee for the certification, which won't result in a large obstacle for manufacturers. Brands like ASUS, EVGA, Gigabyte, MSI and Intel have already had boards certified for the SLI technology.

Intel's P55 chipset is to become the foundation of a large number of Intel systems in the mainstream segment and is to fill a prominent market position. With the new chipset, Intel has moved the PCI-Express controller from the chipset to the processor, which has sixteen 2nd generation lanes available (PCI-e 2.0 16x).  When two graphics cards are used in SLI or Crossfire, these lines are split up and will work in an 8x/8x configuration. Manufacturers can decide to add an additional PCI-Express switch, which allows the amount of lanes to be boosted to 16x for both graphics cards.

nVidia will support SLI on P55 chipset

Tags: corei7 corei5 crossfire geforce sli x58 p55 socket-1156

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