Are there any plans for mobo's that support both X-fire and SLI?

[Stoneburner]

Having to buy a vendor based mobo to run vendor based video cards seems to severely limit consumer flexibility. Maybe in the future ATI will have a chipset that I really want but Nvidia has the better video cards that I want to SLI...

Of course, both companies seem to want to compete in the chipset market and NVIDIA probably will be less willing to compromise on the issue considering the amd chipset dominance, but i really hope somebody else provides this option.

 

[SickBeast]

Unless ULI, Intel, SiS, or VIA makes one, I'd say we're SOL.

 

[Matthias99]

Theoretically, any chipset that supports dual PCIe can run SLI. The initial SLI demos were on an Intel motherboard, since they had dual PCIe before the NF4 SLI boards were ready. A few driver revisions back, NVIDIA made it so that you can only run SLI on "approved" chipsets (which, at this point, is only the NF4 SLI). I know Intel was working on getting their chipsets "approved", but I don't know the status of that.

ATI *seems* to need some sort of chipset support for Crossfire, but it's unclear if that is really necessary or it might just not run quite as fast on something other than their own northbridge.

Theoretically, you could run NVIDIA SLI on another chipset if NVIDIA's drivers would allow it. It's unclear if you might be able to run Crossfire on an NF4-SLI or an Intel board. If it's technologically possible, we could theoretically see a cross-licensing agreement like AMD and Intel have.

 

[ZobarStyl]

What Matthias said: it's less a technological problem and more a driver issue they aren't likely interested in fixing. Both companies want you buying their video cards (2, if possible) and their mobos, so they are unlikely to give you the ability to run SLi/X-Fire on their competitors mobos as it cuts into their profits. In this respect ATi has a lot of catching up to do because up until now nForce has been the definitive chipset for AMD and thus for gamers. However I will admit that the new ATi chipsets look very appealing, or at least they will once the SB is fixed.

 

[lifeguard1999]

Link

Summary: Using older drivers, SLI was enabled on an Intel chipset motherboard. Its the drivers that keep a unified motherboard fro xFire/SLI from existing.

 

[tuteja1986]

i think Intel had plans on making a SLI/Crossfire unified chipset.