Does anyone think P965 not supporting CrossFire is intel's warning on ATI?

[lopri]

I usually don't like to discuss conspiracy theory on tech forums, but if we look back all major Intel desktop chipsets (945, 955, 975) has been compatible with CrossFire.

Enter P965. Sure mobo makers can fit their boards with 2 physical X16 PCIE slots, but the secondary PEG can reportedly support only X4 bandwidth, which would hinder the performance of CF even if ATI were to enable it.

While not as sexy as 975X, P965 will be huge. With the souped-up southbridge along with the new "Fast Memory Access" or whatever, we may see whole lot of boards based on P965, natively supporting Conroe. I just don't understand why Intel would go backwards when dual-graphics support is becoming a standard, at least, on motherboards.

Would this be possibly because of Intel's wrath WRT the short-lived rumour of AMD-ATI merger?

 

[Nightmare225]

I think its just because the 965P is supposed to be a lower-end chipset then the 975X. Not all people need dual cards, some just don't have the money.

 

[lopri]

PCI-E is inherently scalable and modern motherboards should have internal switches to assign the bandwidth flexibly to each slot. That's why mobo manufacturers can configure the extra PCI-E bandwidth the way they want/suit. P965 has a X16 PEG, and it has available X16 bandwidth, which can and should be easily divided into two X8 slots via internal switch. It seems like Intel "locked" the primary PEG @X16 in the chipset so it can't be divided into two X8 slots. That's what I'm questioning about.

 

[theprodigalrebel]

Any chance the 975X Northbridge can/will be paired with the new ICH8R Southbridge? Then all that would seperate the 965/975 would be the crossfire support, right?

 

[lopri]

Yeah but by that time ATI will have their chipset (RD600) ready for full-bandwidth CF. But the point is, among those people who will purchase 965-based mobos with Conroe fever, how many will swap the mobo for CF? It's so much easier just to enable CF on existing chipsets with the support built-in. With X4 PCI-E slots, anything over X1600 will suffer from the lack of bandwidth.

 

[Nightmare225]

I hate these transistion phases for motherboards.