here's an interesting little tidbit.

[Sable]

http://www.custompc.co.uk/news...-the-hp-interview.html

Interview about HP's Blackbird gaming system.

Will there be a choice of motherboard as well?

Rahul: Well, when we get to the later boards for AMD, yes, but we?re only doing Intel at first. What?s really cool is that we?re only using the nForce chipset for Intel, because it?s the best chipset, but we?re also giving the choice of CrossFire or SLI on it.

Sorry, did you just say you were running CrossFire on an nForce SLI chipset?

Rahul: That?s correct.

How do you do that?

Rahul: With a little bit of Voodoo magic! *laughs* It?s all a part of the whole Voodoo DNA thing, and working with our partners to make it happen.

What does Nvidia think of this?

Rahul: You know, that?s a very good question! If I could look at the face of my Nvidia ref right now and see what he was thinking, I?d probably say that he gets it. I think Nvidia understands that Blackbird is a game-changing system. In other words, it?s no longer about the technology inside the machine; it?s about the customer experience. That is how we designed Blackbird, and that is why we?re agnostic when it comes to components. Customers don?t really care about whether they have CrossFire or SLI, what they care about is how that game is going to look, how easy will it be to play ? they care about the visual quality. We have no stickers on the outside of the box, other than the HP logo, and we have the Voodoo logo on the inside, but we?re not going to have Intel, AMD, Nvidia or ATi logos.

I too would love to know what Nvidia thinks of this. O_O

 

[Creig]

Originally posted by: Sable
I too would love to know what Nvidia thinks of this. O_O

I would imagine that their first response will be to release a driver that breaks whatever workaround that was discovered. After all, they did the same thing to the ULi Powerexpress patch and the Intel i955x/i957x chipsets.

 

[aka1nas]

AMD/ATI has been claiming that this works since Crossfire was released and that they don't do any mobo chipset validation in their video drivers like Nvidia does. I just don't know of anyone who was actually tested it.

 

[chizow]

It'll just throw HP/Voodoo end-users to the mercy of custom chipset drivers from HP. End result won't be a big deal, just slower/fewer updates and problems if they try to get CF working with generic NV drivers. HP is the #1 OEM PC maker nowadays, there's no way NV is going to risk pissing them off by blocking this feature, especially if HP runs the support for it.

 

[Skott]

From what I have heard though you dont get true CF performance. Its a less performing dual setup. Still the fact it works, if even at less pserformance than standard CF setup, is interesting. It'd sure be nice if a consumer could buy a mobo and then decide which flavor of card to run in dual mode. I doubt ATI and nVidia would like that though. I dont see either wanting to give up that kind of control of the consumer. Might be a headache for the mobo manufacturers too.