Such a thing as an Intel board with CrossFire?

[AmberClad]

(just wondering as a matter of curiosity/trivia)

Common sense tells me no, but I've seen some pretty unexpected partnerships in the high-tech industry, so I wasn't going to rule it out.

So, is there such a thing as a CrossFire-capable board that uses an Intel CPU?

 

[covert24]

believe it or not....

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...280+107171054&name=ATI

 

[nitromullet]

Actually, the recent Intel chipset boards with dual PCIe 16x slots support Crossfire. That includes P965, 975X, P35, and will include the new X38 when it becomes available. Boards with any of these chipsets would most likely a better bet then a Radeon Xpress Crossfire board.

 

[AmberClad]

Originally posted by: covert24
believe it or not....

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...280+107171054&name=ATI

Wow...and they're C2D boards too, so I assume they came out after the merger.

This one caught my eye though (for all the wrong reasons...). I don't know whether to laugh or cry .

 

[AmberClad]

Originally posted by: nitromullet
Actually, the recent Intel chipset boards with dual PCIe 16x slots support Crossfire. That includes P965, 975X, P35, and will include the new X38 when it becomes available. Boards with any of these chipsets would most likely a better bet then a Radeon Xpress Crossfire board.

Is that something Intel cooked up without the involvement of AMD-ATi?

 

[nitromullet]

Originally posted by: AmberClad

Originally posted by: nitromullet
Actually, the recent Intel chipset boards with dual PCIe 16x slots support Crossfire. That includes P965, 975X, P35, and will include the new X38 when it becomes available. Boards with any of these chipsets would most likely a better bet then a Radeon Xpress Crossfire board.

Is that something Intel cooked up without the involvement of AMD-ATi?

No, it's simply due to the fact that ATI doesn't require chipsets to be licensed for Crossfire the way NVIDIA does SLI. Basically, both SLI and Crossfire should work in ANY motherboard with two physical PCIe 16x slots, but NVIDIA's video drivers detect the motherboard chipset and disable SLI support unless the chipset manufacturer has paid for an SLI license. Needless to say, no one has done that so SLI is only supported on nForce SLI chipsets. Theoretically, Crossfire should work in an nForce 680i SLI motherboard, unless NVIDIA has done something to the chipset drivers to prevent it. I'm not aware of anyone ever testing that out though.

 

[AmberClad]

Originally posted by: nitromullet
No, it's simply due to the fact that ATI doesn't require chipsets to be licensed for Crossfire the way NVIDIA does SLI. Basically, both SLI and Crossfire should work in ANY motherboard with two physical PCIe 16x slots, but NVIDIA's video drivers detect the motherboard chipset and disable SLI support unless the chipset manufacturer has paid for an SLI license. Needless to say, no one has done that so SLI is only supported on nForce SLI chipsets. Theoretically, Crossfire should work in an nForce 680i SLI motherboard, unless NVIDIA has done something to the chipset drivers to prevent it. I'm not aware of anyone ever testing that out though.

Interesting bit of info (I automatically assumed CrossFire required a license like SLi). Thanks :thumbsup:!

 

[nitromullet]

The main thing to note about Intel chipsets and Crossfire is that performance can vary significantly between them. I'm not sure if it is due to the PCIe bandwidth or some other reason, but P965 and P35 run Crossfire in a PCIe 16x/4x config while 975X is 8x/8x and 975X tops the Crossfire benchmarks:

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuch...howdoc.aspx?i=2995&p=4

That will most likely change when X38 launches though. X38 will offer true 16x/16x Crossfire, PCIe 2.0 support, and a whole bunch of other goodies, but it won't be cheap. Gary Key (AT chipset/motherboard reviewer) posted some info on X38 a while back in this forum.

http://forums.anandtech.com/me...=2086101&enterthread=y

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: nitromullet
Needless to say, no one has done that so SLI is only supported on nForce SLI chipsets.

IIRC a chipset manufacturer named ULI reverse engineered the SLI drivers to work on boards with their chipsets. Of course you had to use their drivers and not just any drivers downloaded from nvidia.com. Then a bit after that, Nvidia bought them out.

 

[nitromullet]

That thing about ULI is correct. However, this was never supported, and you could never use newer video drivers once it was discovered by NVIDIA... I'm sure if you dig up some really old NVIDIA beta drivers you could also run dual 6-series cards on an Intel Tumwater chipset board as well, since that was what NVIDIA used during development and even initially certified as an SLI chipset.

http://www.sudhian.com/index.p...sbs_and_x86-64_support