Not possible. Illegal.
They could choose not to include any licensed SLI motherboards - but a third party would provide them anyway. That is about as far as they could go without getting slapped with a lot of fines.
anti-competitive practices are illegal. For some reason you all don't seem to understand this.
There is a big difference between what Nvidia has done and what you are talking about doing. Nvidia does not stop the competitors products from working, it simply stops its own product from working under certain situations, in no way impeding on the function of the competitors hardware. If it did, this would be illegal.
Sorry for missing this, but I have problems on the first statement. You shouldn't do things that are illegal, but that isn't mean it is not possible to do illegal things. For example, throwing garbage on the street is illegal, but it is clearly possible.
Anti-competitive practices are illegal, but not to support SLI isn't one of such practices. Killing the video card directly is too hard and too visible. Killing Nvidia's chipset is easier. Once the chipset is killed, Nvidia must relay on either AMD or Intel's chipset, which is clearly the case now.
While the card can still plugs into the PCIe slot, they can simply limit the resources on PCIe. Moving GPU directly on the CPU socket is one of the ways that can prevent Nvidia gpu to function competitively. Meet Fusion and Sandy Bridge. Both AMD and Intel video cards can benefit from their on-die GPU. Nvidia? Sorry, incompatible. Yes, this may not affect high end cards, and it may appears to have nothing to do with Nvidia, but in fact most of the pie came from OEM.
Besides seeking for legal action, Nvidia had moved to several different markets. One is supercomputer, the second is smart phone, the third is tablet, and the fourth is, PC gaming.
While AMD didn't see the consequences from Intel's action, it may actually sounded good to them at the time. Unfortunately, Intel has another trick for AMD, it was a bit too late to react. Intel's ambition wasn't about killing Nvidia chipset, but both AMD and Nvidia chipsets.
So AMD sued Intel for misbehaving, and ended-up 1.25 billion richer. Nvidia saw the outcome and immediately followed. Well the cases were filed for a long time but they were dragging. Anyhow, Nvidia is probably going to get something from Intel too.
While you may question why will Intel do stuffs like that knowing that they will be sued? Well, sometimes you need to put out a fire before it gets dangerous. Under Intel's radar, the only threat were AMD and Nvidia, while its buddy Mac was busy making MP3 players and formatting iMac. Well, I don't think many foreseen it coming, while ipod dominated the MP3 market, something Intel careless, it also dominated the heart's of youths. While iphone 1 and 2 is technically ipod+phone, iphone 3 is a bit different, it does a bit more, apps. Catching the train at the right time, Mac released iphone 4 and ipad, which completely blown everyone out of the water. Intel saw it coming, but didn't expect it was this serious. Nvidia on the other hand saw it, probably because they were seeking for a way out, moved towards that market with Tegra.
Back to the suing part. It isn't like Intel is losing, or admit they have done anything illegal. It is more like, "Look my friends, can we resolve our conflicts by other means?" AMDs answer is simple, as damages are done, money does heal wounds well. I don't know what the deal is with Nvidia, but they have an agreement about it.
Back to OP, in case you don't know, they ain't playing fair since the beginning. Hey, it is reality, what to you expect? They knew about the game and played very well. What exactly do you expect Nvidia will do shall they gets lock out? Sit on the floor and starts to cry out loud? There are lots of businesses that died in vein, and no one pities, but take advantages from them. If Nvidia allows others to drive them into a corner, then they deserve to die, as a business. This is the business world, not your friendly neighborhood or school playground. Justices may come to aid, but often comes late. Time is money and timing is the key to success. There are no friends, but allies. There are no enemies, but rivals.
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