Will X38 support SLI?

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Will X38 motherboards support SLI (i.e. dual-graphics-card configurations using Nvidia GPUs)?

  • Hell, yes!

    Votes: 4 16.0%

  • Hell, no!

    Votes: 4 16.0%

  • Only unofficially.

    Votes: 11 44.0%

  • Who cares?

    Votes: 6 24.0%
  • Total voters
    25
nicolasb

nicolasb

Distinguished
Sep 5, 2006
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18,630
We know X38 will be the premimum Intel Crossfire platform. But will X38 support SLI as well as Crossfire? Your thoughts, please!
 


X38 motherboards are being produced by Gigabyte that will support DDR2. There are rumors of SLI support, but I haven't seen anything official on the subject. Official support for Xfire and SLI on one board would be quite a coup for Intel.
 


Can anybody imagine Nvidia and AMD/ATI agreeing on such a thing? I mean, if they would both build to the same standard, then those of us who buy motherboards wouldn't have to make the purchase based on which card we were going to run. We would further have the option of changing graphics cards companies without having to buy a new motherboard. Think of the appeal such an idea would have to motherboard and graphics card buyers? Do ATI and Nvidia care about us? You got to be kidding. They only care about our money.
 
Same here, watch and wait for prices to come down and performance of the DDR3 ram to get better. Unless, of course, I strike oil the the back yard and become an instant millionare. My luck, I'd strike oil and the local oil company would sue me for damages to their pipeline.
 
One of those deals where someone else in the next county owns the oil, it just 'inconviently' passed under your property. Yeah, DDR3 with lower latencies and able to surpass DDR2 performance would be worth waiting for. I have the Intel quad core running for many months with PC6400 and I don't plan on upgrading for a while. Penryn is going to be hard to resist.
 
I just found an old 3.0 Northwood and built with it. I thought it was fried! I'm going to buy a Pentium D 925 and upgrade a couple of office computers with it. Move the 805 D with it and have two dual cores micro systems in the office. I have a lot to do while watching Penryn evolve. Pentium D 925 3.0 is 49 bucks.
 
Now this is the results of boredom and waiting so long for the next big step from the cpu companies. I did something similar. Between my son and myself, I found enough parts to upgrade my old office computer from running a AMD 2700 cpu with a ATI 9800 Pro card to a AMD 4400+ and a 7800 GTX card. Did it without spending a cent on extra parts. I put the stock heatsink from the FX60 in my other computer on the 4400+ to keep the temps down with a mild oveclock. It all works fine with the only investment being a couple hours time putting it together.
 
Desktop PC's I run everyday. These are all complete systems up and running:

Q6600
E6600
AMD X2 4800 DC 939 SLI
AMD 64 3400 2.4 754 Newcastle
AMD 64 3400 2.2 754 Clawhammer
AMD 64 3700 2.4 754 SLI
AMD 3200 2.2 Socket A
Pentium 805D 945 micro
Pentium 4 775 3.0 micro
AMD FX 55 939 SLI
Pentium 4 2.5
Pentium 4 Northwood 3.0
Pentium III 450 mhz Windows XP

Pentium 100 mhz won't boot up any longer. I built them all! LOL!
 
Now that I do find interesting, the idea of having a choice between SLI or Xfire on the same board. I remember some hacked drivers that supposedly allowed Xfire on a SLI board in the past, though I never tried them and can't comment on their effectiveness. If a similar drivers came from the mobo company, though, I'd feel a lot more secure trying it.
 


http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=8923

http://www.vr-zone.com/?i=5016

http://news.softpedia.com/news/INTEL-039-s-X38-Chipset-Is-Alive-56490.shtml

Sorry for the delay in posting these, i should have posted them from the get-go. Anyway, with Gigabyte, DFI and Foxconn all producing DDR2 X38's, I'm sure ASUS and some of the smaller manufacturers will follow suit. It just makes sense, ya know?

As for it not being posted on Gigabyte's site - the release is MONTHS from now, they didn't post details on the site about their P35 boards until just a few weeks from release, so I wouldn't be concerned about it. Personally, I think the DFI board sounds pretty darn sweet, hopefully it won't lag behind on release like their 965 and P35 boards have.
 



Nice farm you got there. Im am curently running
E2160 - 2 gigs ram
Opty 165 - 1.5 gigs
x2 3800 - 1.5 gigs

I will upgrade to q6600 when these prices settle down and upgrade my current rig to 4 gigs
Then im gonna upgrade the other two AMD machines to 3 gigs of ram.

Looks like an x2 3600 will join in soon. and I have an athlon 3500 (newcastle) sitting around. It's not worth running.
And people say power consumption doesnt matter only performance.

May I ask what you use your machines for? folding? rendering?
 


sheesh. what's your power bill!!! 😱
 


I only run four computers at the moment; two storeboughts and two homebuilds. One of the homebuilds is my gaming machine, but it will soon be retired to the office when I get around to building a new gamer. I haven't been in a hurry about the new gamer, as there's nothing out yet that demands more than my present gamer does.

@ spotter -Power bills? That's what a wind powered generator is for. Make enough to run the computers and sell some current back to the power company during off hours.
 
The computers are at three seperate locations. My next door neighbor for a long time was from Denmark. He got me started building computers. His business. Part of a European company who built windmills all over California, Mexico and elsewhere to generate electricity. It was funny to hear him talk about trips to mexico going back in the backroads and hiring some of the natives to construct windmills where no electricity existed. If you ever drive out to Palm Springs and see all those windmills generating electricity, his company built part of it. Motorcycles were his real interest. He's back in Denmark for now as far as I know.
 
on track: the foxxconn x38 board will support sli, through a patch of foxconns, the rest is up to the other people, also, have you seen foxconns new "MARS" overclocking board? it flys...
 
Why would they need to? The board simply has to support both mechanisms independently.

I get the distinct impression that even some existing Crossfire boards could support SLI from a hardware perspective, it's simply that Nvidia fixes their drivers in such a way as to actively disable SLI on non-Nvidia m/b chipsets.

on track: the foxxconn x38 board will support sli, through a patch of foxconns, the rest is up to the other people, also, have you seen foxconns new "MARS" overclocking board? it flys...
Click to expand...
How 'bout a link? :)

I've heard that a number of board manufacturers were promising SLI support at Computex, but there have been suggestions that Nvidia may have got into a fight with Intel since then and has decided not to allow it after all.

 


I'm just guessing, but I'd wager that when these board are first introduced we'll be looking at more like a 350 price point for the big name boards and roughly 250 or so for the smaller manufacturer boards. Anyone seen any good pricing info yet?
 
Boo, I can't see the results of my own poll! 🙁

If I click on the button that says "See results" I just get a message telling me I've already voted. :??:
 
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