What happened to all that special sauce in the nForce chipsets that only allowed SLI to work "correctly"...

Hopefully someone will backport some bios's on X38s and X48s to allow the same thing

Speaking as an SLI user myself I must say that I hope we re-visit the ATX motherboard standard soon and increase the size of these motherboards by at least 33% and as much as 50-75% larger.

The industry keeps wanting to make things smaller and smaller, but as heat and power increases in these systems all I want is a few more inches of breathing room for my PC components.

"Nvidia acknowledged to us up front that users would more than likely hack the BIOSes of non-certified X58 boards and add "cookies" to them, but said it won't get in the way of such things."

I read that as "we don't care, it'll just mean people will buy more of our graphics cards so it's a win-win scenario"

although not all board makers will be offered the same set of licensing options at the same price.
I wonder what the reasoning for this is.....It looks like we won't be seeing any Biostar SLI X58 motherboards.

I bet Lucid's GPU load-balancer has something to do with it.
Open SLI up to more boards before lucid's balancer becomes a standard feature.
It's probably too little, too late though.
Nvidia and ATI should have opened multi-gpu support up for everyone a long time ago.

So now while I'm editing BIOSes to enable MS screwage, I can make a side stop and enable Nvidia screwage as well?

I'm going to be very busy with my hex editors for the next few months.

LOLs this would make the Nvidia partners more angry since they took time on researching X58 board with nforce 200 chipsets and apparently ASUS announced to the first X58 SLI supported board with nforce 200 chipset loaded. =P but in the end it will allow supporting without the chipset.

So what do you suppose Intel is going to call their GPU teaming technology? Maybe nVidia realizes that intel too will come up with a version of CF/SLI, and this is a move for them to find a defencible position to see what happens. Keep your friends close....

this isn't nearly as good of news to nVidia as it is to intel.

leaving intel as the only chipset provider who supports both crossfire and sli means most enthusiasts like me probably won't even consider anyone else for their motherboards... choice always reigns supreme!

Nvidia acknowledged to us up front that users would more than likely hack the BIOSes of non-certified X58 boards and add "cookies" to them, but said it won't get in the way of such things.

That's the first thing I thought of even before reading it. Hacked BIOSes on cheaper boards sounds good to me.

I don't know about this though...
However, the company said today that it realized such a silicon solution would limit SLI to a small number of very high end motherboards, effectively roping off SLI from the mainstream of the enthusiast PC market....
x58 boards are by nature going to be 'high-end' so hopefully they will do the same for more mid-range priced chipsets when they come.

It's good to see but late in coming, the only reason to ever choose an NV mobo was SLI and their chipsets are generally inferior to Intel's. One thing that is a bit of a concern is the future of integrated chipsets for Intel CPUs, although it's vaguely addressed I don't know how it would work for Nehalem without a QPI license for NV. Intel's integrated graphics are pretty weak as stated, they're sufficient for their intended use, but the selection of good ones with digital outputs has been small, it's only with G43/45 that digital out has become common. I suppose that 780G with an AMD dual core can still fill the role of an HTPC or media PC.

better than no SLI i guess, or that hot nForce 200 chip.

I would hazard to guess that in the portion in the drivers where it unlocks SLI if it detects a certified part can be easily be cracked or fooled to working with non-certified boards.

Is that that really the case?
Will there be both Crossfire and SLI suport?
(Is Crossfire handled natively on Intel boards currently?)

This sounds like a swansong for nV's chipset business ("we'll just make chipsets for old processors which soon won't be produced any more"). It's a real shame to see the 3rd party chipset vendors falling one after another.

I wonder whether there would be any legal options for attacking the way things are going- antitrust or class action against Intel for dirty tricks in killing other chipset makers off.

> The certification program is intended for motherboard and PC makers, and end-users' actions don't appear to be a big source of concern.

Oh jee, nvidia's money motives become painfully obvious here.

Now if only you could use HybridPower with an Intel SLI board as well; obviously not the X58 as it lacks an IGP.

This is welcomed news by everyone (except Nvidia).

Something we have been waiting since the initial release of SLI and Crosfire. Now finaly becomming true. One simple board that supports both.

Now all we need to do is wait for some BIOS hacks for AMD platforms.