Is Intel shooting self in foot?

[SteveI]

I can't tell how obvious it is, but not long ago, Intel refused to cross license with Nvidia, essentially blocking Nvidia from the conroe chipset market, vertical monopoly anyone?

This shuts Intel machines out of SLI.

Now with AMD buying ATI, Intel as stopped future licencing of ATI chipsets as well... Does this mean crossfire is out going forward?

As much as Intel wants complete ownersip of the chipset market, are they willing to give up the serious (and highly profitable) hardcore gaming rig market so that their chipset division has more marketshare?

For gaming, does this mean that conroe will rarely see its true potential in gaming?

[Daniel ~]

Scary thoughts Steve!

I'm not at all sure how internally in touch Intel is with itself. I often wonder, "do these guys talk to each other?"

[dsio]

You <can> still SLI on intel systems. A very good friend of mine has a Pentium D (presler) with a pair of 7800GTs in SLI on an intel chipset quite happily. Its just a matter of having the PCI-E slots for it.

[SteveI]

Originally Posted by dsio

You <can> still SLI on intel systems. A very good friend of mine has a Pentium D (presler) with a pair of 7800GTs in SLI on an intel chipset quite happily. Its just a matter of having the PCI-E slots for it.

So is it an "official support" thing?
or a matter of mobo companies adding the slots and configuring, where techinically the northbridge doesn't support it?

Isn't SLI owned by nVidia? Couldn't they sue Intel if the northbridge enabled it without paying licensing fees? I don't understand the technology well, but was under the impression that the northbridge controlled the PCI-e slots necessary for SLI.

[cadaveca]

Intel is NOT pulling chipset liscences...yet.

SLi is not "liscenced" on Intel chipsets due to nVidia, not Intel. In fact, it's nVidia that are causing all the issues with the whole multi-gpu platform, and Intel's response was the Conroe Crossfire fiasco.

I have hacked drivers that allow use of either set of cards on pretty mcuh any chipset that supports 2x16 pci-e slots, and inter-communication between them.

The liscencing works that the chipset is not listed in nVidia's driver as "aaproved", and SLi cannot be enabled. This really has nothing to do with Intel. Intel would love to have both, but cannot.


I mentioned earlier...nVidia execs, and "the writing on the wall". this is merely part of the story.

[dsio]

Correction, AOAFiles has hacked drivers which allow generic chipsets to run SLI.

NGO did a really nicely done version, which they in turn ripped off another guy who was not nearly half as good at making installers with pretty pictures.

[cadaveca]

Good shakes, DSIO. Now where's that GLi board.....?