It could be curtains down for NVIDIA nForce SLI chipset for AMD platform, as the GPU giant formally announced its intentions to license NVIDIA SLI technology for use on AMD chipset-based motherboards starting from AMD's upcoming 9-series chipset. Rumors about this development started trickling in around late March. NVIDIA's public release confirms most of what was outlined in the leaked company slide in the older article, that licenses will be only offered to 9-series (and later) chipset-based motherboards, and that only those motherboard manufacturers that are licensed by NVIDIA for SLI on their Intel platform motherboards will be given licenses. NVIDIA specifically mentions ASUS, Gigabyte, ASRock, and MSI as qualifying partners.

The more interesting part of the release, however, was the box-art of ASUS' upcoming high-end socket AM3+ motherboard, the Republic of Gamers (ROG) Crosshair V Formula. Its salad of product logos is what is most fascinating. For one, it confirms the product name and logo of AMD's new high-end desktop processors to be "FX", as revealed by the box designs. The next logo is of Phenom II, and as we know, AM3+ gives backwards compatibility to older AM3 processors. Next up is the AMD 9-series chipset logo, another Radeon-like logo by AMD. Next to it is the logo of the moment: NVIDIA SLI, and lastly ATI CrossFireX. There is a newer rectangular logo of "AMD CrossFire" that succeeds the ATI CrossFireX logo, but maybe ASUS, like many, found it too hideous. You can probably make a better one on MS Paint.