NVIDIA Partners Turn to Intel Chipsets?

[btarunr]

The tier-one partners of NVIDIA, namely EVGA, XFX and BFG, sell motherboards based on NVIDIA nForce chipsets, with motherboards designed by NVIDIA itself, with a few exceptions where EVGA improvised their designs. With NVIDIA licensing SLI to Intel, allowing their upcoming Bloomfield-supportive X58 chipset to support the SLI multi-GPU technology, and for $5 per supportive board, it took less than guess work to think NVIDIA's partners would start using Intel X58 chipsets to grab their share of Core i7 motherboard market as quickly as they can.

In a recent press release, NVIDIA counted EVGA in the partial list of motherboard vendors who are working on motherboards based on the X58 platform, and offer SLI support. In the same press release, Joe Darwin, Director of Technical Marketing at EVGA was quoted saying "By licensing NVIDIA SLI technology, the EVGA X58 motherboard will deliver the ultimate 2-way and 3-way SLI platform to, once again, meet the enthusiast's demand." So we beg to ask: Will NVIDIA actually work on a LGA-1366 chipset, or will the new found love with selling high performance chipsets for the mainstream, such as MCP7A, replace it? Only time will tell. In the mean time, and on a rather comic note, get ready for the first EVGA motherboard to support ATI Crossfire X.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[newtekie1]

I'm just glad we finally have SLI and Crossfire on the same widely available boards.

 

[OnBoard]

I'm just glad we finally have SLI and Crossfire on the same widely available boards.

Yep, even if I don't use either of them it's nice that there is an option for that no matter which side card you happen to have.

 

[newtekie1]

Yep, even if I don't use either of them it's nice that there is an option for that no matter witch side card you happen to have.

Exactly, it is nice that now the ability to add a second card in the future won't affect buying decisions in the present. I hope that this starts a trend, and that eventually we stop seeing phases like "well you have an SLi(or Crossfire) board, so buy the nVidia(or ATi) card so you can add a second later" and people focus entirely one which card offers the best bang for the budget.

 

[KBD]

interesting development. I think nvidia is to blame for this, we are not seeing new chipsets for 1366 and 1160 from them so one cant expect their partners to sit around doing nothing. they gotta get their shit and release some chipsets, i just hope its not gonna be very late like when it took them 7 extra months to have 700 series boards for AMD. In any event, their is no reason why these 3 companies cant make boards for both Intel and nvidia.

 

[VanguardGX]

I never thought i would live to see the day when EVGA had a board with crossfire support

 

[vega22]

nv will know work on making the best boards for amd chips

 

[WarEagleAU]

haha, this is good news and Im really happy to see EVGA with an ATI X chip. Id like to see them make a board for an AMD chip though...

 

[lemonadesoda]

... and for $5 per supportive board...

WOW, if I understand that correctly, it is $30 to use nVidia's chip, and $5 to "license" your own solution.

That's very pricey indeed just to enable SLI. (OEM pricing)

 

[btarunr]

WOW, if I understand that correctly, it is $30 to use nVidia's chip, and $5 to "license" your own solution.

That's very pricey indeed just to enable SLI. (OEM pricing)

$5 is what NVIDIA would have ended up making out of selling each BR-04 chip too

 

[Hayder_Master]

sure they go to intel , they do great's mobo's and intel do best chipset's , can't nvidia reach performance intel chipset ever

 

[KBD]

sure they go to intel , they do great's mobo's and intel do best chipset's , can't nvidia reach performance intel chipset ever

they wont if they dont try ie release chipsets for the new platform. its always good to have a few competing chipset makers for a certain platform

 

[Pixelated]

If Nvidia was really serious about designing Intel compatible enthusiast chipsets I think they could have achieved some amazing results. Unfortunately 680i-790i just falls short in a couple of areas. If they focused on working out the kinks and really dedicated their focus to it well I think they could have challenged Intel in that respect. To me it's as though they lost interest, maybe they weren't making the money they though they would, I don't know. Bottom line is to many quirks and little bugs with my EVGA 680i. Memory issues, SATA HDD\SATA DVD drive issues that really bring down the overall enjoyment. From what I've read and heard the 790i still suffers from similar things. I give them props though for going up against a company in Intel that has a bottomless R&D budget.

I'll be looking forward to purchasing an EVGA (BFG Tech too maybe?) Intel based board, can't beat a lifetime warranty on a motherboard. The closest I have ever seen another company match is 5 years.