AMD's 990X, 990FX chipsets to have SLI support?

Matthew DeCarlo

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According to a slide published by VR-Zone, it should get a whole lot easier to find AMD-based motherboards with SLI support. As you probably know, Nvidia was forced to shut down its chipset business after Intel forbade the GPU-maker from producing chipsets compatible with Core I series processors (or any other Intel CPU with an embedded memory controller).

Since Nvidia can't directly sell nForce chipsets, the company licenses its SLI technology to motherboard makers like Asus and Gigabyte. As such, consumers have been virtually unaffected by the lack of nForce boards -- at least folks running an Intel processor anyway. Those faithful to AMD have a very limited selection of SLI-compatible motherboards.


Fortunately, it appears Nvidia is extending that agreement to include AMD's upcoming 990X and 990FX chipsets, which are slated to launch in the second quarter of 2011 alongside AMD's anticipated Bulldozer processors. According to the slide, the former chipset will be limited to two-way SLI while the latter will support both two- and three-way SLI.

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Bravo AMD. I'm impressed. I wasn't too sure before, but i think i will see what Bulldozer has to offer in terms of performance before i upgrade my CPU and mobo. now if you could only not degrade performance after every Catalyst release.

So now its between 990X,FX and the upcoming Z68 chipsets...
 
Ive been looking for an AMD board that will support SLI. As there seem to be some on the market, they have nvidia chipsets, correct? I suppose it may be a good idea to hold off and get a board with AMD's chipsets that support SLI.
 
trillionsin said:
Ive been looking for an AMD board that will support SLI. As there seem to be some on the market, they have nvidia chipsets, correct? I suppose it may be a good idea to hold off and get a board with AMD's chipsets that support SLI.

Oh, there are many good SLI-AMD combos out there. Hopefully the native AMD-SLI motherboards will have better support for more combinations of nVidia cards, though. It all depends on how long people can wait for our fellow Bulldozer to arrive at the party.
 
supersmashbrada said:
Ahh, poor bulldozer, we await your arrival. To compete with 2014's core i12 processors.

So true.

Are you the supersmashbrada from OCN?
 
overclockers? forum?

My question is which one of the editors drew a bobcat on a 2500k cpu and tried to trick us in the picture.
 
If this is true, it must be the best news I've heard all year. Nvidia must be anticipating AMD's return to the high-end CPU market.
 
@fpsgamer - Was thinking along similar lines, see it as a good move for both AMD and Nvidia ... hopefully there's some substance behind it.
 
The guys of Nvidia got mad with intel movement, so they will help AMD procesor selling!! that´s a good hit to intel! Amd could gaing more share in the CPU market after this.

I really hope that bulldozer dont dissapoint us!....
 
Bull. :(

I bit the Sandy Bridge upgrade because there was absolutely no word on SLI support for AMD chipsets anymore. Now I bet I'll regret my purchase, but still, it's months away.

If Bulldozer ends up beating SB, I may switch back over to AMD.
 
I doubt SB buyers will be gnashing their teeth over their purchase after BD debuts. I can hope the results will be earth-shattering, but that'd be optimistic.

Even so, it's terrific to see this support again. More choice for AMD users!
 
@Dokk
From a consumer standpoint I hope BD has 50+% more performance than SB and retails for half the price...we could do with good old competition.

Of course, given the rise of A(TI)MD's fanboy base since RV770, it's pretty certain that if AMD becomes ascendant in graphics AND CPU then the entire net would collapse under the gravitational pull of the combined smugness- a Schwarzschild radius of Douchebaggery as it were :p
 
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