NVIDIA Powered Intel SLI?

by Marco Chiappetta — Friday, January 07, 2005, 09:54 PM EDT

Good evening folks! Dave checking in here but I'm going stealth under BW's login.... Why? Feast your eyes below. Marco and I are out at CES in Las Vegas right now and we've captured some spy photos of a few new motherboards that we're sure will pique your interest.

Alrighty then, it's an Intel Socket T (LGA775) board from none other than EVGA. They're making an entry into the mobo market with a bit of a splash. This is no ordinary Socket T board though. Take a closer look...

That's right people you're looking at dual PCI Express slots in a standard desktop board and we were told in a private session that these slots specifically support a dual X16 lane graphics configuration. We weren't able to pull the heatsink off the Northbridge but we are fairly certain (and it was noted to us by rep we met with) that this is an nForce based motherboards in pre-production status. The Southbridge looks to be an Intel ICH6 but we can't be too sure since it has engineering brandings on it. Regardless we thought you'd like to take a look at this up close and personal. nForce 5 for the P4 with SLI (if that is in fact what this board is) looks to be right around the corner!

Update 1/10/05 -
Upon closer inspection of this motherboard we're beginning to think that it is indeed NOT an NVIDIA based solution but rather a full up Intel solution using all available PCIe lanes for graphics. As you can see on the silk screen printing next to each PCIe slot, the first slot supports a X16 configuration and the second slot supports a X1/X2/X4 configuration for a total of 20 PCIe lanes available for PCI Express Graphics. The EVGA rep that we met with must have obviously had another motherboard in mind because this board looks to be all Intel in our opinion, which coincides with the number of PCIe lanes available on the board.

Tags: Nvidia, Intel, sli, Power, Red, id

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com