Nvidia to Offer SLI Support for AMD 900-Series AM3+ Bulldozer Motherboards
Until now, AMD users who wanted to run two or more Nvidia graphics cards in SLI had to rely on all sort of tricks and hacks to make this work, but it seems like this won't be the case anymore once AMD introduces the 900-series chipsets designed for AM3+ Bulldozer motherboards as Nvidia plans to make SLI available for this platform.
This was just detailed in an Nvidia slide that somehow made its way to the VR-Zone website.
According to this source, SLI will only be supported by the AMD 990FX and AMD 990X chipsets, so users who own an 800-series motherboard, even if it is compatible with Bulldozer, won't get this technology.
As far as the new AMD chipsets are concerned, the 990FX features two PCI Express x16 slots or four PCIe x8 slots and will be compatible with two-way (2 x16) and three-way (3 x8) SLI setups.
The other chipset model listed by the slide, the 990X will only support two-way SLI and each of the cards use eight PCI Express lanes.
The technology is only available to current SLI licensees and Nvidia won't make the nF200 chip available on AMD-based motherboards.
Outside of the SLI support, the 900-series chipset offers native support for SATA 6Gbps and USB 3.0, RAID 0/1/10/5 when paired together with the SB950 southbridge as well a new fast interconnect technology.
In addition, the chipsets are compatible with AM3+ Zambezi processors as well as with the current AM3 CPUs.
According to VR-Zone, the 900-series launch is expected to take place sometime in May.
At this point, we don't know whether AMD plans to release its first Bulldozer-based, Zambezi desktop chips together with these chipsets or these are still scheduled for a June 11 release, as some previous rumors have suggested.
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