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NVIDIA nForce4 SLI (Intel Edition) Platform Review (page 8)

Category: Chipsets

by Ilya Gavrichenkov

[ 04/13/2005 | 07:07 PM ]

SLI Mode

One of the peculiarities of the new NVIDIA nForce4 SLI (Intel Edition) chipset against the alternative core logic sets is the implementation of 20 supported PCI Express lanes in the chipset SPP North Bridge. This is done to ensure simple configuring of the PCI Express lanes for the SLI mode. In the regular mode nForce4 SLI (Intel Edition) features one PCI Express x16 bus and four PCI Express x1 busses. Once SLI is enabled, the chipset supports two PCI Express x8 busses and three PCI Express x1 busses thus allowing you to install two PCI Express graphics cards into your system.

Anyway, the mainboards based on the new Pentium 4 chipset from NVIDIA are supposed to feature two physical PCI Express x16 slots, which can logically work in different modes. You will be able to switch between these modes with the help of a special commutation board, just like in Athlon 64 based platforms. Although some mainboard makers announced the solutions that are capable of detecting the PCI Express working mode for the board automatically, depending on the number of installed graphics cards.

As far as the performance gain in SLI mode is concerned, we have already paid due attention to it in our article called NVIDIA Multi-GPU SLI Technology: New Approach to Old Ideas. Here we would only like to provide a table with the results obtained for a system built on NVIDIA nForce4 SLI (Intel Edition) chipset and Intel Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.73GHz CPU with one or two NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT based graphics cards.

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