Intel Corp. during Intel Developer Forum (IDF) said that its premium-class chipsets and mainboards will support ATI’s multi-GPU technology called CrossFire, which is yet to come to the market. This is the first time when a chipset designer officially claims support for ATI’s CrossFire, which has so far been an exclusive feature of certain ATI core-logic products.

Intel said during IDF that it had validated its 955X core-logic and D955XBK mainboard with ATI RADEON X850- and X800-series graphics processors that operate in multi-GPU CrossFire technology. It is now expected that not only Intel’s own D955XBK that has two PCI Express x16 slots, but also 955X-powered mainboards manufactured by Intel’s partners with appropriate slot configurations will be able to support ATI’s multi-GPU capability.

Intel 955X chipset and mainboards on its base support Intel latest processors, including Intel dual-core Pentium chips as well as Intel Pentium 4 Extreme Edition processor 3.73GHz with 1066MHz processor system bus.

When unveiling the CrossFire technology in late May, 2005, ATI said that it had validated only its own RADEON XPRESS 200-series chipsets to enable multi-GPU systems with RADEON X8-series visual processing units (VPUs). The company, however, noted that it could also allow CrossFire to run on certain platforms from Intel Corp. and other third-party core-logic developers, including arch-rival NVIDIA Corp. So far ATI CrossFire did not materialize in any forms, including graphics cards and supporting mainboards.

ATI CrossFire platform requires a compatible chipset in addition to a pair of ATI RADEON X800/X850-series graphics cards, one of which equipped with Compositing Engine, a special set of chips that blends parts of frames rendered by different graphics cards.