MSI: CrossFire on Intel P965

[Dr Mordrid]

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/09/19/msi_p965_platinum_crossfire/

MSI has managed to get Intel's P965 chipset to support ATI's CrossFire, enabling the system on its P965 Platinum motherboard - an industry first, the company claimed today. So far, the multi-GPU technology has been limited to ATI's own chipsets and to Intel's 975X chipset.

The P965 Platinum ships with a pair of x16 PCI Express slots, though only one of them is connected to 16 PCI-E lanes - the other connects to four lanes. It's these two slots MSI expects you to connect your two CrossFire-ready graphics cards to.

Quite how all this works, MSI hasn't said. Either ATI's drivers incorporate P965 support and MSI's simply the first company to react to the change, or MSI's board fools the driver into thinking it's connected to a 975X chipset.

The motherboard supports Intel's range of LGA-775 desktop CPUs, including the Core 2 Duo, across a 533, 800 or 1066MHz frontside bus. It can take up to 8GB of 533MHz or 667MHz DDR 2 SDRAM, or 4GB of 800MHz DDR 2, all in dual-channel mode.

[rylan]

Wait, so the 2nd board will run in 4x mode? lol, thats a joke.

[Taz]

The P965 Platinum listed on MSI's website shows 1 x x16 PCIe slot and 1 x x4 PCIe slot, no mention of Crossfire support

http://msicomputer.co.uk/products.aspx?product_id=703734&cat_id=77

[Paulr]

The latest Cat drivers allow the 965 chipset to support X-Fire.

This release of Catalyst® introduces CrossFire™ support for the Intel 965 Chipset. This feature is available for D3D applications, and is supported on ATI Radeon® X1900 CrossFire™ edition products. This feature is supported under the Windows XP operating system.

Even though one slot is 16x and the other is 4x this shouldn't have any major perofrmance issue.
Remember AGP 8x? What were we actually using with regards AGP bandwidth when we started the move to PCI-e - 4x at most?

[agallag]

8x AGP can manage 2GB/s max, half duplex. PCIe x4 can do 1GB/s second, full duplex. I doubt if many graphics cards use all of that bandwith anyway, so it'll probably work just fine.

[rylan]

Don't forget the insane packet transfer oveahead on PCIe. Its substantially less efficient than PCI/AGP at the same speed.

[schmosef]

why not just get a 975x mobo and be done with it?

[lowlifecat]

i remember reading about somebody getting CF (over dongle) working on a SLi mobo. have they implemented dongle-less CF for high-end x1 cards?

[Paulr]

why not just get a 975x mobo and be done with it?

Because the 965 is the newer chipset giving you access to the ICH8/R controller over the older ICH7/R controller on the 975x based systems.
The 965 boards also have a few other changes - no Southbridge IDE channels so almost the end of legacy controllers etc.
The 965 boards are usually cheaper than the 975x boards.
Not all 975x boards are Conroe compatible.
965 based systems are almost certainly going to be quad-core compatible.
Conroe you have to remember was a retro-fit to an already on the market and older chipset (975x) and although that chipset should be quad-core compatible there are no certainties.
All of the insane overclocking of Conroe you see is based on the 965 chipset - that just seems to have insane capabilities.

SLI or X-Fire support was certainly not something I had at the top of my list when I was building my Conroe system a couple of months ago.
The fact that the 965 board I decided to go for has now officially had X-Fire support added is just a bonus - however one I probably will never use.
I'm still not convinced that multiple adapters is the way forward, multiple GPU's yes, but on the same card.