Quote Originally Posted by Seraphiel View Post
Wait a minute

NVIDIA doesn't have a license for the QPI connection, but could make a chipset for anything that doesn't have QPI. The lack of QPI info on the lower market solutions, does that mean they use the old FSB and not QPI, and could NVIDIA possibly make SLI chipsets for these if they wish to?
The lower markets have just what amounts to an I/O southbridge. The northbridge is entirely integrated on the CPU, and PCI-E 2.0 connects directly onto the CPU. Even less wiggle room for NVIDIA. They could pull a Skulltrail and launch boards with a couple of NF200 chips to 'enable' SLI and and claim there's special sauce in those.. But that didn't fly so well the first time, I fear they'd get publically shredded if they pulled that stunt again.

Quote Originally Posted by Seraphiel View Post
And even if NVIDIA doesn't have the QPI license, couldn't they just unlock the driver and support SLI on Intel's own chipset, if they wanted to?
Of course they could, but that's exactly what Intel wants. SLI on Intel chipsets. At the same time NVIDIA's chipset business would go out of business, at least for desktops, because the 6 and 7 series for LGA775 sure has given them a frayed reputation.. Even if their Nehalem chipsets turned out 'okay', why would anyone bother if Intel had SLI and with the cloud of data corruption, crashes, bugs and bad drivers looming over nForce?