Quote Originally Posted by bowman View Post
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.

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?
You're totally under estimating the nVidia Faithful, Fanboys and Loyalists. They're afraid to even try anything but nVidia. Some even claim to have have switched from Intel chipsets and are much happier with nVidia. There's thread about Intel not giving nVidia a license and why. Amazingly nVidia Fans think Intel should Pay for SLI while nVidia should get all Intel for free! Giving more credence to the old saying, "Love Blinds". BTW, I'm very BIASed against nVidia but not without good reason.