Affordable SLI Motherboards?

NVIDIA is very curious about ATI’s upcoming multi-GPU solution, as it will mark the end of NVIDIA’s exclusivity on multi-GPU platforms.  In order to help expand the SLI market, NVIDIA appears to be ready to drop the price of their nForce4 SLI chipset.  While currently priced at around $80, the chipset will drop in price to close to $40 later this year.  The goal is to enable SLI motherboards to be priced at $100 or less.  We have even heard some very aggressive motherboard manufacturers are looking to offer sub-$80 nForce4 SLI motherboards by the end of this year.  At $80, it would be senseless not to buy a SLI motherboard; which is exactly what NVIDIA wants.

Epox has already demonstrated a concept board to be released later this year; the board is a Socket-754 motherboard but uses NVIDIA’s nForce4 SLI chipset. 

The idea is that the money you save by going with a Socket-754 CPU goes towards buying a better pair of graphics cards, which will give you better overall gaming performance in the end. 

The board is only made possible by NVIDIA cutting the price of their nForce4 SLI chipset.  Note that NVIDIA isn’t cutting the prices of their nForce4 SLI Intel Edition chipsets nearly as much, only the AMD version. 

The biggest reason for NVIDIA dropping the price of their SLI chipsets?  ATI.

ATI’s new multi-GPU chipset will be priced on par with NVIDIA’s nForce4 Ultra chipset, not the nForce4 SLI.  Need any more explanation?