Over the last few years, relations between chipmaker Intel and graphics developer Nvidia have been anything but peachy: the two companies have engaged in fairly public name-calling over Intel’s integrated graphics controllers and product bundling, countersuing each other over chipset licensing, and Nvidia has even been entering the high-performance supercomputer arena, where Intel really doesn’t want a tremendous amount of competition. However, occasionally, the companies can agree on something: Intel has licensed Nvidia’s SLI technology for supporting multiple graphics cards on “Nehalem” P55 chipset-based motherboards built around Intel’s Core i7 and Core i5 processors. Other major motherboard manufacturers Asus, EVGA, Gigabyte, and MSI are also on board. The result is that any consumer with a P55-based motherboard will be able to count on SLI support with any combination of up to three Nvidia GeForce graphics cards.
