MCP72XE supports 3 way SLI too using NF200 chip
New generation of AM2+ chipset is being built to introduce more features like 3 way or 4 way SLI. Instead of supplying more lanes to the chipset or use a tunneling technique, a Switching chip is introduced. It is known to be NF200.
Basically, the MCP72XE has 19 lanes, it can be configured as PCIe II 16x1+ 3x1 or 2x8 + 3x1. In the past, this chipset would be something similar to the good old NF4 Ultra chipset supplying only enough for Dual 8x SLI.
With the PCIe II switching chipset NF200, this will change. The single PCIe x16 can be connected to the NF200 PCIe II switching chip, there by achieving Dual PCIe II x 16 (Imagine your network switch switching multiple ports of 100mbps). With this NF200, it can actually achieve more than just 2 x PCIe II x16. In fact, it can be split even further to 4 x PCIe II x 8 (Quad SLI) or 2 x PCIe II x 8 + PCIe II x16 (Triple SLI).
The same concept can be applied to any C73 Intel edition chipset to achieve Tri SLI.
|