NVIDIA gets $5 per X58 motherboard for SLI license

Word is going around that NVIDIA has opened up SLI to the Intel X58 chipset in exchange for a license fee of $5 per motherboard:

According to a news-story by Expreview web-site, Nvidia will charge mainboard makers $5 per unit for SLI “license”. It is unclear whether the company also plans to charge manufacturers of motherboards for actual “certification” procedures of their Intel X58-based products. $5 per mainboard should not substantially affect end-user price, hence, SLI technology may become available on the vast majority of new platforms aimed at performance-hungry end-users.

At present only Nvidia nForce chipsets enable the company’s SLI multi-GPU technology, thus, users, who plan to utilize two or more Nvidia GeForce-based graphics cards to speed up their video games, have to acquire nForce-based mainboards, in spite of the fact that there are no technical limitations for SLI operation on third-party chipsets. Those, who use multi-GPU capable core-logic sets from AMD, Intel or other chipset vendors cannot use SLI technology, but may utilize competing ATI CrossFire array consisting of several ATI Radeon graphics cards by Advanced Micro Devices.

NVIDIA commands the motherboard makers to use SLI approval keys in the BIOS to pass certification. This doesn't really sound that complicated and I think there's a good chance it won't take long until someone figures out how to add SLI support to other motherboards that are technically capable of doing it.

So far, we know the following ten motherboards will get X58 SLI licensing:

ASUS : Rampage II Extreme, P6T Deluxe

MSI : Eclipse SLI, X58 Platinum SLI

Gigabyte : GA-EX58-UD5P, GA-EX58-Extreme , GA-EX58-UD5P

DFI : LP UT X58-T3eH8, LP DK X58-T3eH6, LP JR X58-T3H

ECS, Foxconn and EVGA are also expected to churn out X58 motherboards with SLI support.