HEXUS.first-look - MSI P4N Diamond - Digitally Switched SLI

[Steve]

Since SLI's rebirth a few months ago, nForce 4 SLI chipset users have been burdened with the task of inverting a daughterboard or setting a heap of jumpers to reconfigure the lane setup of their PEG slots. However, that is now changing. Motherboard manufacturers are starting to create digital switches for SLI, making life that little bit easier for the enthusiast. Here we have the first box shot of MSI's P4N Diamond motherboard, which is an nForce 4 for Intel based board, in fact the first P4 SLI board with a digital SLI switch.

Click image to enlarge

Inspecting the picture we can see the two PEG slots and between them a set of chips which assume the role of the digital SLI switch. Their presence appears to prevent the placement of a PCIe slot between the two PEG slots, however even single-slot cooled SLI users will prefer to leave their two graphics cards a bit of breathing room to improve their cooling. A 1x PCIe slot has been placed above the top PCIe slot which compensates for this.

A quick skim over the board as a whole suggests a reasonably effective board layout, with all storage connectivitiy along the inner-most edge of the board, which should help keep cabling nice and tidy.

SLI seems to be continually improving, and given that it is now marketable to Intel users, I expect we can see it grab a bit more market share, possibly with this very motherboard.

[chrisuk]

looks good, but i'm sure I saw another solution the other day that used more like 4 IC's. But still, makes it alot 'nicer' and more modern.

[Steve]

Hi chrisuk, welcome to HEXUS.

I think this is what you mean:
http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=41847

For Socket 939 though, not P4.

[chrisuk]

Thanks!

That was it, couldn't remember where I had seen it. I guess the difference must lie in the chipset design, because I can't see MSI "wasting" loads of chips to do it. That is, unless Asus have found a super-douper ultra simple method of digitally switching it that MSI didn't think of.

[Steve]

Possibly, or maybe it's a cost issue - a few more expensive chips or lots of cheap chips?

In all honesty though, there could be all sorts of reasons.

[chrisuk]

as a small update, the guys over at bit-tech have some high res images of the mobo.

http://bit-tech.net/feature/86/