As may know, NVIDIA doesn’t have a chipset ready for the launch of Nehalem. This has forced companies that use NVIDIA chipsets exclusively, like EVGA, to rethink and instead turn to Intel and its X58 chipset. This comes with at least one obvious advantage for faithful EVGA customers; you now get CrossFire support as well. Although you will have to get your Radeon cards elsewhere. You can be certain that EVGA will pitch in the $5 per motherboard needed to get SLI support.
EVGA will go with its regular strategy and launch both fully-fledged FTW versions and regular SLI versions. By the looks of it, the FTW version might use the NF200 bridge chip for additional bandwidth, while the SLI version will be just X58. We’re not certain about the NF200 bridge chip though, it adds cost and ridiculous amount of heat, with little to no performance gains. Then again, the FTW version is for the high-end segment so we wouldn’t be surprised if EVGA uses it.
