One of the new features of new chipset and CPUs is support for SLI and CrossFire. Of course we were very interested in SLI performances on an Intel based motherboard so we used two ASUS GTX260 Matrix models because those present optimal combination of price and performances. Hard drives can be “bottleneck” so we used two WD 500GB disks in RAID 0. Memory used was 2 x 2GB Kinston HyperX DDR3 that operates at 1600MHz in dual channel mode (Intel Core i7, Core i5 and Core i3 LGA 1156 CPUs don’t have triple channel support).

New Chipset

Intel P55 chipset continues the development path set by X58 chipset. Instead of north and south bridge, there is one chip – P55 Platform Controller Hub. Memory controller is integrated into CPU which allows it direct access to memory and eliminates bottleneck that FSB can create. We should underline that although P55 has nothing to do with memory, on Socket 1156 (Lynnfield) motherboards only DDR3 memory will be supported starting from DDR3 800 up to DDR3 2000 and even faster. Intel P55 Express chipset also grants control of 16 PCI Express 2.0 lines to CPU, while the rest 8 will control chipset (Hub). Since the majority of motherboard will have 3 PCI Express slots that will operate in x16/x4 or x8/x8x4 mode, only real difference are first two slots that will be controlled by CPU. This should minimize latencies in GPU-CPU communication.

We already mentioned that new P55 motherboards will have support for SLI and CrossFire. These are good news since Intel users will no longer be restricted to ATI graphics cards when creating multi GPU systems. By moving memory and PCI Express controller into CPU, chipset no longer needs fast QPI interface used in X58, so slower 2GB/s DMI connection is used instead. Data and media support are now similar to well known ICH10R south bridge: 14 USB ports, 6 SATA with support for RAID (0/1/5/10), audio and gigabit LAN.