NVIDIA's nForce4 for Intel SLI platform is their first foray into the Intel chipset business outside of their involvement with the Xbox. NVIDIA's focus when entering a new market is on performance leadership, then bringing the features from the high-performance part into the mainstream. It's a strategy that's worked for years on the video card end.
GIGABYTE's board is fairly unique in support for 4 video cards at the same time on the consumer side of things. Only Dell with their XPS computer offers anything similar to what this board offers at the moment. It's unlikely however, that NVIDIA would spend the time and money on R+D on quad SLI for one high-profile customer. It's likely that they will incorporate the design into their next generation of cards.
NVIDIA will be pushing very high-resolution gaming with monitors like the Dell 3027 30" LCD with resolutions of 2560x1600 in the near future. They will have to with the introduction of Quad-SLI systems with 4 "Next Generation video cards" working together. The sheer fillrates and memory bandwidth offered by 4 7800GTXs is nearing science fiction from what was the absolute highest end performance a year or two ago.
GIGABYTE has done a wonderful job with the GA-8N Quad Royal SLI motherboard and it stands out among the crowd as a top performance board with all the extras that grab the enthusiasts attention. Features-wise the Quad-Royal has no peer, as the board scores over 50 points in our features charts due to the inclusion of Wireless Networking, Quad-SLI, Dual BIOS and more. Performance and stability was excellent and no problems were observed during the month we played with this board. Hats off to Gigabyte on this one.
