Nvidia claims it's sold 1.5 million Nforce4 SLI motherboards

SALES NUMBERS are rising as Nvidia is selling SLI capable motherboards and cards like hot cakes. The high end users like the idea that you can plug two cards and have it up and running. Some of them have bought an SLI motherboard and one SLI capable card and now are waiting to get enough money to buy a second one.

We reported some time ago that Nvidia sold a million of Nforce 4 chipset but this time the company is ready to say that 1.5 million of world wide sold chipset is ready for dual card SLI setup.

It's a bit confusing to learn that Nvidia sold six million graphics card as six million card could fit into three million SLI capable motherboards. You have to understand that not every SLI capable card was sold together with an SLI motherboard. Many SLI capable cards are inside PCIe systems powered with other chipset like Nforce 4 Ultra, K8T890 or Intel 915, 925, 945 or 955.

AMD motherboards are definitely dominant for several reasons. One is that they have been shipping longer than Intel's, but the real stuff is that gamers prefer AMD and that SLI performs much better with AMD CPUs. We heard once that this is due to AMD's superior CPU marchitecture that simply fits better with SLI. AMD boards can score better while the performance increase in Pentium based Nforce 4 SLI motherboards will be limited and lower than on AMD side.

We estimate that around 1.2 million motherboards sold worldwide which are AMD Nforce 4 based, while some 300,000 are perhaps Intel based.

Cheap SLI boards are coming and you should expect to see them soon. In next two weeks you should be able to grab €75-79 priced 6600 LE SLI capable graphic cards and we believe that this should rocket Nvidia's SLI motherboard and graphic card sales. Nvidia sure scored a big time with SLI as it turns out that is selling much better than both ATI and Nvidia anticipated. µ