sli question

poggy

was jusy woundering about sli have the option and could be a cheap upgrade.
how closly do the cards hav eto match i'm guessing that they have to be the same card by the same comany but will moddles and bios versions make a difrence to it

don't know a lot about sli any help would be greatly appricated

Joeface

Think they need exact same bios...

8T8

They have to be the same card for SLI to work e.g two 7800 GTX or 6600 GT etc the bios and vendor limitation no longer applies.

NVIDIA fixed that issue a few driver revisions ago so any card as long as its the same kind will work though be aware if one is clocked higher then the other it will clock down to the slower card as you can buy overclocked out of the box versions (or at least thats what I recall could be wrong on the clock down if they changed someting in the drivers).

See the SLI FAQ on NVIDIA's site.

AnCapaillMor

2 of the same Cards is the limitation, if joeface knew his stuff, he'd realise that the same bios rule has'nt counted for quite a while.

what card do you have at the moment?

poggy

thanks for the hlep guys,

AnCapaillMor wrote:

what card do you have at the moment?

a 6600gt thinkig of going sli if i can get away with a cheaper second one,gigabyte one i have can be kinds pricey and looking for the exact one is a bitch, only have 128mb memory on it so kinds feeling the pinch.

Judt

poggy wrote:

thanks for the hlep guys,



a 6600gt thinkig of going sli if i can get away with a cheaper second one,gigabyte one i have can be kinds pricey and looking for the exact one is a bitch, only have 128mb memory on it so kinds feeling the pinch.

Nope. You can do something similar with ATI's Crossfire, but not with SLI - they have to match exactly.

poggy

Judt wrote:

Nope. You can do something similar with ATI's Crossfire, but not with SLI - they have to match exactly.

acording to 8T8 and now nvidia they don't have to match

. However, using the latest Release 80 Graphics Drivers, NVIDIA GPUs sold by different manufacturers can be used together in SLI Mode. For example, a GeForce 7800 GT from vendor ABC can be matched with a GeForce 7800 GT from vendor XYZ

thanks for the input tho.

Judt

Depends on the card... I'm not sure exactly, but you'd want to be careful before shelling out for two cards.

8T8

He is only buying a second cheap 6600 GT to enable SLI with his current setup so he shouldn't have any problems and worst case scenario if for some reason the card refused to work with his current one you can flash the bios so they are the same its' pretty easy to do (if you've ever flashed a bios before) their is a website the catalogues the bios from graphics cards which you can download them from.

poggy

well its worth a try, and not a lot of work to flashing a bios. i fi run into problems i'll be back for a little help.
thanks

Wacked

Make sure your exiting 6600 is has the adapter for sli before you go out and buy a new one. Not all of them do.