SLI system Q & A

bretttp1

Hi everybody,

I‘ve built a system (see spec bellow) using an sli capable motherboard but haven’t utilized the function yet and I was wondering if anyone had any experience setting up such a system? I have a couple of specific questions:

Do you have to use the exact same graphics cards in parallel; can you use a graphics card of the same type but from a different manufacturer?

If you’ve overclocked one card will this effect an sli set up?

And will it be any good !!!???

Thanks

AMD Athlon 64 3700+ 2.2GHz Socket 939, 1MB
EPoX EP-9NPA+ SLI,nForce4 SLI,Socket-939 ,ATX,S-ATA2,GbLAN,Firewire,DDR, PCI-Ex16.
PC3200 DDR-DIMM 1024MB
NorthQ 4775-500, ATX 500W, 4xSATA, SLI, 20/24pin
Maxtor DiamondMax 10 300GB SATA2 16MB 7200RPM
Samsung DVD±RW burner, SH-W162L, 16x, Dual, LightScribe
Dell DVD±RW burner
POINT OF VIEW GeForce 6800GS 256MB GDDR3, PCI-Express, 425Mhz/1GHz
Gigabyte GZ-FSCA1-AN Aurora Black Aluminium Body

Cuddlesworth

You can run different manufacturers, but you need the same type of card.

Sli will run to the speed of the slowest card when 1 is overclocked.

No it will not make much of a difference, you would get better performance buying a new high end card and selling your current one.

KdjaCL

krazy_8s wrote:

No it will not make much of a difference, you would get better performance buying a new high end card and selling your current one.

Im not so sure about that atm i have nearly 2 SLI pcs with 6800GTs as the SLid card, i would love to see someone lend me a 7900GTX so i can see if it can run Bf2 GRAW and Oblivion with my CPu and ram at the same levels as the 2 Gts or to be exact how much better it will run it

For example 1st SLi pc which is complete:

DFI SLI DR with 1 GB ddr400 and 3000+

Bf2 1024 Highest settings AA on 8
1 card 2 cards
70 140 FPS

Graw High 1024
40 80 FPS

Oblivion 1024 HIghest with HDR
30 60 FPS


2nd SLi pc has 2 GB 3200 and 3800+ 2nd GT in post from Ebay.


In the future Force Nvidia drivers (90 to be exact) it will be possible to run 2 different cards and use one as a physics card ie 7900 Gpu and 7600 as physic.

So far the top pc has cost less than one 7900GTX, €530 to be exact 2 gpus mobo ram and cpu
2nd pc will end up costing 420 thanks to ebay for mobo ram cpu and 2 gpus.




kdjac

Cuddlesworth

Not bad, you must have picked up some nice deals off of e-bay. Makes me wish I had a credit rating. But I stand by what I said, Sli is not worth it. A new card of the next generation will offer the same performance inprovements of a second card in sli. Takes less cpu power as well. And less power. And normally improved features. Sli only benifits people who run at high resoulutions at high AA + Af. Btw my one x850xt and A64 at 2.2ghz is getting better fps. When it runs. And my x1800xt 512mb is a good bit faster. When it runs.

KdjaCL

But where does the ram and cpu i have hinder me and yours help you.

Bf2 needs 2gb ram to load the maps, Oblivion the same would i get more with 2gb and a decent CPu? Would you get less with my cpu and ram. Not so sure about Graw yet think the games code may be hindering me.

Nvidia and Ati have set the prices for proper SLi to be too high (only the same cards bollix) I trying to get very high gaming performance from cheap as chips quality components.

The main system i one i keeping is 3000 1GB ram and 2 6800Gts on DFI board so far is cost 530. With intention of X2 and another 1Gb when they cheaper.

The other one for a mate and its costing 400 total so far.

Obviously not inc the parts someone would have like HDs and cases.

Benchmarking is impossible to give a clear idea unless i had a mega card to test with, as all the review websites oly use the best components and never seem to give an idea off how a normal SLI rig will run only 2 79s with a X2 and 11 GB of ram or something.

Atm now is the time to go for cheap ass SLI lurk in the tweaking modding forum soon as you see a "im getting one of these threads" pm the user about their old **** Worked for my last 3 pc incarnations



kdjac

astrofool

SLI can be a handy option to simply add a second card in, but a new top of the line card will always be faster than the equivelent older gen. in SLI.

Cuddlesworth

Lol done that last thing a few times myself. But I have quite a few different parts and I like benching. And when I had 2 6800gts compared to a x850xt I really prefered the x850xt.Unless I ramped my opty up to 2.6ghz. Then I cranked the res up to 1600*1200 on the crt.
And when I got the x1800xt, the 2 6800 gts were not even worth a look in. . I'd like to run some tests again and show you but I no longer have the 6800gt's and my opty died a painfull death from overvolting. Thats "2" to cpus I'v killed in 1 year to "0" I have saved.