you sli two cards together right ? then what

[Saltire]

i inderstand the bits about sli'ing them together and how it works, but i cant figure out what happens round back when jobs done.

i mean, you will either have 4 dvi ports or possibly some hdmi ports too, what happens then, how do you connect the dual connected cards to your monitor ??

first time i have thought about this but as i am getting interested in it i am wondering what the hell happens .


hope someone can give me good help. thank you.

some links to photos and stuff would be brilliant

[cunny]

SLI 2 graphic card means connecting the 2 to act as 1. What you basically get is the memory and GPU power of both cards combined. But i am refrained from doing it, with the GPU of cards these days, I dont think there are many games/apps that would push a single card, never mind 2 good cards in SLI mode.

This should cover the basics of what it does and how...

NVIDIA's SLI resurrects GPU teaming - The Tech Report - Page 1

[Saltire]

ahh, so what your saying is the work is done inside the computer where the graphics cards are joined and then at the output theres just you usual one output cable, i see i see.

I didnt give it much thought at all until now and may take the plunge sometime soon

thanks.

[cunny]

Basically you get the resources of 2 cards, most cards come with 2 DVI outputs now so you can run a tv and monitor or dual monitors no problem.

Do some reading up, when i went to do mine (few years back) i had 2 faulty cards, so i took them back, ended up buying a top end card instead of the 2 cards. I got more GPU power from that 1 card than i would have from the 2 that were faulty

[Saltire]

But going back to the original point, correct me if iam wrong, all the work is done inside the compouter with the two cards and then if you only had one monitor then you just connect one of the graphic outputs to that yes ??? and you get the full force of both the cards through that one monitor ?

[cunny]

You would only use the 1 DVI output on the cards yes, as the actual bridging of the cards is done inside the machine.

[Saltire]

thanks man, you learned me a bit of stuff i genuinley didint know as ive never looked much into hooking two cards up apart from just talking about it, so thanks agaian

[kkeddy]

you would need to connect the two cards together

it is like two cards working as once, also you would need the corrct drivers and software for it to work

[chroma]

Its also worth noting that slapping in two cards doesnt equate to twice the performance, 4 cards running in SLI or CROSSFIRE is roughly equivilent to 3x a single card if the application is well coded, if its not been designed with SLI/CROSSFIRE in mind then it generaly results in a drop in performace.

The more cards the more the increase in latency and bandwidth usage over the bus, its also heavily dependant on the render method used, suffice it to say its all very technical and boring.

Whilst common sense dictates that more cards = MOAR POWAR! its not always the case.

[manxspud]

What chroma says is true, i have only used the hybrid sli myself and was really disappointed with the results, the boost in performance was hardly worth it.

For me 1 decent card is enough.

@manx

[Sirus]

What motherboard have you got also?.. because if it's using an older intel chipset then sli wont work on it, only nforce chipsets.. as older intel chipsets only support crossfire

If it's a newer board with a newer chipset it should support both sli/crossfire

I also agree with what chroma and manx say, it's a bit stupid unless you know all the ins and outs and are gonna build a monster pc to use sli, all it does is basically render half or parts of the screen for each card.. it's a big money gimmick and is really only appreciated in really well optimized games.. or to help handle a high-res setup

[rIKmAN]

Don't forget to go into your Nvidia/ATI Control Panel and enable "SLI Mode".
Also check in-game options as some have options there too that need to be set before they will run optimized for SLI/Crossfire.

[Saltire]

yea its a waste of time man, one decent card nowdays can do all the jobs two can do without less power and heat.

most new cards are like two cards strapped together when you look at them anyway, LOL.