sli?

[tomdog126]

i have a 9600gt card in my pc which replaced my 8600gt i was wondering is it posssible to have these running in sli or does it have to be the exact same cards. 2x 9600gt

[spearman914]

The thing i hate about nvidia is you need the same cards to run sli. ex: 2 x 8800 gts. But it "could: be in different brands. ex: BFG,XFX,eVGA,Palit Although it could be in different brands the cards you are running in sli would just run at the same speeds as the slowest card runs:
ex:
8800 gt 675 MHz Core
8800 gt 700 MHz Core
Both of them would just run at 675 MHz.

[tomdog126]

cheers spearman , bit shoddy that u need same cards cos you think that having a 8600gt running along side is better then not having anything. thought nvidia would have made this poss

[spearman914]

cheers spearman , bit shoddy that u need same cards cos you think that having a 8600gt running along side is better then not having anything. thought nvidia would have made this poss

And its sad that you can only run different cards in crossfire.

[saadzaman126]

u can only run crossfire with different cards? but i thought u could run it with two HD 3870's?

[erocker]

Yes. With crossfire, you can use any HD3XXX series cards together. With SLi you are limited to the same card. Of course you can crossfire two identical cards!:)

[Solaris17]

im positive you can run 2x 3870's but i think by diff he means one needs to be the CF edition the other the slave and i think those very but i may be mistaken i know this was the case for one of the gens of ATI cards im not sure if they still do it like that. im n sli boy iv been away from ati since the x1600XT b4 the rename

[OzzmanFloyd120]

Sell the 8600GT and save up for another 9600GT

[erocker]

Ati got rid of the "master" and "slave" cards with introduction of the X1950Pro's.:) No more dongles or anything either, just two crossfire bridges and you are good! I'm actually testing different configs of 3870's and 3850's (and all three at once) right now! I think SLi uses one SLi bridge whil ATi uses two. They work quite similarly now.:)

*Btw 2 9600GT's in SLi are one of the best scaling dual card set-up's there is!

[Solaris17]

cool ya sli only uses one.

[saadzaman126]

oh good i got scared for a sec

[JrRacinFan]

@erocker

Your performance would suffer, but sometimes you dont even have to use bridges. Same can be said with SLi.

@tomdog

Only possibility is to bios mod the 8600GT. Then that definitely cannot be guaranteed and you have a chance of killing your card from a bios flash.

[saadzaman126]

so with crossfire u can use any two card and with sli they must be identical

[JrRacinFan]

Pretty much saadz.

[saadzaman126]

cool just makin sure...

[OzzmanFloyd120]

I don't think they have to be IDENTICAL, I'm pretty sure if you took an XFX 9600GT you could pair it with a BFG 9600GT, but like Spearman said, it will underclock the faster card to meet the lower card.

[Guru Janitor]

I don't use sli, but I have read that you can use two different manufacturers, as long as its the exact same GPU, clock, etc. I'd say, just buy the same card again, and save yourself any headache down the road. Now, I'm gonna go crossfire in a little bit, with too hd3870's, this thread is confusing me with the ATi's. You can crossfire the exact same cards right(manufacturer)? Cause I can't seem to follow where the ATi portion of this thread is going...

[JrRacinFan]

I don't think they have to be IDENTICAL, I'm pretty sure if you took an XFX 9600GT you could pair it with a BFG 9600GT, but like Spearman said, it will underclock the faster card to meet the lower card.

Umm correct me if I am wrong, but that's identical.

@Guru

You can crossfirex in vista, the HD3XXX family. Or you can crossfire any combination of 2600 series. Same can be said with 2400 series and 2900 series(except for 2900GT). Those are pretty much the only exceptions to the rule that you must use the exact same GPU (brand is negligent). Also, make sure you put the fastest card as "master" in your first PCIe slot, this applicable to SLi and crossfire(x).