Two video cards

[Blebbz]

Is it possible to run two video cards at once, but not SLi? I just wanted to know because I'm hoping to get an SLI video card and motherboard, but I want to make sure that it's actually necessary to do so. Thanks
Blebbz:?

[xRyokenx]

Yeah, SLI is for one monitor, you can have two of 'em going for like dual monitors and such, I believe. Correct me if I'm wrong.

[Blebbz]

So SLI is for say having 2 x 512Mb graphics cards running together so that it's like having a 1Gb graphics card, whereas non-SLI is just like having two monitors showing a game from different viepoints?
Hard to explain how I'm thinking lol

[xRyokenx]

Well, SLI is like having two cards both working together for one monitor. Like, 512mb x2 and the core and RAM clocks x2 or something like that. Dual monitors is either one or two cards working for two monitors. For one card it'd be half power to each (or something like that) and two cards would be full power of each card to each separate monitor.

[dgrmkrp]

Nope.. This is simply a mater of how the graphic cards will work:
-in normal use, each card extends the desktop. One output is set as primary and will display your game/movie.. Only if you can configure the game to render stuff on multiple screens will the game be visible on multiple screens :)
-in SLI or Crossfire, both cards (should be identical) do the same thing in parallel, one way or another, and speed up the rendering of the game. You can't really say you have 1 video card with 1GB of RAM.. you have 2 with 512MB and that is it. Unfortunately, the scaling of performance is non-linear, so you won't see a 100% boost from 2 cards, unless there are some really heavy optimizing going on.

Hope I helped.

[Blebbz]

Thanks for clearing that up:up:. Really appreciate it, was pretty confusing at first, i know it shouldn't be, but it was:up:

[xRyokenx]

Thanks for clearing that up:up:. Really appreciate it, was pretty confusing at first, i know it shouldn't be, but it was:up:

You're welcome. This stuff is confusing, but I'm getting better at understanding it as time goes by, lol.

[Spawn-Inc]

the best way i would put it, and i believe its atucally how it works is rather than combining power it will cut the screen in half and each have is given to the two cards. its easier for cards to display smaller sized screens.


here is a link (http://www.slizone.com/page/slizone_faq.html#g1) to SLIzone

[The boy 4rm oz]

Just remember, two graphics cards in SLI doesn't mean double the performance. I.e. if a single cards scores a 3D mark of ohhh lets say 11,000, two in SLI wouldn't score 22,000.

[Outlaw]

For the reader... there are pictures too. :)
SLI (http://www.behardware.com/articles/536-1/nvidia-sli-with-an-asustek-a8n-sli.html)

[Blebbz]

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/95/SLI_newlogo.jpg
:D Wikipedia knows all (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalable_Link_Interface) :D

Try and get ur teeth into that one, oh and pics:

SLI Motherboard with 2 SLI graphics cards:
Just noticed that bridge at the top, i think it must bypass the output pins of one card and put the current through the second. Rough guess anyway
http://www.amdzone.com/pics/motherboards/asus/32xsli/A8N32-SLI%20DeluxeVGA-3D.jpg

[Blebbz]

SLI doesn't always give a performance benefit — in some extreme cases, it can lower the framerate due to the particulars of an application's coding.[7] This is also true for ATI's CrossFire, as the problem is inherent in multi-GPU systems.

What a bummer, you pay twice the price and get worse performance (sometimes)

[The boy 4rm oz]

That would only be if you get two low end cards say like 7600GTs or something like that.

[Spawn-Inc]

i still like this the best,


http://img78.imageshack.us/img78/6378/oct18bx7po.jpg

http://img504.imageshack.us/img504/3262/oct9yc.jpg

http://img230.imageshack.us/img230/5384/oct3gy.jpg

[The boy 4rm oz]

Now that is EXTREME!!! Eight GPUs, what more can you want. I would kill to see those 3D Mark scores lol. Wonder what it would look like water cooled :) lol. +rep for an awesome find

EDIT: Have to spread some rep first :(

[The boy 4rm oz]

Oh forgot to say this earlier Blebbz, that bridge basically links the two cards into SLI, without that bridge they would act as two separate cards. You can't run SLI without the bridge (SLI motherboards come with one, sometimes two).

EDIT: Woohoo 900 posts lol

[Spawn-Inc]

np, don't worry about it. i posted it before here (http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/forum/showthread.php?t=7657&highlight=octo), that setup is for multi monitors not sli i think.

[The boy 4rm oz]

Yeah probably, to me it just looks like that out of the four 7950GX2's they are joined in pairs. So basically 2 SLI systems in 1 comp lol.