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. Really appreciate it, was pretty confusing at first, i know it shouldn't be, but it was

[xRyokenx]

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

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 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