Dual GPU's

[justleftlife]

So, i am looking for some information on the how Dual GPU's work... i am not 100% sure on how that technology work. I cant seem to find anything on the interwebs we got here. so if any could post some link on how it works that would be amazing. thanks

[Luke122]

SLI vs Crossfire.

[justleftlife]

As intresting as that was... it wasnt what i was looking. I am not looking for benchmarks. i am looking more on how the 2 cards work together. I heard some where that both cards render the image at the same time, to produce a more clear and smooth image at bigger resolutions. if there is more information please link

[Luke122]

Ooops, sorry! I guess I should read these things a bit further than the first page... I was under the understanding that they would explain the technologies in that one.

Well, they do explain them better in here.

[crenn]

Each card is given a section to render and essentially those sections are joined up.

[Spawn-Inc]

for sli the the first video card works on the top half of the screen and the second card the bottem half. not sure about crossfire though.

[justleftlife]

well, that works thanks. I am thinking about going with Sli on my P5WD board. i have 1gig ram in there should i get more if i do decide to this? I am primarly usuing the machine for gaming and Photo editing.

[NightrainSrt4]

If you have the money to go sli, I would def get another gig of ram first. You can get ddr2 2x1gb sets for like $40 now. Wicked cheap. Def a good upgrade

[a.Bird]

from what I've read (pretty extensively) SLI makes the largest difference in performance when gaming at higher resolutions than average. When it comes to special effects, anti-aliasing, textures, etc., there isn't really much of an impact on lower resolutions. If you're trying to play your games at anything higher than 1600x1200 (which is a little over the top in my opinion) then you could definitely benefit from an SLI set up.

Make sure you know what you are doing though. The cards should be essentially identical. If the amount of memory is different on each card, they will both operate with the smaller amount of memory. And performance is not doubled; the memory size and speed, as well as the gpu speed, of both cards are not added together to equal or excel the speed of a single videocard that costs twice as much. So once again, unless you want to play your games at an extremely high resolution, I'd spend the money on a single card with double the specs for much better rendering and texture buffering, etc., and consider the second PCI-E slot as a possible upgrade in the future when you have the money to drop on a second card.

[justleftlife]

I dont plan on going at any resolutions that are that high. But i do want a 21" monitor and i am going to upgrade my ATI X1300 Pro to a nice shiny new Nvidia, Dont know what one yet. still looking around. I am actually in the process of building a new computer. so right now i am in the "just looking" sid eof the house. I am a big gamer and with new games coming out i am super exctied and i want to play them like they are ment to be played. also this is my first try with the water cooling.

Thanks for the advice.