2x 9500gt 1024mb but i Dont think its crossfire?

[mrthrust]

I Guys/Girls,

Quick question,

My friend bought a new pc system.

There was an option when buying to upgrade his GFX card, to include 2 instead of just one (Magic he though)

Now my understanding is that the 2 cards (if used in SLI mode or/ Crossfire) I thought there would be a bridging point on the two cards, were they would be connected together??

this is the case on most Nvidia based boards,

The 2 cards which are in the system is the (9500GT PCI-E 1024mb DDR2 TVOUT)
it was only recently that we had hard drive problems and he asked me to open it,,

On inspection i noticed the 2 cards WAS NOT joined in any way together using a SLI bridge,

So from my understanding this is setup to run like 4 monitors & NOT to work together,
in most SLI cases...

The Motherboard which these are running on is a :

ASRock Penryn 1600SLI-110dB
With :
8GB Memory
Intel Quad 2.8

any help would be great..

 

[Mousemonkey]

Some people have claimed their SLi setup working without the bridge even to the point of working better without rather than with, my own rig will not work without the bridge so I remain sceptical about such claims. Has your friend tried enabling the SLi indicators via the Nvidia control panel and then running 3D mark to see whether the green bars appear?

 

[masterjaw]

Dude, first of all, the title should've been said SLI, not crossfire.

If it runs without a bridge, then it isn't running in SLI. The bridge is the one who syncs the two cards together.

 

[Helloworld_98]

I thought only 9600GT's and above could run in SLI.

 

[mrthrust]

cheers for the response guys,
yes the title was crossfire, I assumed that because the cards were Red in colour they were ATI cards, but after closer inspection and the driver disk that comes with the package was Nvidia...

but the cards definitely don't have a SLi bridge point at the top of the cards..
so I take it the cards are not bridged and NOT in SLI mode.

like you said mousemonkey "enabling the SLi indicators via the Nvidia control panel and then running 3D mark to see whether the green bars appear"

ill give this a quick try and see were things are..

 

[mrthrust]

http://www.palit.biz/product/vga/picture/Bp00733-pic2.jpg

picture of the card,

there is 2 of these in the machine..

 

[Helloworld_98]

9500GT's can't do SLI, 9600GT's and up can though.

 

[Mousemonkey]

I thought only 9600GT's and above could run in SLI.

Good point, I just popped the side off mine to have a look and you're right there is no SLi connector on the MSI card that I'm using.

 

[mrthrust]

well after getting the drivers etc all installed..

I went to the Nvidia control panel selected SLI mode, the screen went black
blinking cursor, then back to the desktop, with the Green Line connected both
cards,, both cards have 1024mb each so i thought it would have bumped up the video memory, from 1024mb to 2048mb, but the system shows 2 cards installed but the video memory still sits at 1024mb..

very strange.. but i suppose it is working on SLI mode without the bridge point..

Cheers

 

[Mousemonkey]

The green bars should only be present during 3D mode not in desktop, vRAM will always be the smallest amount of one card so if one of the cards were a 512MB and the other a 2GB card say, then the amount available would be 512MB not 2.5GB.

 

[mrthrust]

The green bars should only be present during 3D mode not in desktop,

Is this within the Nvidia Control panel? were you select the SLi mode?
if so the picture of the 2 cards are highlighted using a green line, this would indicate a connection,

Or do you recommend running 3d benchmark?

The motherboard is SLI ready and im sure the SLI bridge is built into the motherboard...

as for the memory, will it just show 1024mb even though it has 2?
I can understand that it only shows 1024mb in windows, but it will use the 2 cards, for better performance?
even GTA on the pc is running prity crap..

Not even touched prototype or cysis..

 

[Helloworld_98]

^ GTA is CPU based not GPU based.

Crysis won't run great anyway, in SLI the 9500GT's would probably perform between a 9600GT and a 9800GT.

 

[mrthrust]

^ GTA is CPU based not GPU based.

Crysis won't run great anyway, in SLI the 9500GT's would probably perform between a 9600GT and a 9800GT.

I would have thought a:

Intel Quad 2.8,
8gb mem
2x 9500gt GFX cards

would have run it nicely....
dont get me wrong it runs ok i suppose,
its only when there's a massive gun fight or lots of people on the screen at once..

 

[Mousemonkey]

You need to run 3D mark or something to get the SLi bars on screen, you will see something like this

as for the RAM it has to store the same data on both cards at the same time thus it only 'sees' one amount of RAM, it's like having two photo's of the same scene and whilst you can have a photograph in each hand you will be looking at the same picture thus you only have 'one' even though at first glance you appear have two.

 

[mrthrust]

as for the RAM it has to store the same data on both cards at the same time thus it only 'sees' one amount of RAM, it's like having two photo's of the same scene and whilst you can have a photograph in each hand you will be looking at the same picture thus you only have 'one' even though at first glance you appear have two.

Well that has to be one of the best analogies ive ever heard... cheers for that..

btw which 3d mark is that your running.? any special options to be enabled to see the bars?

 

[Mousemonkey]

Thank you, I'm glad it made some sort of sense. That is a screenshot from Crysis running the Ultra hack and the option to get the bars up can be found here:-

 

[Dahak]

Actually,lower performing nvidia cards do run in sli,they just don't require the bridge as the pci-e slots can handle the work.Whereas mainstream and higher cards do require the bridge.

Dahak