Does SLI require a special motherboard?

[rutski89]

I'm currently doing a Xeon E3 build with an Nvidia GTX Titan. I might want to eventually buy another Titan to make an SLI setup. This is the motherboard I'm currently considering:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157409

Will this board support SLI? It does have thetwo PCI-E 3.0 16x slots, but is that all it takes to support SLI? Do I have to look for the board to be advertised as somehow being "SLI Ready?" Or does any board with the two necessary PCI-E 3.0 16x slots automatically support SLI?

 

[Bejusek]

Minimal requirement for SLI to work is two pci-e slot working x8/x8. This board meets this requirement. The problem is that the boards supporting SLI usually come advertised as SLI ready. This costs money, because Nvidia has to certify the board themselves. Maybe to keep the price down Asrock skipped the SLI certification. Who knows...

But why would you want this board? It has no feature that 'ordinary' Z87 board doesn't have, and Z87s are 100% compatible with SLI. Why Xeon btw?

 

[rutski89]

I'm going with the Xeon because I need ECC ram.

Also, I was under the impression that the Z87 chipset doesn't support the E3 Xeon I'm getting:
http://ark.intel.com/products/75462/

That's good to hear that the only real requirement for SLI is just having the requisite PCI ports available. If that's really the case then I'm willing to take the probably-no-so-risky gamble on this not-technicall-certified-but-probably-OK board, cool.

 

[Bejusek]

Yes, Z87 supports this Xeon without problem. No ECC memory support, though. Are you going to do some scientific calculation on that machine and you need error checking?

As far as the SLI support is concerned, better give it some more googling. I'm not 100% positive this will work.

 

[rutski89]

At the moment my sights have switched to this board instead:

ASUS P9D WS

The ASUS web page there very suspiciously mentions support for CrossFireX, but neglects to say anything about SLI.

I wonder if that's basically synonymous to saying "This board doesn't support SLI"

 

[Shubham Verlekar]

Yes It supports SLI for nVidia Titan
use PCI port for SLI
ASRock C226