GA-P35-DS3P sli question

[xuz113]

I just bought gigabyte GA-P35-DS3P board.

The board has two pcie X16 slot, it should be sli ready. But why there is no sli bridge in the box? how are you guys doing sli or crossfire?

 

[aevm]

Ummm, just because it has the slots there it doesn't mean it supports SLI. I believe you can run 2 ATI cards on it, one at 16x and one at 4x. (Or both at 8x, don't remember right now, it's not really that important). You can't do SLI with that board AFAIK.

If you're serious about SLI I suggest you return it and get an eVGA 680i instead.

 

[xuz113]

So if I buy two ATI cards to do crossfire, the card comes with the bridge to do the crossfire? (because the board does not give any cable to connect two vedio cards.) I never run 2 vedio cards before so the questions may sound stupid.

 

[therealchrist]

Yes the cards come with the bridges.

 

[aevm]

Yeah. My GA-P35C-DS3R came with 4 SATA cables, an IDE cable, and a software CD. No bridge.

 

[Crashman]

So if I buy two ATI cards to do crossfire, the card comes with the bridge to do the crossfire? (because the board does not give any cable to connect two vedio cards.) I never run 2 vedio cards before so the questions may sound stupid.

The Crossfire Edition cards come with two bridges. The standard cards don't. You need a Crossfire Edition card just to get the bridges, the cards are actually the same.

Not that Crossfire will work well, your board doesn't have two X16 slots, it has an X16 and an X4 (wired to an x16 slot just so the longer cards will fit).

 

[chookman]

To my knowledge CrossFire doesnt need a bridge its done off the controller (master) card and through the PCIe bus?

I know there is some boards that you can get that you can switch from 16x 4x to 8x 8x

 

[gamehostingreviews]

I have a single 8800 GTS. Does it matter which slot I stick it in? I don't plan on using SLI at all.

 

[aevm]

Yes. Use the 16x slot. Not sure which of them that is, you'll have to check the motherboard's manual. I'm guessing it's the blue one, so that a thick video card blocks a useless PCI-E x1 slot and not a PCI slot.

 

[gamehostingreviews]

According to another post on a different forum the x16 can refer to both the size and the speed of the PCI-e architecture. That was the part that was throwing me for a loop. Upon further review of the manual it looks like the the top slot is the only one that supports full 16x.

 

[aevm]

Oh yeah, lots of manufacturers say things like "Unbelievable graphics performance with dual 16x slots" in large print and then in fine print on the second page they say (electrical 16x + 4x). Marketing tricks... The only chipset that really does 16x+16x today is 680i, but x38 will also have that capability when it's released next month.

 

[gamehostingreviews]

In summary: Shoot the marketing guys, spare the engineers.

Thanks.