Question on dual gpu setups

[ralc001]

Sorry about asking what may be a noobie question but here it goes.

As far as I know, to use sli capable nvidia cards in sli configuration, you just need two identical cards.

For crossfire capable ati cards, you need one card that is a crossfire edition card, and one card that is the normal version.

My question is, if you use a motherboard that is specifically tailored for crossfire ati cards, does it waive the requirement that one card needs to be a crossfire edition? Or does it still need one crossfire edition card and one normal card?

Thanks.

 

[ddwaldon]

For sli the cards do not have to be identicle. They can be from different manufatures and even
have different memory. But its better to have to of the same.

For the ati i believe you only need one card to be c/f for it to work.

 

[tj_the_first]

Yeah there's very little information going around when it comes to Crossfire.
http://ati.amd.com/technology/crossfire/buildyourown.html
http://ati.amd.com/technology/crossfire/howitworksdemo.html

■You can't run Crossfire in a SLI motherboard. You can have two graphics cards and run 4 monitors but you can't configure them in Crossfire mode.
■You only need a Crossfire edition card if you're not using X1950Pro or HD 2xxx cards. There are no crossfire edition cards in these types because they all have internal crossfire.
■You must use the interconnect to link the cards - internal flex bridge or external cable. Internal is better since it's not ugly.
■Enable Crossfire in Catalyst Control Center and you're done.

Hope this helps and that if I'm wrong someone points it out before I make my crossfire system with another X1950Pro.

 

[ralc001]

Ah thanks a lot. That explains quite a few things. Another thing then:

I understand that its best not to use 2 sli'd cards on a crossfire mobo and not to use 2 crossfire'd cards on an sli mobo.

Are there mobo's out there where you can either use 2 nvidia cards sli'd or 2 ati cards crossfire'd? Or are all mobo's "optimized" for either sli or crossfire?

Again, thanks for the help.

 

[badge]

MB's are SLI OR Crossfire, and NOT manufactured with the option of having both setups on the same board.

 

[jitpublisher]

While you can run any single GPU on any motherboard with fairly equal results, you can even run 2 seperate GPU's at the same time, not linked. But you throw that completely out the window if you want to run 2 cards in SLI or Crossfire

Yes, if you want to run Crossfire, the motherboard MUST be Crossfire Compatible.
Same for SLI, the motherboard MUST be an SLI chipset on the motherboard.
You cannot run Crossfire on an SLI (nvidia) chipset motherboard, and likewise you can't run SLI on a motherboard with an ATI chipset.

Now, there have been rumors of people who have hacked the drivers and got SLI to work on other chipsets, but I also heard that is all they would do....just work....they did not work well.

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

Well there's always been the work-arounds, but it's interesting that the first company to bring us multi-VPU in ALX with the intel Tumwater might be the one that brings another solution for both companies to one location again.

http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=9017

Intel's new X38 (particularly the X38A) may end up supporting both SLi and Xfire through the work of Foxconn, and that likely means that it will extend to other X38 based mobos, despite the mention of locking it to the BIOS (easily hacked).

http://img.hexus.net/v2/internationalevents/computex2007/JARS/Wednesday/DSCF3977_cropped-big.jpg

 

[badge]

Interesting...I was not aware until now. I have no experience whatsoever with Foxconn products. Either or...hmmm interesting selling point.

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

Yeah Foxconn's actually been around a while but they were primarily the builder of other people's hardware. They made lots of ATi's partners board (along with Sapphire and Celestica), IIRC Powercolor's boards we made by Foxconn. They started striking out on their own more about 2 years ago and then started making both ATi and nV boards. So it's not surprising that they're doing this, but what is surprising is that the Juggernaut ASUS+Gigabyte partnership didn't use their huge clout with ATi & nV to do this with their MoBos earlier (would've probably saved that partnership [A+G]).

 

[badge]

Oh man. I guess it means Foxconn has the hot chicks for Reps.

I'll have to pay more attention.