SLI / CrossFire FAQs

[meodowla]

Hello and welcome to the forums mate
Your motherboard is this :
http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?modelmenu=2&model=2181&l1=3&l2=149&l3=676&l4=0
It has only one PCI-E 2.0 slot,so it supports only one ATI card and supports Nvidi Hybrid SLI.

Ya... its my motherboard... And i'm using ATi GPU on Nvidia chipset board(which support Hybrid SLi).
Is it possible for me to use Hybrid SLI or Crossfire with the IGP Nvidia 8300....

 

[nukemaster]

Hybrid SLI will only work with select Nvidia cards. It will not work with your ATI card

 

[Maziar]

Hey nuke,long time noe see mate
Well i have a question here,i know this board has only 1 PCI-E 2.0 slot so how it supports HybridSLI ?

 

[nukemaster]

Hybrid SLI uses the onboard GPU to assist the dedicated one(or the other way around 😛).

It works the same as AMD's Hybrid Crossfire that allows the integrated HD3200 on 780G boards to run with another card like the 3450 and give a decent performance boost.

Nvidia's biggest advantage is with the right hardware and software the system can shut off the dedicated video card when not in use and rely only on the power saving onboard video card. Onboard is more then enough to surf around the net and stuff.

Nvidia
http://www.nvidia.com/object/hybrid_sli_desktop.html

Toms test when the 780G was released
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-780g-chipset,1785.html

 

[Maziar]

thanks for the information mate

 

[meodowla]

Check this image:

 

[Maziar]

So ?

 

[nukemaster]

You can not run Nvidia and ATI drivers together on Vista. MS was sick of driver conflicts with one to another,. Disable the onboard in the bios.

 

[Maziar]

Ow i didnt notice the mark on the nvidia one 😀

So nuke,he can only run one in VISTA?
How about XP ?

 

[meodowla]

Thats the problem.... 8300 can't be disabled while in Vista... in XP it does'nt appear...... I tried to disable it in BIOS.... Primary Video Adapter set to PCIE.... Onboard video adapter has two Options, Auto and Enable... so set to Auto.. Hybrid SLI also have Auto and Enable.... It also set to Auto...
I've 4GB RAM... but in Vista it shows only 3.5GB... When Hybrid SLI enabled, RAM again reduces to 2.75GB..

 

[nukemaster]

Just leave it as it is, You only get 3.5 gigs of memory because your 48XX card is taking 512 megabytes of address space. XP 64(or Vista 64) would have solved that issue, but there is no problem with 3.5 gigs of ram.

You can disable the Nvidia one(in vista), but it should not make a difference.

Maziar - Under XP, at least if the board supports it(some do disable cards when another is inserted, but i doubt its the case here) you can use both, I have used ATI and NV cards together(XT1900 and 8800GTX on a 430 watt psu I am brave) before and it worked. There is a hack to make both cards run under Vista, but i am not sure how stable it is.

 

[Maziar]

thanks alot for the tip mate

 

[meodowla]

Just leave it as it is, You only get 3.5 gigs of memory because your 48XX card is taking 512 megabytes of address space. XP 64 would have solved that issue, but there is not problem with 3.5 gigs of ram.

You can disable the Nvidia one(in vista), but it should not make a difference.

Maziar - Under XP, at least if the board supports it(some do disable cards when another is inserted, but i doubt its the case here) you can use both, I have used ATI and NV cards together(XT1900 and 8800GTX on a 430 watt psu I am brave) before and it worked. There is a hack to make both cards run under Vista, but i am not sure how stable it is.

Both the cards work together..??? THats COOL..

 

[nukemaster]

The do not help each other. they can just drive 2 screens each.

But yes they did both work at the same time.

 

[meodowla]

I tried XP64... now it shows 4GB exactly.... thanks..

 

[G-wiz]

i have a question for you guys i have good amount of cash to buy 2 4870 1gb or 2 Gtx 260 core 216 i want your honest opinion of which of these cards should i buy cause i've been going back and forth for about 3 days now about which of these cards to go with. thank you

 

[nukemaster]

Check the benchmarks for the games you play. Some games favor ATI others Nvidia. I personally fine ATI's Vista drivers to be more stable, but it was a 8800GTX and they have worked out many bugs.

 

[Maziar]

I would get HD 4870 over GTX 260 Core 216 they both perform near each other but the ATI card has a lead over its Nvida's rival.

 

[meodowla]

Check the benchmarks for the games you play. Some games favor ATI others Nvidia. I personally fine ATI's Vista drivers to be more stable, but it was a 8800GTX and they have worked out many bugs.

Could you quote some games which are good at Ati and not good at nVidia...???

 

[nukemaster]

The source engine used in HL 2 ran far better on ATI hardware at the time it is still slightly better on Ati hardware but the fps are pretty much cpu limited now anyway.

Assassins Creed used to run faster on ATI hardware until it was patched to remove the DX 10.1 advantage ATI had in that title.

Serious Sam 2 seemed to favor ATI hardware of its time.

Nvidia owns the performance crown for Crysis, ET: Quake wars as well as many OpenGL based games.

There are some times where Nvidia is the only way to go (Crysis) and others where ATI is better.

Both companies also leap frog in performance anyway.

But if you main game will be Crysis and games based on its engine, then you are better off getting Nvidia now.

There are some questionable things Nvidia has done too

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=3320&p=6

On top of that daily crashes/poor performance on some games under Vista64 that I would have blamed on MS if I had not tossed in an old ATI card to test.

I am no fanboy here, I like my 8800GTX allot(on hell of a card and way ahead of its time), but under Vista64 its a lost cause with even the latest driver still crashing some games to a black screen.

 

[websquad]

I have a Windows XP/Pro system, eVGA 780i motherboard, Q6600 processor, and 4GB RAM. In this is a nVidia GeForce 8800GT, 512MB, SLI display, driving a pair of 19" panels (1280x1024). 750W power supply.

Saturday I added a 22"W panel (1680x1050) and am driving it with an DVGA UV Plus UV16 USB display port adapter.

From the motherboard specs, it appears to have 1 x PCIe and 2 x PCI slots. It also says that all three PCIE GPU slots are 16x.

http://www.evga.com/products/pdf/132-CK-NF78-A1.pdf

Performance with the USB port thing sucks.

For the record, I don't do games. So a high frame rate is not an issue.

Can I add a non-SLI display adapter? Will the RAM in the new card reduce the amount of available RAM to my XP (32-bit environment) applications?

I'd like to minimize my cash outlay. Any suggestions?

 

[nukemaster]

I see no reason why you can not just add some low end video card to the mix.

XP 32-bit can only address 4 gigs of total memory including your video memory and other devices with onboard memory.

So if you have 4 gigs(you do 😛) your 8800 would already bring you to ~3.5 add another card to the mix and your down to ~3.0-3.25. Since you do not game, get something with lower VRAM.

 

[Maziar]

nuke is right,when you dont game then get a lower end card,by saying non-SLI display adapter you mean a non-SLI ready card? if so then yes but its not really important because most of the cards are SLI-ready.

 

[meodowla]

Check this. What is this? Hybrid SLi?

From:http://www.guru3d.com/article/physx-by-nvidia-review/3

 

[Maziar]

No,the 9600 card is used as a PhysX card.