sli crossfire ??

[gosson]

Hi,I need to clear something up and maybe u guys can help.I know what SLI(Nvidia) and CROSSFIRE(Ati) is all about and I know about PCI Express x16 motherboard slots.But what im trying to clear up is I see SLI motherboards for sale,so are there sli motherboards that can only use PCIE X16 Nvidia graphics cards and can NOT use PCIE X16 ATI graphics cards even though the motherboard has a PCI Express x16 slot or slots and is it the same way with crossfire only motherboards??? And if u own a ati graphics card are u better off getting a crossfire only motherboard(if there is such a thing)And has anybody noticed any real differnce in useing 2 graphics cards (sli or crossfire)?
Any info on this subject is more than welcome.THANX

 

[rammedstein]

i'm not sure if i understand the question, but i'll try answer it, on my 30" at native res i notice a huge difference between 1 card and 2 cards, but i don't really notice the difference at anything below a res of 1600x1200

 

[J3EBS]

It's more dependant on the chipset, gosson. I understand what you're asking. Basically you want to know this: if a motherboard has two PCI-E X16 slots, can you use either SLI or Crossfire, right?

To use SLI, you MUST have an nVidia chipset AND two PCI-E X16 slots.

To used Crossfire, you MUST have either an ATI chipset or Intel chipset (this might change due to the AMD/ATI acquisition) and there is a bit of leniency on the PCI-E slots. This is because Crossfire needs only two PCI-E X8 slots. Because there's technically no such thing as an X8 slot, both are labelled X16 but one will only do X8.

I believe this information to be correct, but if it's not, I would like to be corrected. All this is from when I was building my PC back in mid-2006, and I don't recall any changes to said requirements. But there may very well have been some.