Rules of sli??

[370forlife]

I'm going to get a brand spankin' new PNY pci-e16x 2.0 nvidia 9800GT 512mb video card, so what am i going to do with my old XFX pci-e16x 1.0 8600GT 512mb? My question is can i sli it with my new 9800GT??? My biostar Tpower N750 has a 750a chipset, and 2 pci-e 16x 2.0 slots (8x in sli i believe,) if not i will put it back in my old ECS 3200+ motherboard so i can do some decent gaming on my computer at my dads.

[stevo1210]

Re: Rules of sli??

I dunno, but I think if you want SLI mode to work, the two cards may have to be based on the same chipset?
I was never into SLI and Xfire stuff so I'm not really sure myself.

[zandrax]

Re: Rules of sli??

@ 370: Stevo is right. From wikipedia:

Cards from two separate retail companies will work together in SLI mode, but they must be the same GPU model (e.g. G70, G73, G80, etc). The cards may have different BIOS revisions, different default clock speeds, or even different memory sizes. However, the fastest card – or the card with more memory - will run at the speed of the slower card or disable its additional memory.

Since the 9800GT is a G92 and the 8600 is a G84 chip, SLI won't work; you'll have multiple output instead.

Zandrax

[370forlife]

Re: Rules of sli??

so, basically, if i sli'd them, the 9800GT would run at the speed of the 8600GT (pointless then) but i could use up to 4 displays?

[kikkoman]

Re: Rules of sli??

right. but you don't even need to sli them for 4 display mode. (actually up to 5 since your board has onboard video).
on the other hand your stuff supports HybridSLI (the 9800gt with the onboard graphics)... but no idea if its worth it.

[dood]

Re: Rules of sli??

so, basically, if i sli'd them, the 9800GT would run at the speed of the 8600GT (pointless then) but i could use up to 4 displays?

No, you cannot SLI the two together. They are different chipsets, as pointed out above.

The clockspeed/memory size thing is if you have two of the same chipset cards that just happen to be running at different speeds (some manufacturers bump their speeds up from the factory over the standard specification), or have different memory sizes.

[370forlife]

Re: Rules of sli??

right. but you don't even need to sli them for 4 display mode. (actually up to 5 since your board has onboard video).
on the other hand your stuff supports HybridSLI (the 9800gt with the onboard graphics)... but no idea if its worth it.

Well, it would be 3 with hybrid sli, 1 DVI (with HDMI audio pass through,) on the motherboard, 2 dvi on the vid card. IDK that you can do regular sli and hybrid sli at the same time though.