4 monitors: A8N Deluxe or Premium?

[aiken]

I'm building a system that will primarily be used for software development. I've already got most of the parts, including two XFX 6600GT video cards. I had been waiting on the a8n premium board because of its software based SLI selection, but now I'm wondering if I understood that correctly.

Given that both video cards will always be active, mostly in a two-card, four-monitor configuration, would there ever be a time to put the motherboard into non-SLI mode? The more I read, the more it looks like I would just change the SLI setting in the driver to play a game in SLI mode on a single monitor, and that there would never be a time to turn off SLI mode on the motherboard via BIOS or the selector card thingy. Can someone more knowledgeable chime in?

For bonus points, does anyone have a reasonable expectation on when the 90nm process 3800+ and 4000+ a64 CPU's will be readily available (ie, orderable from Newegg)?

Thanks!
-b

 

[GuitarDaddy]

You will have to use non-sli mode if you use 4 monitors, In sli mode only the top output on the card in slot one works. With sli you can only use one monitor.

If you want to use SLI for gaming, you will have to switch back and forth.

 

[aiken]

I understand that, but what I'm confused about is the role of the SLI adapter card in the A8N deluxe and the SLI bios setting in the A8N premium. I'm starting to think that both of those would always be set to SLI, and then SLI itself would just be enabled/disabled in the nvidia driver.

To put it another way: when running normall (four monitors, two cards), would the SLI selector card be in SLI mode or non-SLI mode on the a8n deluxe motherboard? I had thought it would be in non-SLI mode, but reading about how the card splits the PCIe bus into two 8 lane slots, I'm starting to think that normal windows usage with four monitors would use the same setting as SLI, and the driver would just be told not to actually do SLI.

Cheers
-b