ati and current n4 boards

[tterris]

would someone clear up this mirk that is my understanding real quick. i'm under the impression that on the current n4 boards coming out (asus, gigabyte and msi) none will support an ati (x800xt) in SLI. does this mean that the board will only support nvidia cards or that it can only support 1 ati card not linked by SLI?

 

[HiroProt]

AFAIK ATI cards will run fine, just not in SLI mode. I know that you can even run an nVidia card and an ATI card at the same time, with 4 screens, in non-SLI mode.

 

[Rhin0]

It the card doesn't support SLI then you won't be able to.

I doubt ATI is going to support an Nvidia technology unless they absolutely have to.

 

[Kovie]

ATI currently does not produce SLI capable cards. SLI as done by nvidia is a direct card to card transfer and not done over the PCIe lanes, so ATI based cards as of the current generation (and probably for the forseeable future) are not capable of doing it the way nVidia does it. ATI is working on SLI but not much is known about what they plan to do with it.

It doesnt mean at all that they cannot use ATI cards, it just means that current generation ATi cards are not capable of SLI.

 

[Sylvanas]

SLI will be supported with ATI with their next gen 'R520' they call it 'AMR' or multirendering. id expect to see the Xpress200 boards showing up with the capability sometime next year when the R520 is released.

 

[tterris]

but, will i be able to buy 2 sli-capable ati cards that will run on the current n4 boards, or will i have to buy a completely new board that supports ati sli?

 

[Dethfrumbelo]

ATI will have a dual GFX card solution sometime next year, and it will likely not be compatible with nVidia's SLI. In order to run SLI you need a nVidia mobo and nVidia cards. To run ATIs dual GFX, whatever they're going to call it, you'll need an ATI mobo and ATI cards.

 

[gobucks]

Unless ATI is just dying to wage a competing standards war (think MXM versus ATI's standard for mobile PCIe), which I doubt, they will make it compatible with existing SLI motherboards. However, I wouldn't get my hopes up for getting an ATI SLI card anytime soon. It's looking like July at the earliest - after all, ATI is just now gearing up for its first refresh of the R420, which will be the X850 series (as well as a few new X800 products), so i doubt they are gonna be releasing the R520 until the R480 cards have plenty of time to get into market and sell.

 

[flexy]

Originally posted by: tterris
would someone clear up this mirk that is my understanding real quick. i'm under the impression that on the current n4 boards coming out (asus, gigabyte and msi) none will support an ati (x800xt) in SLI. does this mean that the board will only support nvidia cards or that it can only support 1 ati card not linked by SLI?

ATI will have their own SLI solutions