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Crossfire on an SLI Mobo?

J

jhuang0

Junior Member
I just purchased the Asus A8n-SLI motherboard. I have yet to get a video card, but I'd really like a system that's SLI ready in the future. The SLI motherboard was somewhat of a compromise given that ATI did not have any of its Crossfire motherboards out yet.

I have heard a couple of rumors that ATI's crossfire solution is not actually technologically dependent on the motherboard (contrary to ATI's claims that you need a crossfire motherboard), and thus, it may be possible to use an ATI Crossfire solution on an Nvidia SLI motherboard. Does anyone know if this is true?

I'm only asking because the Nvidia Geforce 6600 GT is fairly expensive compared to the ATI X800 cards that not only have more memory, but also typically beat the 6600GT in benchmarks. I'm only going to get one video card now (there's no guarantee I'll ever actually SLI the video card)... and I'd rather have an ATI card over the 6600GT. My max budget for a new video card is $200.
 
I have heard a couple of rumors that ATI's crossfire solution is not actually technologically dependent on the motherboard (contrary to ATI's claims that you need a crossfire motherboard), and thus, it may be possible to use an ATI Crossfire solution on an Nvidia SLI motherboard. Does anyone know if this is true?
Click to expand...

Just rumors so far. There has been nothing official from ATI about whether Crossfire will work in any board with two PCIe x16 ports or not.
 
As far as I know, both plan on supporting Intel chipsets but niether plan on supporting their competitors chipsets.
 
I asked the ATI rep. about this as well at a CrossFire demo, and he wasn't too specific about it. Obviously, he didn't say they would support NV chipsets, but he also didn't indicate that it wouldn't work. My guess is that ATI have tried out CrossFire on the SLI motherboards, and it probably functions. However, it certainly isn't officially supported, nor would I expect the performance to be optimal. I do think that with the (relatively) large number of enthusiasts with SLI chipsets, ATI may work to have CrossFire fully functional and supported in these motherboards. I guess it all depends on how well their CrossFire boards sell.

 
its supposed to work on the intel boards with dual x16 slots (i think there are some xeon ones like this) so maybe it will work on nvidia as well.
 
ATI just announced that Crossfire will work in an Intel 955x board. (Second slot has only 4pcie lanes so it's kind of worthless).

I suppose it could also work on an Nforce board, but I don't see any reason for NVIDIA to make a bios or driver to support it.
 
Originally posted by: Wreckage
ATI just announced that Crossfire will work in an Intel 955x board. (Second slot has only 4pcie lanes so it's kind of worthless).

I suppose it could also work on an Nforce board, but I don't see any reason for NVIDIA to make a bios or driver to support it.
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AFIAK nvidia doesn't make the BIOS, and ATi would make the driver making it possible to run on a nForce4 SLI.
 
So I guess the only logical follow up question is this: if you wanted to build a SLIish ready computer on this motherboard, but didn't want to actually buy the 2nd video card until later, would you go for the Geforce 6600 GT, or the ATI Radeon X800 Pro?

 
Originally posted by: jhuang0
So I guess the only logical follow up question is this: if you wanted to build a SLIish ready computer on this motherboard, but didn't want to actually buy the 2nd video card until later, would you go for the Geforce 6600 GT, or the ATI Radeon X800 Pro?
Click to expand...

Obviously today that would mean 6600GT...who knows about tommorrow.
 
Originally posted by: rbV5
Originally posted by: jhuang0
So I guess the only logical follow up question is this: if you wanted to build a SLIish ready computer on this motherboard, but didn't want to actually buy the 2nd video card until later, would you go for the Geforce 6600 GT, or the ATI Radeon X800 Pro?
Click to expand...

Obviously today that would mean 6600GT...who knows about tommorrow.
Click to expand...


What are you smoking? The x800Pro beats the A$$ out of the 6600GT!!!!!!
 
Originally posted by: Hacp
Originally posted by: rbV5
Originally posted by: jhuang0
So I guess the only logical follow up question is this: if you wanted to build a SLIish ready computer on this motherboard, but didn't want to actually buy the 2nd video card until later, would you go for the Geforce 6600 GT, or the ATI Radeon X800 Pro?
Click to expand...

Obviously today that would mean 6600GT...who knows about tommorrow.
Click to expand...


What are you smoking? The x800Pro beats the A$$ out of the 6600GT!!!!!!
Click to expand...

A second X800pro may not deliver much performance on that motherboard...thats todays answer for the variables he offered.
 
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