So I'm interested in a new, preferably SLI or perhaps RD580 based, motherboard. Since so many boards based on nforce4 SLI or nforce SLI x16 made by the Tier I usual suspects appear very similar in performance, I'm paying attention to things like layout... more touchy-feely issues! I'm dead set on passive cooling, but one thing I'd like to have that I haven't found clearly indicated in reviews or Newegg's site is the physical solution for SLI/Crossfire.
That is, which boards require a dongle between the two VGA cards' DVI outputs (that's just Crossfire, right?), which require the PCB connector that clips two VGA cards together inside the case and sits parallel to the mobo, and what mobos, if any, allow you to use EITHER physical PCIe x16 slot for a single VGA card without a dummy card in the empty slot? As you can probably tell that's what I'd really like: a dual PCIe x16 board so that I can expand to two VGA cards if I eventually want, but that also allows me to use either slot if I'm only going to have one card for the time being. BIOS-enabled SLI/Xfire without a jumper, etc. would also be nice. So far I haven't found one like this...
That is, which boards require a dongle between the two VGA cards' DVI outputs (that's just Crossfire, right?), which require the PCB connector that clips two VGA cards together inside the case and sits parallel to the mobo, and what mobos, if any, allow you to use EITHER physical PCIe x16 slot for a single VGA card without a dummy card in the empty slot? As you can probably tell that's what I'd really like: a dual PCIe x16 board so that I can expand to two VGA cards if I eventually want, but that also allows me to use either slot if I'm only going to have one card for the time being. BIOS-enabled SLI/Xfire without a jumper, etc. would also be nice. So far I haven't found one like this...
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