Mixing video cards

[DBissett]

I'm building a box primarily for work, but thinking about buying a good 16x video card for some gaming on it too. If I add a second card down the road for work does it also need to be a 16x card, or can I add a card in a slower PCI slot to run additional monitors? Any downside to this? (The work itself is not graphics intensive...trading and spreadsheets) If that's OK, then I can buy a MB with one 16x slot instead of a crossfire board and save some money. Thanks.

 

[FalseChristian]

If you buy an SLI board such as the nVidia 750i, 780i, or 790i Ultra you will have 2 GPU PCIe X16 slots. For instance my Asus P5N-D is a 750i with 2 physical 16x PCIe 2.0 slots so even if both PCIe 2.0x16 slots are filled I still get the full 16 out of both slots. Yes, your videocard has to support the PCIe 2.0 spec such as G92 8800GTs and up but you can put older PCIe 1.1 cards in there and they will work just fine.

 

[betasub]

Originally posted by: DBissett
I'm building a box primarily for work, but thinking about buying a good 16x video card for some gaming on it too. If I add a second card down the road for work does it also need to be a 16x card, or can I add a card in a slower PCI slot to run additional monitors? Any downside to this? (The work itself is not graphics intensive...trading and spreadsheets) If that's OK, then I can buy a MB with one 16x slot instead of a crossfire board and save some money. Thanks.

Yes, this will work fine and is the most common way of driving 3+ monitors. No need to go for multiple PCIe slots, or the expense of an SLI or Crossfire board (these are primarily for combining the power of GPUs for 3D gaming). A budget PCI video card will be fine, although if you use Vista it needs to be able to work with same driver as your main/other card (so same GPU manufacturer, similar generation, is advised).

 

[sgrinavi]

If I were building a box for work/play I would look into the new hybrid-sli rigs. On-board video (low power) for futzing around and a KFA 3d graphics card with a little SLI boost for good measure when you want to game

Nvidas Tech Brief

Hybrid SLI boards on The Egg

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