New drivers offer mixed vendor support

[HighCalibreHooch]

I would like to match up my 6600GT with another 6600GT, or perhaps a 6600 or 6600 LE. Are the latter two possible?

According to the readme in the latest build for nvidia Foreware drivers, the 81 series drivers will offer "SLI mixed vendor support."

http://www.tweaksrus.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=1999

Does this mean any 6600GT can be paired with any 6600GT, or does it mean any two SLI video cards can be paired (i.e. 6600GT & 6600LE)?

-hch

 

[HighCalibreHooch]

bump

 

[HighCalibreHooch]

do the peter griffin bump

 

[lifeguard1999]

The 80.xx drivers do support mixing and matching different vendors cards and cards with different BIOS settings. However, they are not released yet and are not WHQL. There are leaked versions out there, but they have some issues with them still.

 

[HighCalibreHooch]

Interesting stuff. Any word of pairing different chips (i.e 660GT with 6600 or 6800)?

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

I do not believe thats possible, and its a hardware issue. Crossfire can do mixing though.

 

[AmdInside]

You can mix different card manufacturers as long as the chip is the same, so yes, you can mix two differen Geforce 6600GT cards. Even if the video BIOS are different or if each card is clocked different (for example OC cards). The feature I am most looking forward to is switching SLI modes on the fly (no reboot required).

 

[LTC8K6]

You can't SLI anything below a 6600GT anyway.

 

[HighCalibreHooch]

Actually I'm pretty sure the vanilla 6600s and the 6600LE units are SLI-capable. Since the 6600LE are dirt cheap I was hoping to slap one of those beside my 6600GT as a cheap upgrade (with SLI motherboard of course).

P.S. why would anyone want to SLI (verb) two 6600LE's anyway? Probably only as fast as one 6600GT....

 

[AmdInside]

You can SLI two Geforce 6600LE and Geforce 6600 cards:

http://www.slizone.com/object/slizone_build.html#certified_addincards

 

[erwos]

Originally posted by: DLeRium
I do not believe thats possible, and its a hardware issue. Crossfire can do mixing though.

Can it? I've only seen slides that indicate X800s can CF with other X800s, and X850s can only CF with other X850s.

I also find it somewhat difficult to believe nVidia couldn't do a GPU and memory clock speed match (to the lowest common denominator) to keep everyone in synch, given roughly corresponding cards (ie, 6600 and 6600GT).

-Erwos

 

[LTC8K6]

You can SLI two Geforce 6600LE and Geforce 6600 cards:

Yeah, but that wasn't true initially. For a long time it was only 6600GT and above.

 

[compgeek89]

6600 / 6600 LE and below use SLI without the bridge connector.

If you were to even manage pairing a 6600 GT with a 6600 Vanilla or LE itd be worse than a single 6600 GT as the card would be dumbed down to the lowest common denominator.

 

[HighCalibreHooch]

Like a three-legged race; they could only go as fast as the slowest card. That would indeed suck.

 

[bdoople]

Originally posted by: DLeRium
I do not believe thats possible, and its a hardware issue. Crossfire can do mixing though.

FanATIcs creep up again!

Ya know what crossfire can't do? 1600x1200@85hz.

 

[Topweasel]

Originally posted by: HighCalibreHooch
Like a three-legged race; they could only go as fast as the slowest card. That would indeed suck.

Actually Nvidias driver has alwas done on the fly load balancing for one of the modes which mean two very different speed cards would be allowed to each do the max the could.

Aslo All 6*** cards and higher (this ncludes the 6200) work in SLI. The ones with a Bridge connection (GT, GTX, Ultra) will perform better with the Bridge chip connected then when its not.

Mixed cards have always been supported but the same bios had to be loaded on both (making it seems like the same card) which can be updated by anybody. the 8*.** drivers Eliminate this and are supposed to allow for seperate overclocks and defualt speeds for both cards. As it stands you still would need matching cores, but as the Load balancing gets more and more streamlined I am pretty sure they can get it to the point where matching series will be allowed. I doubt they will ever allow a G70 to G80 type SLI setup.