Non-SLI or Crossfire dual-graphics card configuration??

[javguy]

I am quite a newbie here. Basically I have 2 ATI graphics cards. First is a PowerColor X800 XL and the second one is an ATI X800 Pro.

None of these cards are crossfire enabled, ready or whatever that term is. I want to use both of these cards together so they won't go to waste.

I am planning to put together a Conroe system, already have the E6600 chip on order, planning on getting the Asus P5B Delulxemotherboard to go along with it. This motherboard does not support SLI nor Crossfire, which I don't have anyhow so I think its a good fit for now. Its SATA drive access speeds and overclocking capabilities suit my needs.

My questions are:

1) will my 2 graphics cards work alongside in this board? I've never toyed with the dual graphics card solution so I'm asking if I could just plop in any 2 video cards into these slots even though they're not sli or crossfire.

2) how would they performance comparable to say a single X1900 or a Nvidia 7900?

3) Why would Asus make a high-end board without SLI or Crossfire support? Do they still make high-end video cards that aren't SLI or Crossfire capable? I'm wondering this for when I will upgrade my video card in about a years time. I don't want to have a mb that does not support the future standard.

Thanks in advance.

 

[lamere]

1) One of them needs to be a crossfire ready card (special input on the card, not a standard DVI out), so unless your card came with a dongle adapter to hook them both up, you can't use them.

2) Don't know

3) Conroe is in the very early stages, give it time

 

[Lord Evermore]

1) They will work as independent graphics cards with separate monitors. You're already aware your board doesn't support Crossfire or SLI. There's no way to make the two cards "team up" to perform any better than one card alone. Also, the second x16 slot on that board is only x16 physically, it runs at x2 or x4 bandwidth mode.

Only the X1300 and X1600 series will work in Crossfire mode without one of them being "Crossfire Edition" with the input port and external cable. If one of your cards were Crossfire Edition, then it would work, as the X800 Crossfire will work with any other X800, Pro, XL, whatever.

http://www.ati.com/technology/crossfire/howitworks.html

2) They won't perform any different than if you ran only one card at a time, since you can't team them together. The card in the second slot will also possibly perform less well than it would in the first slot, due to the PCIe bandwidth limit.

3) Because not everybody wants to use Crossfire or SLI but still wants high performance and features in everything else. Crossfire and SLI are very low value for the money. They're something you get because you have money to burn, not because they provide good performance for the amount they cost. SLI and Crossfire will never be "standard" in that people expect them to be available even on cheap boards. Within a couple of years, every high-end single video card available will perform better than the very best current cards in SLI.

If you want Crossfire and SLI, there are plenty of other models of mainboard that do support them. Intel happens to make some of the best chipsets, but isn't focused on making them particularly geared toward GPU-teaming. So people who want the quality of an Intel chipset don't have a lot of choices for GPU-teaming capability, so Asus and others make high-end boards using Intel chips but have to leave out SLI or Crossfire.

nvidia of course isn't going to make SLI available on Intel chipsets because they want you to buy an nvidia chipset, and ATI's chipset market is so small they DID make it possible on some Intel chipsets because that meant more sales of ATI video cards. Now that ATI is owned by AMD, there may or may not ever be Crossfire on future Intel chipsets, since AMD would rather you buy an AMD processor in order to get Crossfire.