NVIDIA SLI

[Ruroni]

Is NVIDIA SLI the only way to have two PCI-e video cards?

Why only nVidia MoBos, and only with nVidia Video cards? I thought PCI-e was a universal slot/port, available even for Mac.

So how come using 2 PCI-e slots to double up on the GPU performance is an nVidia thing, only?
Not even Intel's processors (wasn't intel a major contributor in the development of PCI-e?) can have PCI-e?

¿or am I mistaken, and other MoBo's and GPUs can work it too?

Just curious.

 

[amol]

About the motherboards : You can get a VIA K8T890 Pro board

About the video cards : ATi will soon unveil their SLi solution (though it will bear a different name)

About Intel : the nForce5 boards (i believe) will support SLi

it's a newer technology, you gotta wait

 

[stevty2889]

Most non-sli motherboards don't have more than one 16x PCIe slot. There are some server boards that can support multiple PCIe graphics cards, but not in SLI. SLI isn't just having to graphics cards, it is linking them together and splitting the work. IE your playing a game, and one the video cards work together take turns rendering the frames. Nvidia makes the only SLI chipset right now, and only works with their cards. As Amol said, ATI is currently working on their own version of SLI.

 

[HappyCracker]

Yes but could you not just set that SLi card to SLI mode to setup the two 8x slots and just not use the SLi bridge between the cards? You would then have two 8x slots and could put two cards in there for 4 monitor support, I'd imagine ATi cards would work there also.

 

[Sqube]

With 4 monitors, I wonder would you have to start worrying about sending too much information? Or is the PCI-e bus that big?

 

[Melchior]

Worry aobut sending too much information? Um... PCI cards can do this. Its just a monitor.

And no, Nvidia's drivers dont allow for more than 1 monitor right now, which sucks alot. But it should be possible.

Ultimately, its a drivers thing, and what the chipset and graphics cards support. Obviously, ATIs cards aren't built for SLI so it won't work.