Pseudo-SLI

[keymaker78]

SLI on non-SLI board.
MSI k8n neo4 platinum
I was just going thru some articles and found this interesting one. Its from www.hothardware.com

"this board is based on the nForce 4 Ultra chipset and doesn't have official support for NVIDIA's SLI technology (although thanks to some creative engineering it can support more than 1 graphics card)"

and

"The K8N Neo4 Platinum has a relatively unique slot configuration, when compared to most of today's nForce 4 Ultra based motherboards. At the top spot is a PCI Express x4 slot, followed by a PCI Express x1 slot, the PCI Express x16 PEG slot and four standard PCI slots (the orange slot is reserved for a proprietary communications card according to MSI).

If you look very closely at the pictures of the first x4 slot, you'll notice something interesting. The backside of the slot is notched. This is done so that a standard PCI Express graphics card can be inserted. This used to allow this board to function in a pseudo-SLI mode, until NVIDIA blocked this feature in later driver revisions (v66.96 was the last revision that worked). The slot is still useful though should you want to run multiple monitors using dual graphics cards."

So if i use a driver released before v66.96 can i get SLI performance with 2 vga cards on a non-sli mobo? Thanks.

Here is the link
http://www.hothardware.com/viewarticle.cfm?page=6&articleid=678&cid=3

 

[keymaker78]

bump....

 

[Furen]

That driver is pretty old. I think SLI works better with the newer drivers. Also, using SLI on 4x + 16x slots is slower than doing 8x + 8x. Lastly, you'd need to get an SLI bridge, somehow.

 

[t3h l337 n3wb]

What kind of half decent video card goes in a 4x slot anyways?

 

[imported_Kensai]

Originally posted by: t3h l337 n3wb
What kind of half decent video card goes in a 4x slot anyways?

I've put an x850XT in a physical x16 configured for x4... Great for the extra monitor.

 

[Hacp]

Wait... DOesn't video cards these days barely use 4x? So would it matter, if the SLI Information is being moved through the SLI bridge instead of the PCI-Express bus(I would assume)

 

[t3h l337 n3wb]

A current generation video card, say like an X800XL, uses a bit more than 4x. I'd guess maybe somewhere around 5x-6x. I was under the impresion, however, that there was no such thing as a current generation video card made for a PCIe 4x slot Please correct me if I'm wrong...

 

[ND40oz]

Originally posted by: keymaker78

If you look very closely at the pictures of the first x4 slot, you'll notice something interesting. The backside of the slot is notched. This is done so that a standard PCI Express graphics card can be inserted.

 

[t3h l337 n3wb]

Oh, I see... But they still wouldn't be able to run in SLI right, since you need the bridge? Wouldn't this then be just like the DFI Lanparty Ultra-D with 2 video card slots but no SLI (Although it can be modded to SLI)?