Two 256 7800 GTXs or One 512 7800 GTX?

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Ackmed

Diamond Member
Oct 1, 2003
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560
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Yeah, worked fine. Installed it yesterday, and its up and running. Took about 20 mins, if that from start to finish. Its actually just a NF4-D too.

Im still a bit ignorant on the different rendering methods of SLI, and the game profiles and such. Having a harder time than I would like to find out which are the best for me. And my BF2 profile doesnt seem to want to work. :( I still have my NV silencer on the top card, but obviously its too big for the bottom card. Which the GTX's had dual slot coolers like ATi's.. oh well.

edit, here are some pics of it; Pic one of the system, and Pic 2 of the cards. Your old one, is now happy with my old one. :)

(change the numbers to see more pics, 1-8)
 

lopri

Elite Member
Jul 27, 2002
13,310
687
126
That is a gorgeous build! I don't know why I can't do a cabling like that.
Which ForceWare drivers let you SLI with the Ultra board?
 

Ackmed

Diamond Member
Oct 1, 2003
8,499
560
126
Any of them will. Its a hardware mod, so no software can detect it. Its just a simple bridge between two contacts on the chipset itself. I went ahead and enabled SataII as well, not that I play to use it anytime soon. I am on the 81.85's though, all seems well besides one crash.

As for the cabling.. I actually want longer IDE cables so I can go behind the mobo tray, but cant seem to find any in black. :/ Thanks for the compliment though. :)
 

Elfear

Diamond Member
May 30, 2004
7,163
819
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Originally posted by: vikingblade
Elfear...I see that youre running SLI'd 7800GTs. Can you share your experience. Ease of Set up, Performance etc... Anything else I should be aware of before making a final decision to go SLI. tHANKS

If I hadn't decided to watercool the cards it would have been a lot easier. The only difficulty I had with SLI was trying to find a good FEAR profile (which I found on Nvnews.net). Other than that it was a piece of cake. Ventilation is always a concern, so make sure you have adequate airflow.

Performance is nothing short of astounding. I was using a 7800GTX clocked at 520/1350 and these GTs just blow it away. In HL2: Lost Coast I saw an 80% increase in framerate and in FarCry I saw about the same. COD2 runs pretty smoothly at 1920x1200 2AA/8AF everything maxed. In FEAR I get an average of 49fps with 97% above 40fps at 1600x1200 4AA/8AF everything maxed. Definetely worth it in my opinion.
 

RampantAndroid

Diamond Member
Jun 27, 2004
6,591
3
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Originally posted by: lopri
Originally posted by: RampantAndroid
Dual rail is much better...two independantly regulated 12v rails...that's much better than 1 single rail....two rails means if one is overloaded, the other won't be affected...do something to that single rail PSU, and everything will suffer.
Dual 12V rails mean ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewtopic.php?t=23916

P.S. Hey, Ackmed, were you able to turn Ultra-D to SLI?


Yes, they DO mean something...as I said, each rail has its own regulation on it...think of it as two seperate LM317T voltage regulators...each can take around 1A I think, any voltage you like....now would you prefer one of those at 2A where any little fluctuation will easily pull your voltage down by .5 or more, or take two of them rate 1A each...if you overload them, each one will suffer a small voltage drop...keeping the voltages closer to the operating specs.

Same way in a PSU, just instead of solid state voltage regulators, its a switching PSU.
 

caz67

Golden Member
Jan 4, 2004
1,369
0
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Originally posted by: GOREGRINDER
just get a second gtx and rock your games,..the only thing faster will be 2x512mb 7800gtx's sli

Yeah baby, trust me..!!!