Will a GTX 460/470/460 SLI configuration work?

[Kakkoii]

I couldn't find much information on this subject, mostly due to the 460 being pretty new. And I'm no expert when it comes to the technicalities of SLI.

The GTX 460's only have 1 SLI connection, and thus you can only do dual-SLI 460's. But what if you had a 470 or 480 in-between them, with the 460's connecting to the two ports on the 470?

Would this work, or is it unknown at this point?

Thanks.

(If SLI can work in dual with a single strip SLI connector between them, why wouldn't it work like this in a 3-way configuration? I see in tri-SLI setups that it's a double-wide connector going across all three, but why? Or is it so the third card can communicate to the first card past the middle card in a cycle..)

 

[Grooveriding]

SLI only works with identical cards, not even a refresh will work with a prior model. For example, a 285 will not SLI with a 280.

 

[bryanW1995]

yeah, and besides that sli 3 way isn't much better than 2 way. not like real life.

 

[Kakkoii]

SLI only works with identical cards, not even a refresh will work with a prior model. For example, a 285 will not SLI with a 280.

Ah ok, I thought I had read you could mismatch. I guess I was thinking of Crossfire then, which you can to a certain extent.

yeah, and besides that sli 3 way isn't much better than 2 way. not like real life.

Normally that's true, but I'm not going SLI for the gaming really. I'm mainly doing it to do CUDA based computations, accelerated physics for 3D modeling/animation work and for vastly accelerated rendering times.

I'm just going to go with dual 460's then. I don't have a shitload to spend anyway XD.

 

[aka1nas]

Ah ok, I thought I had read you could mismatch. I guess I was thinking of Crossfire then, which you can to a certain extent.





Normally that's true, but I'm not going SLI for the gaming really. I'm mainly doing it to do CUDA based computations, accelerated physics for 3D modeling/animation work and for vastly accelerated rendering times.

I'm just going to go with dual 460's then. I don't have a shitload to spend anyway XD.

You don't use SLI with CUDA, you have to explicitly program your CUDA app to work with multiple cards AFAIK and then it still identifies them individually.

 

[DefRef]

I just upgraded to a pair of 460 1GBs and I really don't see how much more performance people want other than to stretch their e-peens. At 1920x1200, I'm getting 100 fps with everything full blast and 8XAA in Far Cry 2 and am getting steady 60+ fps in Crysis, albeit w/o AA. DiRT 2 demo looks so sweet, I'm getting it again for the PC when I already had it on the Xbox 360.

 

[Kakkoii]

I just upgraded to a pair of 460 1GBs and I really don't see how much more performance people want other than to stretch their e-peens. At 1920x1200, I'm getting 100 fps with everything full blast and 8XAA in Far Cry 2 and am getting steady 60+ fps in Crysis, albeit w/o AA. DiRT 2 demo looks so sweet, I'm getting it again for the PC when I already had it on the Xbox 360.

If you took the time to read some of the posts you'd know this isn't about gaming, but for a cheap workstation.

 

[Kakkoii]

You don't use SLI with CUDA, you have to explicitly program your CUDA app to work with multiple cards AFAIK and then it still identifies them individually.

Does the same apply to PhysX though? I thought you have to specify a card as the PhysX processor (or set it to auto). So don't you need to have cards in SLI if you want to select multiple to use for PhysX? I don't know since I haven't had a Nvidia card in about 8 years.

 

[tweakboy]

From the 6800 on, its gotta be same card. Hes right on that note. gl