dual video cards

[tater]

I have a Gigabyte ga-m55sli-s4 motherboard it has dual Xpress 16 slots. im wondering what will happen if ii run 2 cards that arent the same....


Thanks

 

[Changis]

you most probably will get the ability to run 2 x 2 monitors.. (aka. cards will run individually)

 

[tater]

how they display doesnt exactly concern me. I am just looking for a boost in performance without doing anything to the first card. Or for when i buy the first out of 2 512mb Nvidia 7800 XFX cards. i kinda wanna leave my MSI radeon x300...i dont know why though lol mostly curious to know

 

[Changis]

Like I said, if you buy a 7800 and have the X300 there, you will not get any performance boost, only two individual cards running simultaniously.
if you buy a second 7800 you can connect them with a bridge and get SLI (the two GPU's will cooperate as one)

as for the X300 after you get the 7800, if you don't use more than 2 screens, there is no need for it other then sentimental feelings (wich seems to me is why you wanna keep it)

 

[tater]

k...too bad my xpress 16 slots are too far away from each other for me to use the sli bridge i got from gigabyte with my motherboard...I will be running 2 20.1" lcd ...i also intend to run 2 of the 7800's...but until i get the 2nd i wanted to see if it would boost my performance...lol like a 512mb SLI 7800 needs a boost from a 256mb x300 radeon

 

[tkpenalty]

Just order a long and flexible SLI bridge.. >_> its that simple.

 

[Pinchy]

How can u use an SLi bridge on a X300 and 7800 anyway , unless he means the two 7800's. If thats the case, wouldnt the 7800's come with an Sli bridge?

 

[tater]

...i did mean the 2 7800's..and i have an sli bridge but my motherboard was setup so u could run 2 dual slot xpress 16 video cards...so there pretty widely spaced

 

[Pinchy]

hmmm...

My mobo is designed the same, there is a massive gap b/w the two PCIe slots. But, the crossfire dongle for the X1950 fits fine (its flexible). Arent SLi bridges flexible?

 

[tkpenalty]

hmmm...

My mobo is designed the same, there is a massive gap b/w the two PCIe slots. But, the crossfire dongle for the X1950 fits fine (its flexible). Arent SLi bridges flexible?

They never were flexible since they are PCBs. Also the CF ones are sorta longer.

 

[Pinchy]

huh? my CF dongle is flexible

 

[tkpenalty]

I mean SLI. ATi Used their brains 10% while Nvidia 0% when designing their bridges.

 

[Changis]

hmmm...

My mobo is designed the same, there is a massive gap b/w the two PCIe slots. But, the crossfire dongle for the X1950 fits fine (its flexible). Arent SLi bridges flexible?

well, the Crossfire dongle is ment for a mastercard an a slave card.. While SLI uses a "fixed" Bridge to connect (Various SLI bridges showed in pics below)

as you can see, The SLI Bridge can come in different lengths, and in flexible variants..

The SLI Bridge is connected Thusly:

As for the Normal ATi Crossfire Connection; This is the Crossfire Dongle That Comes with a Mastercard:

That connected looks like this:

ATi Crossfire also have the same Bridge solution (like SLI) for three of their cards, namely the X1950 GT, X1950Pro, And the X1650XT As shown here

Connectors for Crossfire Bridges


Here is a List over Hardware/Software Crossfire differences in Performance

1600x1200 4xAA/16xAF
3DMark05:
X1950 XTX Hardware CF
11.127,0
X1950 XTX Software CF
11.015,0

Prey:
X1950 XTX Hardware CF
80,3
X1950 XTX Software CF
70,4

Company of Heroes:
X1950 XTX Hardware CF
32,5
X1950 XTX Software CF
21,9

F.E.A.R.:
X1950 XTX Hardware CF
82,0
X1950 XTX Software CF
71,0

Oblivion:
X1950 XTX Hardware CF
19,9
X1950 XTX Software CF
17,6

Riddick:
X1950 XTX Hardware CF
71,5
X1950 XTX Software CF
63,5

Call of Duty 2:
X1950 XTX Hardware CF
57,0
X1950 XTX Software CF
54,5

Splinter Cell 3:
X1950 XTX Hardware CF
131,0
X1950 XTX Software CF
129,7

Battlefield 2:
X1950 XTX Hardware CF
99,0
X1950 XTX Software CF
98,0

Serious Sam 2:
X1950 XTX Hardware CF
18,2
X1950 XTX Software CF
17,1

Values are in Average FPS
(Computer system unknown, List Source)

And a 3dMark06 test Showing Differences between a Single X1900XTX and Dual in Software Crossfire using the following System:
Gigabyte 965P-DS4 motherboard (Supplied by Gigabyte)
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 processor
2x 1024MB Corsair XMS2-8500-C5 memory (Supplied by Corsair)
GeCube X1900XTX graphics (Supplied by GeCube)
Sapphire X1900XT graphics (Supplied by Sapphire)
Corsair HX620W power supply (Supplied by Corsair)
Western Digital 250GB SATA hard drive
Sony 52x CD-ROM optical drive
Samsung 16x DVD-R optical driv

Hope This Clears up a bit

 

[tkpenalty]

Um.. The In-card Crossfire nearly doubles performance btw.

 

[Pinchy]

not always, ive seen crossfire do as little as a 10% increase

 

[tkpenalty]

not always, ive seen crossfire do as little as a 10% increase

Thats in a bottlenecked system though.

 

[Pinchy]

Nope, with a conroe, ive seen crossfire do just above 10%. I think it was b/c the game(s) wasnt optimised for it tho.

 

[tkpenalty]

oh lol yeah.... probably that. Depends on the situation anyway.

 

[Pinchy]

Yeah true.

Theoretically, CF should do about a 90% perf increase (i mean, it depends on how much the game requires the CPU, etc)

I dont think CF does THAT much, but it should come close.

 

[tkpenalty]

In the case of 2 X1950PRO... it does.

 

[Pinchy]

Yeah thats cus they have the "new" crossfire. The older CF gave no where near a 80% perf. increase.

 

[tkpenalty]

Yeah thats cus they have the "new" crossfire. The older CF gave no where near a 80% perf. increase.

Old Crossfire = SLI

New Crossfire = Better than SLI..

Its a serial connection, having one bridge being up and the other down.

 

[Pinchy]

Spot on

 

[tkpenalty]

That makes the new crossfire completely different to SLI.

 

[Pinchy]

Go Ati