Nvidia SLI Question

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sprak74

Gawd
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Jun 11, 2007
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I have evga 7950GT 512mb and ega 7950GT 256mb. Now, could I run these two card in SLI or am I screwed? I'm using Vista. Thanks.
 
sprak74 said:
I have evga 7950GT 512mb and ega 7950GT 256mb. Now, could I run these two card in SLI or am I screwed? I'm using Vista. Thanks.
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you can use them. As long as the cores are the same it will work. But since one card has less ram it will only use that amount.
 
Better solution: sell both, buy a single card that's faster than both of them together (8800 GT/GTS/GTX)
 
silent-circuit said:
Better solution: sell both, buy a single card that's faster than both of them together (8800 GT/GTS/GTX)
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Yeah thats what I am going to do except I am gonna get the ati 3870. SLI is not a good long term solution.

SLI is worth it if you get really good deals on your cards - i got both my 7900's for $120 combined.
 
haadij404 said:
Yeah thats what I am going to do except I am gonna get the ati 3870. SLI is not a good long term solution.

SLI is worth it if you get really good deals on your cards - i got both my 7900's for $120 combined.
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Why 3870? The 8800GTs are faster, in general.
 
you might care to take a look at this.

So far no one has published a conclusive article proving it wrong.
 
Thanks for the replies. I'm a afraid that the core speed might not be the same. It's not even showing up in Nvidia control panel to enable SLI. Is there a way to check each card core speed?
 
Can I mix and match graphics cards with different sizes of memory?

While it is not recommended, NVIDIA does offer this flexibility using Coolbits. When purchasing a second graphics card, you should try to match the memory size so that you are ensured full value and performance from your purchase. For example, if your first card is a GeForce 6600 GT with 128MB of memory, you should purchase a second GeForce 6600 GT with 128MB of memory. However, using Coolbits (value set to 18), you can force both of the cards to use the lower of the two memory sizes and operate together in SLI mode. When dissimilar memory sizes are enabled to work together using Coolbits, the effective memory size for each card becomes the smaller of the two memory sizes. Instructions to enable this feature can be found here.
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sprak74 said:
I have evga 7950GT 512mb and ega 7950GT 256mb. Now, could I run these two card in SLI or am I screwed? I'm using Vista. Thanks.
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As a previous poster said, the 512MB card will become a 256MB card (lowest common denominator) which could be bad news for memory intensive games (you might lose performance in cases where a lot of memory is needed).

Mixing cards is only recommended if you pretend that.. of the two cards you have, you have 2 of those. If two of those identical, slower cards in SLI is faster than the single faster card you have, then it's worth it.

Basically assume the worst and that everything on the faster card will be slower/lesser to match the slower card.
 
Sr7 said:
*sigh* still citing that obviously flawed article are we?

I guess you need something to cling to to give you hope :)
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Your right. Without that article I was suicidal.

My only point is that both SLI and crossfire are pretty pathetic. I don't know why, but for the longest time I was under the assumption 60-70% improvement was the norm. Apparently its more like 20.

At the higher resolutions and higher texture details (remembering the minimap standard for DX10 is 8x greater then that of DX9) Vga ram becomes exponentially more important.

the apparent massive overhead of SLI combined with the the fact that your first gpu actually has a reduction in cache size means I wouldn't do it.
 
pathetic? Not if you happen to be one of the people with 1920 x 1200 displays that actually wants to use 4xaa and 1920 rez.
Both crossfire and sli were 70 to 100% faster in almost all the pertenant benchmarks and at that rez you start getting into memory bandwidth limitations that sli'ed 8800gtx's don't have.

Honestly reviewer's shouldnt even do resolutions less than 1920 x 1200 with aa on when reviewing sli or crossfire.
CF and SLI are made to let you game at higher resolutions with aa.
They don't do anything really with lower rezzes.
 
Thanks for everyone replies. I have given up and going to put it up for sale.
 
Sr7 said:
Is that right?

3870: $249
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...&N=40000048&Description=3870&name=Video+Cards

8800GT: $269
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...=40000048&Description=8800gt&name=Video+Cards

269/249 = 108%

The GT typically has a 10-15% performance lead over the 3870.

So you pay 8% more you get 15% more. That's not too shabby.

Sorry but I declare BS on your statement.
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You do realize newegg isn't the cheapest place to buy computer hardware. Hell even Bestbuy is selling the HD 3870 for $215. In addition, ATI lowered the cost of it to $200 or are planning to in the near future so thats a minimum savings of $50.

lol, quoting newegg prices like its the gospel.

I haven't seen the 8800GT dip below $270
 
haadij404 said:
You do realize newegg isn't the cheapest place to buy computer hardware. Hell even Bestbuy is selling the HD 3870 for $215. In addition, ATI lowered the cost of it to $200 or are planning to in the near future so thats a minimum savings of $50.

lol, quoting newegg prices like its the gospel.

I haven't seen the 8800GT dip below $270
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$208 via Dell a while back.
 
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