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SLI across different GPU revisions?

D

Dr_Han

n00b
Joined
Oct 16, 2005
Messages
13
I have owned my 8800GTS 640 for a little over a year now and am looking to move into an SLI setup. However, my specific card is no longer sold by the egg. Would SLI still work for me if I chose to purchase something like this?

I'm also a little concerned about my motherboard. I have an old 650i that does not support full x16 across both of the PCI-e slots (1x16 and 1x4 in SLI). Would I see reasonable performance increase if I seated the newer, overclocked card in the x16 slot and moving my old card to the slower slot? Would this even work if they operate at different clock speeds (500 and 576)? Would it be a better idea to just go with a brand new single card solution?

Any help/advice would be greatly appreciated :)
 
With SLI, all of the cards downclock to the speeds of the slowest card. Also any extra RAM is also disabled to match the card with the lowest amount of RAM. But that 8800GTS 640MB will work with that 8800GTS 320MB card you have now. However I don't recommend doing so. It is more cost effective and easier to just get a single 8800GTS 512MB that will perform on par with your planned 8800GTS 320MB SLI setup for about the same price:
MSI NX8800GTS 8800GTS 512MB PCI-E Video Card - $210
 
Danny Bui said:
With SLI, all of the cards downclock to the speeds of the slowest card. Also any extra RAM is also disabled to match the card with the lowest amount of RAM. But that 8800GTS 640MB will work with that 8800GTS 320MB card you have now. However I don't recommend doing so. It is more cost effective and easier to just get a single 8800GTS 512MB that will perform on par with your planned 8800GTS 320MB SLI setup for about the same price:
MSI NX8800GTS 8800GTS 512MB PCI-E Video Card - $210
Click to expand...

its 640mb....and he might as well since he has it. even though the gts 640 only has 96sp and 512 has 128sp. also both pci-e slots will run at 8x in sli mode, which is more then enough. not sure where your getting the 4x from. even the specs on the link you gave says 8x/8x.
 
Domini said:
its 640mb....and he might as well since he has it. even though the gts 640 only has 96sp and 512 has 128sp. also both pci-e slots will run at 8x in sli mode, which is more then enough. not sure where your getting the 4x from. even the specs on the link you gave says 8x/8x.
Click to expand...

Oops. Mis-read the amount of RAM. Dunno where the OP is getting 4x from either.

Still don't think it's a good idea considering the cost of the 8800GTS 640MB.

What size monitor do you have, Dr_Han?
 
Both the card that I currently own and the one I am looking at for the SLI setup are 640mb cards. They also both share the 320bit memory interface. As far as I can tell, they are nearly identical, save for the factory overclocked settings of the N829. I did not see the specifications for the number of stream processors on the N829, however.

My bad on the motherboard information. I must have been thinking about one that I was contemplating buying earlier. That's sort of embarrassing, actually.

On another note, I want to pick up another 2gb of memory for my machine that is only running XP Pro right now. Is this a good idea as XP won't recognize the full 4gb?

Thanks for all of the help so far.

EDIT: I have a 20.1" that runs at 1680x1050.
 
Dr_Han said:
Both the card that I currently own and the one I am looking at for the SLI setup are 640mb cards. They also both share the 320bit memory interface. As far as I can tell, they are nearly identical, save for the factory overclocked settings of the N829. I did not see the specifications for the number of stream processors on the N829, however.

My bad on the motherboard information. I must have been thinking about one that I was contemplating buying earlier. That's sort of embarrassing, actually.

On another note, I want to pick up another 2gb of memory for my machine that is only running XP Pro right now. Is this a good idea as XP won't recognize the full 4gb?

Thanks for all of the help so far.

EDIT: I have a 20.1" that runs at 1680x1050.
Click to expand...

as far as the additional 2Gb of memory goes, i personally believe that having 4Gb of system memory on a 32 bit OS is not a good idea since it is wasted, even with 4Gb's in Xp it is hard to get it to even use the 3.XGb it can utilize....now, when you drop Vista x64 on there, you will be glad you have 4Gb's of memory although 2Gb's works fine for 99% of things

and BTW, the N829 model has the mysterious "96+" stream processors

http://www.evga.com/products/moreInfo.asp?pn=640-P2-N829-AR&family=GeForce 8 Series Family

i never did hear what the deal was with that....there's a 96 SP model, and a 112 SP model, but where does the 96+ SP model fit in....does that mean you might get lucky and get one with more? or that some are only disabled in the BIOS and only requires a flash to unlock them?

*EDIT* i just did a little more digging and it appears the 112 SP G80 GTS cards that were released in the beginning were not allowed by Nvidia to be marketed as having 112 stream processors so they had to mark them "96+", so you have 96, 96+ (which is actually a G80 with 112 SP's, and then at some point they switched to the G92 core which also has 112 SP's)

so there's a G80 GTS with 96, a G80 GTS with 112, and a G92 GTS with 112....for SLI to work you need two G80's or two G92's, so make sure of that, apparently you can SLI a 96SP G80 with a 112SP G80
 
So the G80 that I have and the other G80 that I linked will work in SLI?
 
correct, also 4gbs is fine for xp.....it will utilize it,but it just wont show it all in my computer.
 
nobody_here said:
32 bit XP is only capable of physically addressing 4Gb's total, if the system has to address 640Mb's of memory in video memory it will only use the 3.4'ish Gb's of system memory, so XP will not actually use it all

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000811.html
Click to expand...

Wow. This is a great explanation of how the x86 architecture addresses memory. That article is packed full of information.

Thanks so much for the information everyone! Looks like my planned purchases will work out just fine :)
 
Domini said:
wow thats a really good price.
Click to expand...

yep, and they had the 320Mb models for $99 recently and before that $79.....i got one of those and a RMA from an EVGA 7900GT that should end up being a 8800GTS 320 also so i will end up being able to rither run SLI for almost nothing after selling my 8600GT or sell one and profit!:p
 
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