TRI SLI in XP???

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Kidfinger

[H]ard|Gawd
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Does anyone know of a way to force Tri-SLI in XP? I dont want to go Vista (Though I do have an upgrade pack to Ultimate) due to the performance hit. I purchased these three cards and finally got them installed but I was unaware that TRISLI only worked in Vista.
 
The performance hit post SP1 in Vista is pretty much a non issue, I wouldnt worry about it too much.
 
Not quite true. XP can handle more than 2 GPUs, it just has limitations that make it not worth the effort. 7950GX2s ran quad on XP, but due to the XP problems, performance did not scale well. The difficulty was enough that NVidia lost interest in solving the problems, and did not even try with the new series of cards... the drivers for them access the hardware in ways that XP does not allow.

So... while it is true you can't do tri-sli on XP, it's not true that XP can't use 3 or more GPUs... it's just really really bad at it.
 
Well, didn't the 7950GX2's do the "invisible" SLI thing? so it shows up as 1 card...

Because the 9800GX2, and 7950GX2 didn't require SLI boards (For single cards)... only if you wanted to do quad-SLI... which makes me believe that statement might be true, although I don't know for sure.. I ran SLI 7950Gt's for like 2 months before selling them off and going with a single GTS320 ... (Didn't game a lot anyways)
 
Kidfinger said:
Does anyone know of a way to force Tri-SLI in XP? I dont want to go Vista (Though I do have an upgrade pack to Ultimate) due to the performance hit. I purchased these three cards and finally got them installed but I was unaware that TRISLI only worked in Vista.
Click to expand...

No way to force it, but to be frank, if you've got a triple-SLI setup the negligible performance hit from Vista isn't going to matter.
 
NKDietrich said:
No way to force it, but to be frank, if you've got a triple-SLI setup the negligible performance hit from Vista isn't going to matter.
Click to expand...
And that pretty much sums it up. Whatever loss in performance you'll incur migrating to Vista it will be more than compensated for by the additional GPU in games.

Having said that, IMO the superior performance of Tri-SLI does not compensate for other Vista negatives such as compatibility issues and slower overall performance. I'd just forget about Tri-SLI and stick with XP, if you really like that OS. If not, then you should strongly consider Vista since it will grant what you desire.
 
Well, I wenty with a dual boot for now. The only problem I can see with this is that XP wont recognized the three cards and run them in SLI (As stated above). Hell, Ntune wont even give me anb SLI option. So when I run XP, I will only be getting the performance of a single card. Ah well. Time to start tweaking Vista....


Thank you everfyone for your advice!:D
 
In the real gaming, the difference between XP and Vista is impercetpible, principally for you with a Tri SLI system.
 
gustavompo said:
In the real gaming, the difference between XP and Vista is impercetpible, principally for you with a Tri SLI system.
Click to expand...


Actually, at the moment, I can honestly say there is a difference. I cant even get Vista to go beyond 1024x756 in resolution with the newest drivers. I can get tri-sli enabled, but I only have 2 settings for res. 800x600 and 1024x768......Not what I want on my 22 inch monitor that has a native resolution of 1050.
 
I thought the GPU limitation in XP was due more to API limitations and that DX9 can't render more than 3 frames at a time (triple buffering), making AFR rendering with > 3 GPUs useless (possibly the other ways of rendering frames as well, not exactly sure how those are handled on the backend). DX10 does away with this limitation and so Vista offers quad+ GPU support. Can anyone with some more technical knowledge explain this one?
 
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