SLI or Crossfire

I

Interest

banned
Hi everyone,

I was wondering how do dual, tri, or quad SLI or Crossfire work. Is it like a processor? I mean like do they work on separate parts of the screen, or do combine?
 
Basically, you get 2 or 3 or 4 cards, slot them into your motherboard, connect the together using small connecting PCB's.

Then just plug your monitor into one of the cards.
 
Oh, sorry. You didn't understand my question. I know what it is. I just don't understand how they get powered all together. For example, I have a 8600GT. The specs on it are 512ram, 128bit, and 540 core clock. If i got another one and put it in SLI mode, would that double my specs. I mean like would my video card be then 1024ram, 256bit, and 1080 core clock or what? I mean like how does it work once it's in SLI mode. Please someone answer I need to know. thank you =]
 
No you wouldnt get '1024ram, 256bit, and 1080 core clock ' im afraid, i dont know how it works, but you dont get much performance increase in many applications, and for the record, dont buy another 8600GT
 
In Dual SLI both cards receive the same amount of work load but each card only has to render half of the scene or if you have it in Alternating mode each card renders either the even or odd frame. In Crossfire they used to have a master and slave card but no anymore and the second card decodes some of the images and sends them back to the master card
 
technically yes, but there are very basic drivers available for quad sli.

i think the 3870x2 and the 9800x2 would be the only ones taking advantage of this.

also, not every application uses sli to an advantage. some games are made worse and you need to disable sli.
 
With Quad it would be better to use Alternating frames with them split up odd and even with 4 GPU. Split frame would kill the performance.
 
From the benchmark results, it seems that crossfire has a bit of an edge over SLi, but single card Nvidia still thrashes AMD/Ati.
 
oscaryu1 said:
Neither. Just get a better card.
Click to expand...
I agree, unless you already have one card and can get another really cheap. Or you just have the money to go SLI or Crossfire with top cards just because you can and dont care about the Price/Performance difference.
 
Crossfire for sure, chipsets like the X38 and the upcoming X48 are excellent overclockers. The nvidia chipsets, not so much OC friendly.
 
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