sli with 3 cards?

underworld288

underworld288

New Member
I am looking at newegg and I have noticed that they sell mobos with 3 x16 pci-e slots. Can you use them all and put 3 8800GTS cards in there?

P.S: This is probably stupid to ask since obviously it can be done but I'm just checking before I buy.

thanks
 
The more traditional style, you can't do this. I beleive you can run three cards, but not all in SLI. However, I know there has been word about being able to do this later with the additional "gold finger" connections. The real limitation here is probably with the chipsets and what they can manage. I'm not sure if any are really capable of handling more than two cards at once. Besides, what's the point. A single GTX can play basically any game maxed out :P
 
2 are for 2 SLi video cards, and the third is used for the physics. Only 2 will be in SLi, however they will all be connected together.
 
well, the original use of the triple-SLi was going to be to use a 3rd card for logic, leaving the main two cards to only have to worry about graphics

but now that there's the physix (however you spell it) dedicated physics cards, i don't know if triple-sli will ever happen.

I mean, if you really want to go crazy, you can go quad, and link two double-cards together, so i doubt the triple-sli will ever be realized
 
You can't SLI 3 video cards on those boards, as two are only meant for SLI. The third one can be used for any other PCI-E card though.
 
If you guys google a little bit, there is talk about future cards working with more than two cards in SLI. However, current hardware, drivers and such don't support it...
 
Yeah, there has been a lot of talk, but the_other_one is right. What's the point of it? It you have just 1 8800gts or gtx card, you would be fine. If you have 2, you'll be fine for a few years. But it is nice to have a physics accelerator though. It helps gaming an awful lot. If you are thinking of getting th board, add in a physics accelerator. You would have an awesome rig there.
 
underworld288 said:
so really I can put 3 8800gts cards in there and all of them would work at rendering the graphics and/or physx?
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Have you even read any post in this thread? lol

Everyone here has said that you can only SLI 2 video cards as of now.

You can install 3 cards, but only two of them will work together in SLI-form.
 
like TOO sais.. not yet. however, what you can do is put 2 Cards in SLI (wich renders you with only 1 monitor) and use the 3rd PCI-e slot to put a cheap pci-e card in the pc for additional 2 monitors.
 
skidro892007 said:
Yeah, there has been a lot of talk, but the_other_one is right. What's the point of it? It you have just 1 8800gts or gtx card, you would be fine. If you have 2, you'll be fine for a few years. But it is nice to have a physics accelerator though. It helps gaming an awful lot. If you are thinking of getting th board, add in a physics accelerator. You would have an awesome rig there.
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Now, i wouldnt say he will be fine for years. I can assure you in a year SLi 8800GTXs will be nothing lol.

Technology is moving alot faster then it used to.

I mean look at the SLi 7900s, a single 8800GTX, i believe even the 8800GTS, outperforms them. And that was only last year, a little before.

So i wouldnt even worry about getting SLi, just buy one of the best cards at the time, all the extra money and power used isnt worth it.

And the physics card only works with about 3 or so current games now. It wont work with every game. So it will only help in games that support the card.
 
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heyman421 said:
because there are single cards with dual-gpu's, and SLi'ing two of those together is called a quad-SLi
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Exactly.

I've read some stories on using 4 nVidia cards in SLI, but those are special boards that arent available to consumers.

So whenever a company says it's quad-SLI compatible, it just mean you can SLI two dual-GPU cards.
 
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