SLI Question

[Pom]

Knowledgeable Austechians,

I’m looking at putting together a new PC and want to utilise the PCIe GF8600 out of my current machine. As I’ve not put together an SLI rig before I have 2 questions.

Being an AMD fan I plan to use a Phenom CPU on a Gigabyte M/B and adding another 8600GT to my existing and SLI them to keep the costs down.

1. I’m looking at using a Gigabyte SLI board (GA-MA790x-DS4) which is SLI capable but only states ‘Crossfire Compatible’ Does this limit the SLI ability to RADEON cards or will the NVIDIA cards SLI ok
2. 2ndly the supplier I normally use still stocks cards very similar to my existing one, but exactly how close do they need to be?

I currently have a XFX GF8600GT that uses DDR3 memory clocked at 600MHz (Part number PV-T84JU-DD3). My regular supplier has the following two cards available:-

1. ·XFX GeForce 8600GT 256M DDR3 Dual DVI TV Out 540Mhz(PV-T84J-UDF3)
2. ·XFX GeForce 8600GTS 256M Dual DVI TV Out 675Mhz DDR3(PV-T84G-UDF3)

As you can see, one has slower memory, one has faster, and they both have different part numbers. Close enough or asking for trouble?

EDIT: Notice that the 9600's are available now. Will look for a performance comparison 9600 vs SLI 8600?

Appreciate any advice.

Cheers,
Pom

[Chimp]

i was told to use exactly the same cards when i was planning to do this (never actually did it)

[Fartminion]

Hope I get this right, I think x fire is for AMD / ATI and SLI is for Nvidia and Intel. Just did the core 2 Quad 9650 in a XFX 780i mb with two XFX 8800GTX's, with this MB and cards you can add another one later if needed, it's my son's last freeby system - Fart

[Jalorathis]

Youare semi-correct there.

SLI is what Nvidia calls the linking of 2 or more cards to increase performance.

Crossfire is the ATI alternative.

There are AMD boards with SLI or crossfire and intel boards with SLI or Crossfire however i doubt there is a board with both.

As far as cards go, usually as long as the card specs are the same, it will work. however, if the specs are different (gpu frequency, memory frequency, so on, so forth) i cannot gaurantee it will work. The reason they say use identicaal models of card is to gaurantee they work.

My 8800gtx is a reference model, pretty much the most basic an 8800gtx can get. no overclocking nothing. This will allow me to get any other reference model wether it is from the same brand or not. In your case, i dont think yours is a reference model, which means you will probably be best to buy an identical card to make sure that it will actually work. or, if possible, take the machine to a computer shop and ask to put the card in the machine before you buy to make sure.

Jalorathis

EDIT: could i get one of those PCs fartminion?

[Pom]

Thanks all. Just been reading about the TLB bug in the early Phenom's and as far as I can tell, there is no way of knowing if the one's stores have in stock will be OK or not. Crikey, might need to look at an Intel solution!

Be the first in years.

As for the SLI, further chasing around the net points to Gigabyte only supporting ATI crossfire.

Oh well, back to the drawing board.

Cheers,

(PS - Fartminion, should join the Austech folding team and put that horsepower to use!)

[urban_s0ulja]

honestly.
dont sli 8600gt
you'd be better off with a 9600gt/8800gt/8800gtsg92.

might be a bit more expensive but 2 x8600gt wont matc the performance of one of the above mentioned cards.

to answer your sli question any of the cards will work as long as they are running the same gpu. even the factory overclocked ones will work but speed will only operate the same as the lowest card.

if you decide to persue sli have a 8600gt sitting around, pm me if you want a fair priced second hand card.

also ive been hearing some neg.s about the new amd quad cores.
id research it throughly before making your purchase.

if you need anymore help ask

gl