Question About Nforce4 Intel Edition Chipset.

[POE_UK]

does anyone know here if SLI will work on 64bit windows on my ASUS p5nd2-sli motherboard please? tried on numerous forums and no-one wants to help me

[Fibbles]

Does nVidia offer SLI support with any of their 64 bit drivers? That's what you'll need to find out.

Maybe they just don't know the answer?

[POE_UK]

you maybe right there i emailed nvidia tech support yet they have not answered me!

[POE_UK]

i have just had an email from nvidia it says asus are bad-mouthing nvidia by printing in their manuals for the p5nd2-sli boards "due to chipset limitation, sli will not work on 64 bit windows"
nvidia have just confirmed to me its 100% compatible with xp home,pro,x64 and theyre not happy bunnies at all!

[Fibbles]

May I ask why you care about SLI support when SLI is a waste and for show offs?

[POE_UK]

i agree its a waste of money if youre gonna spend about £850 to £900 on 2 cards as you can get sli through a single card fair point really isnt it? also at present what games are there that support quad sli and what about drivers?

May I ask why you care about SLI support when SLI is a waste and for show offs?

because i felt ripped off by a motherboard "that doesnt do exactly what it says on the tin" and i thought i may be helping others so they dont waste their time emailing nvidia if they have this motherboard.

[Fibbles]

i agree its a waste of money if youre gonna spend about £850 to £900 on 2 cards as you can get sli through a single card fair point really isnt it? also at present what games are there that support quad sli and what about drivers?



because i felt ripped off by a motherboard "that doesnt do exactly what it says on the tin" and i thought i may be helping others so they dont waste their time emailing nvidia if they have this motherboard.

The GX2 single card SLI solution is, in itself, made for an SLI setup. Especially if you're wanting to get the meximum performance from it.

Any game that supports dual video card rendering thru AFR or SFR (or any other mixes) will support quad SLI.

Some games don't show much of an improvement and some do. For example, my latest Maximum PC mag (I dont like the mag tbh) has the score of a single Radeon x1900XT getting around 45 FPS in Quake 4. With 2 x1900XT's in CrossFire, they get almost 98 FPS. That's a little more than double and double is cool! Not every game will show those improvements, but quite a few do and who doesn't want more. Cost is always an issue, but if you want SLI or XFire, why should you not get it?

What I don't understand is why you think it's OK for the GX2 to be SLI, but not for a dual card solution? How are 2 cards in SLI in a single package better than 2 that are seperate?

In the end though, those that want it will get it and those that don't, won't :thumb:

[POE_UK]

zittware has proven that quad is a waste of money and a single 7950gx2 with 2 gpus on a single card is the best option at present

[CandyKid]

I'm supposing that the low scores of quad is due to two things...

1) Bandwidth. (each core is designed for it's own 16x PCIe slot, not a shared one)

2) Drivers.

I'd expect it's usefulness to come out later, though I still think it's very expensive.

PLUR
CK

[Da_Rude_Baboon]

zittware has proven that quad is a waste of money and a single 7950gx2 with 2 gpus on a single card is the best option at present

That is not entirely correct. Quad SLI has been developed to run large high resoloution monitors such as the Dell 3007WFP 30 (http://accessories.euro.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=uk&l=en&sku=52657&category_id=6198&first=true&s=dhs&cs=ukdhs1)" monitor which has a native resoloution of 2560x1600 or even the 24" version which is becoming popular with gamers. If you want to run the most graphic intensive games at the screens native res with all the bells and whistles there are currently NO graphics cards which can do this. Quad SLI will get you close. Remember quad SLI is first generation technology and will improve with each subsequent generation. SLI is not that old and has increased its performance and value since its intial release.

There is nothing wrong with SLI, or quad SLI. If i had the disposable income i would be tempted tbh. If you can afford it then go for it, if you cant dont bash people who can.

[POE_UK]

what about if you run a quad setup on a board that has 2 pci express slots that run in 8x each? but yet on a single slot is 16x

That thread was closed for a reason. Don't start it here. CandyKid

[CandyKid]

This is what I'm referring to... this card has two full 7900 cores on it with each being designed to take advantage of a 16x PCIe lane.

Now that both cards are on ONE SLOT, each card gets only 8x as in the older SLi boards that you're talking about.

I think a quad setup would be best on a SLi64 board which aren't available yet (and may not be, I dunno)... since the best thing now is a SLi32 board which would give each card 16x and each core 8x PCIe.

PLUR
CK

[POE_UK]

understood that m8 so in my asus p5nd2-sli board would the 7950gx2 run at its full potential?

[CandyKid]

Err... probably not... and that's kind of the point. I'm not sure that 16x is enough for both cores to be running at maximum and that's as much bandwidth as any single PCIe slot is going to have at this time... Though I'm sure driver updates will help.

PLUR
CK

[Greeny]

Are you sure a 7900 can saturate a whole 16x lane PCI-E slot? That doesn't sound likely, if that assumption was correct then where's PCI-E 32x or whatever and where would the video card manufacturers go from here if they've allready saturated the relatively new interface standard?

I'm skeptical. :)

[CandyKid]

...and I'm talking out my rear, but it's all I can think of. ;D

PLUR
CK