SLI questions from beginner

TishMcGrish · May 31, 2014

Hi, i was wanting to put in a second graphics card into my system but am a little stuck at the moment. I have 2 questions. 1) If i have an extre PCIe slot, does that mean my motherboard is sli ready? And 2) If i want to run SLI with 2 GTX 770's do i need the two same exact Graphics cards? For example i currently have a 2 gb MSI GTX 770, can i get a 2gb gigabyte gtx 770?

Thanks for the help! I appreciate it

Aspire77360 · May 31, 2014

You need to check your motherboard specs as it may be crossfire and not SLI compatible and different 770s works

VincentP · May 31, 2014

Not every motherboard with two PCI-E x16 slots will support SLI.
Additionally, if the second slot operates at x4 speed, performance improvement over one card is limited.
List you motherboard model and we can advise.

The second card does not have to be the same brand as the first.
If the two cards run at different clock speeds from the factory, the faster card will match the speed of the slower one in SLI.

mazooni · May 31, 2014

Two different 770s work but you need to make sure the 770s have the same amount of ram. A 770 with 4gb vram and another 770 with 2gb won't work. They need to have the same amount.

manofchalk · May 31, 2014

If it states SLI compatability, your good to go. Crossfire compatability doesn't mean much as anything can gain Crossfire certification.
Motherboards can have two physical 16x slots, but that doesnt mean its 16x or even 8x electrically. You want two 16x slots that operate in at least 8x/8x when there are two cards in the slots.

You can run different branded cards in SLI just fine as long as they are the same card (ie, a 780 and a 780, 760 and a 760)

mazooni :

It would work, just you would only have an effective 2GB of RAM to work with despite having 6GB of physical memory.

VincentP · May 31, 2014

mazooni :

They will work in SLI, but the 4 GB card will only use 2 GB of the available VRAM.

mazooni · May 31, 2014

VincentP :

Oh. Didn't know that. Thanks for letting me know

. Any way not worth paying for the extra 2gb on the 4gb card when it will only use 2gb.

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SLI questions from beginner

TishMcGrish

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Aspire77360

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VincentP

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mazooni

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manofchalk

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VincentP

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mazooni

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