Sli on only crossfire compatible mobo

you won't be able to sli, nvidia driver won't let you

As stated above, the motherboard won't allow the transfer of data between the two cards. If you have more than one screen, you could connect all but the primary (gaming) screen to the second card and lessen the load on the primary card, but you won't be able to connect the cards via SLI, the motherboard won't allow it. In that configuration, they'd both be stand alone cards.

Bottom line, you can't SLI on that board.

Your problem is this ... the slots don't know whether its an AMD card or nVidia card in there, the MoBo is not the problem in that respect. The problem is that boards with CF support provide a x4 slot for the 2nd card and to run SLI you need a x8 slot for the 2nd card.

Plenty of crossfire boards use x8 slots for the additional cards, some even use x16. IDK where you're getting x8 and x4 from...

Point taken

It's the motherboard at the end of the day. You can't sli on a xfire board. What was trying to be said is even if the board had 2 x8 or 2 x16 slot it wouldn't matter because the motherboard does not support sli. Also sli 960's gets you the performance of about a 980 which is kinda not that great considering for $379 you can have a 1070 that destroys a 980 really badly. Would be better off selling your 960 and picking up a 1070.

The only reason it wouldn't support SLI is because it can't to x8. You wont find a single PCI-E x8 x8 board that doesn't support both SLI and CF.

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2183643/asus-z97-crossfire-performance.html

x8 mode can support Xfire and SLI. X4 mode cant, the bandwidth is too low, and will bottleneck almost any card in the slot.

Click to expand...

https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/484902-crossfire-vs-sli/

SLI requires two PCIe x16 that can at identical x8 speeds but Crossfire only need one lane at x8 and the other at x4

Click to expand...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGN1na3F5do
See 2:40 mark


The 960 is a weak card, two 960s don't even catch a 970.

at 4k of course the 960 is weak but idoubt he is playing at 4k with a 960. At 1080 and even 1440p the 960's are closer to a 980.

Also sli is great i run it. But i always get the 2 highest end cards that way if a game launches like doom with no sli support im still able to play it maxed out at a decent frame rate until the sli update comes out.

The reason why I don't recommend multiple GPUs is because not all games support SLI/Crossfire. Some games will only use one GPU, even though you may have multiple.

For that reason, I always recommend getting one of the fastest GPU you can afford.

Nope... apologies for copying the wrong graphic.

The GeForce GTX 960 SLI is not just undone by its own shortcomings due to a lack of perfect scaling in some games, but in being a whole $70 costlier than a single GeForce GTX 970. The GTX 960 SLI ends up offering roughly the same average performance as a single GTX 970 across resolutions. You're, hence, much better off choosing a single GTX 970 to GTX 960 SLI; that is, if you plan on buying two of these cards outright. The GTX 970 offers close to 20 percent more performance per dollar than the GTX 960 SLI in 1080p and 1440p.

Click to expand...

Oft repeated but never, ever documented..... why ? ... cause the numbers don't support it. yes, there are games that don't support SLI, the fact is few care .... a) they are rare and unpopular b) doesn't matter when a game doesn't support SLI get 90 fps w/ a single card.

The average scaling across techpowerup's 19 game test suite was 70%.... for AAA games, the ones everyone plays, it was 90+%.... let's "do the math" with single versus a pair of 970s.

-Tomb Raider goes from 29.8 to 58.7; scaling = 96.98% ... for the same price, you wanna play at 58.7 fps or the 35 fps you get from a 980 ? ... SLI'd 970s are 68% faster

-Far Cry 3 goes from 35.6 to 68.8; scaling = 93.26% ... for the same price, you wanna play at 68.8 fps or the 41 fps you get from a 980 ? ? ... SLI'd 970s are 68% faster

-Crysis 3 goes from 22.5 to 43.3; scaling = 92.44% ... for the same price, you wanna play at 43.3 fps or the sub 30 fps of 28.8 fps you get from a 980 ? ? ... SLI'd 970s are 62% faster

-Dragon Age Inquisition*goes from 33.8 to 66.0; scaling = 95.27% ... for the same price, you wanna play at 66.0 fps or the 38.8 fps you get from a 980 ? ? ... SLI'd 970s are 70% faster

-Metro LL goes from 40.7 to 74.6; scaling =83.29% ... for the same price, you wanna play at 74.6 fps or the 53.2 fps you get from a 980 ? ? ... SLI'd 970s are 40% faster

In the entire 27 game list, the 980 is faster in only 1 game.... All those that played Wolfenstein: New Oder (I don't know anyone) have reason to be disappointed ... no SLI support so playing with in SLI resulted in 56.2 fps, meanwhile the 980 brought a whopping 61.8 for to the table.... is losing 5 fps in one of 19 games really that much of a deal breaker when using twin 970s makes you 60-70% faster in 4 AAA games.

But the real issue is ...

- The 980 leaves you w/ < 60 fps in 14 / 27 games - 52%.
- The twin 970s leaves you w/ < 60 fps in 3 / 27 games - 11%

Again, for the 19 games test suite including the any that did not support SLI has the twin 970s averaging 40% faster than the 980. But let's not forget the two option are the same price....the argument therefore is:

- One doesn't want to go an average of 40% faster in 26 games, because in 1 game, we lose 5 fps.
- In the really demanding games, where fps is low making game play problematic, it's not worth getting 60 - 70% fps improvements because in one game you drop from 62 fps to 56 fps.

Hi i know im a little late but im planning on doing the same thing. Why has none mentioned the installation of additional software. Another thing is im fairly certain ive seen crossfire on sli boards. And their are hybrids that can do both as some of you didnt realise. Like gigabytes 990x.

Heres a link to a quick shortly solved discussion which includes the software (it is literally the first google result if you search the title).

http://www.overclock.net/t/1386309/running-sli-on-a-crossfire-motherboard

I really dont understand why you had to go into to such technical detail. You could just research and say. And 16x will support all under (8x, 4x) if your reffering to pcie. Most crossfire has 16x support and as does sli.

You can crossfire on sli board, but not the order way around.