What is SLI?

[enigma322]

What is SLI? And what does it mean when a motherboard is SLI ready?

 

[Heyyou27]

SLI stands for scalable link interface, better known as running two Nvidia cards in the same system to improve performance. I would not recommend SLI at the moment unless you plan on using 8800GTXs at a resolution of 2560x1600.

 

[ausch30]

SLI stands for Scalable Link Interface which is Nvidia's way for you to have more than one video card in your system and have them communicate with each other and act as one. ATI also has a way for this to happen which is called Crossfire and the two technologies are not compatable.

SLI ready means that the motherboard has 2 PCI express slots running at at least 8x for the use of 2 Nvidia cards.

 

[ausch30]

I would not recommend SLI at the moment unless you plan on using 8800GTXs at a resolution of 2560x1600.

The point of this is that if you are gaming at low resoltions you don't need SLI, if you were planning on getting two mid-level cards and running SLI it would be cheaper to just get 1 higher level card. The only way SLI might be a better choice is if you already had a mid-level card and you wanted to do a reasonably inexpensive upgrade you could add another and increase your performance although I don't quite agree with the 2560x1600 I think a good case could be made for SLI at anything from 1920x1200 up but either way you will have to have a very big screen, if you have less than a 24in screen you really don't need it.

 

[enigma322]

Ah...well I am getting

- ASUS P5WDG2-WS PRO mobo

- 8800GTS 640mb GPU

and probably a 19-22 inch screen. So my mobo would be fine for good gaming?

 

[ausch30]

Nice motherboard, it has the Intel 975 chipset which is Crossfire. With the video card your planning on purchasing if you never plan to add another video card it doesn't matter but if there is a chance you might want to in the future you might be better off going with a motherboard with a Nvidia 650 or 680 (SLI compatible) chipset which will give you the flexability to upgrade down the line.

 

[ausch30]

I tried to PM back yesterday but for some reason it wouldn't work, this is what I wrote.

That motherboard seems to have more than you will need it is a server motherboard having 8 SATA ports and 2 PCI X slots, there are several good boards out there all of which are considerably less expensive, except for the Striker, than the board your thinking of buying. With that board you are paying for things that you will most likely never need why not pay for things that you might need or want down the road.
Striker Extreme
Abit IN9
EVGA 122
ASUS P5N32

 

[enigma322]

Hey man. thanks for the replys. I primary chose that board because I read the customer reviews and it seemed really stable. But maybe I should go with one the SLI's because I do want to game with the system. The P5WDG2-WS had like 80% good reviews while those you linked had like 50% good reviews.

 

[enigma322]

Oh, and I dont think I'll be planning on running dual video cards for a while. I think the 8800GTS 640mb will be fine for a bit. And if I do decide to get another..will any of these mobo's be able to fit 2?