Advice SLI 8800GTX with Dual-Link 30" Monitor

Hi

I decided to buy following System

- Intel Core 2 Duo E6700,
- Asus Striker, nForce 680i SLI 1
- Corsair TWIN2X2048-6400C4, 4x1GB, DDR2-800, CL4 2
- Hitachi Deskstar T7K500, 7200rpm, 16MB, 500GB, SATA-II 2
- Asus EN8800GTX/HTDP/768M, PCI-E, 768MB GDDR3 1 850.- 850.-

and HP LP3065, 30" TFT, Widescreen, 2560 x 1600, 3 x DVI-D 1

Now... I have a Problem... for better resolution/performance I think about SLI (2x NVIDIA 8800GTX)... but my problem is, that the Monitor needs Dual- DVI for best Resolution (2560 x 1600) and I am not sure it is possible to do SLI and provide Dual-DVI at same time -> somebody told me, SLI needs the second DVI Bus for Communication between the two 8800GTX.

any Feedback is wellcomed......

You can use two 8800GTXs in SLI while running at 2560x1600; when running SLI you can only use one monitor, and that's probably the cause of the confusion. The 8800GTX also has two dual link DVI outputs.

That's pulled directly from nVidia's website.

If I understand it correctly, that means each of the two connectors are Dual-link capable. According to Wikipedia...

DVI Wikipedia Article

Dual-link uses only one plug and one cable.

I don't have any experience with SLI personally, but I thought all communication happened on the bridge between the two cards inside your system. I've never heard of a DVI cable going from card to card.

Hope this helps.

A solid answer for you:

SLI Zone

SLI Zone is nVidia's SLI web site. Check the #5 and #7 video's for hook up. Only one DVI cable.

Looks like there is a little confusion over Dual-Link DVI and Dual DVI so hopefully I can help.

Dual-Link DVI - is referring to a single DVI port that has the capability of displaying a DVI resolution of 2560X1600. When DVI first started to make its appearance on video cards it was limited to the DVI resolution of 1600x1200 and was deemed a Single-Link DVI port, so if you wanted a higher resolution you needed to use VGA. Later in the high end 7 series cards they started to have Dual-Link DVI ports on them.

Dual DVI - This merely means the video card has two DVI ports on it. What you will need to do is research to find if both DVI ports are either Single-Link or Dual-Link ports.

For instance:
The 8800GTX has Dual Dual-Link DVI ports, meaning two DVI ports, each one a Dual-Link port capable of displaying a DVI resolution of 2560x1600.

The flipside to that coin would be some of the 7800GT video cards. They had Dual DVI meaning two DVI ports, but only one of them was Dual-Link DVI. So one DVI port could display a resolution of 2560x1600 and the other could only go up to 1600x1200.

It’s a lot to take in and I hope it helps.


XFX Support