A little confused on a motherboard, SLI, ATI Crossfire?

[ssh2004]

I am upgrading my computer shortly and will be getting a Q6600 along with a p35 motherboard as i have read that it is a good combination to overclock. I was planning on getting an Nvidia 8800 graphics card. However i notice the ASUS motherboards (also Gigabyte) support ATI Crossfire. So my questions are as follows:

1) i take it the Nvidia graphics card will still work fine?
2) i wont be able to use two Nvidia graphics card in future since they only support ATI Crossfire?

Not so much of a problem right now as i only want to use one graphics card but it could throw a spanner in the works if i want to change that in the future. Thanks in advance.

San.

 

[trinix]

All non-nvidia chipset motherboards don't support SLI. One card works fine, but 2 cards won't work. So if you also ain't going to buy an ATI card I suggest saving the money on the crossfire setup and just buy a single card board.

Also SLI isn't really worth it usually. Better getting a new card in the future that is better, unless of course more games are going to use it, but still a lot of games are single card optimized and the gain will not be worth the cost imho.

I think in 1-3 years we might see more SLI/crossfire solutions, but maybe we won't need it at all.

 

[Maziar]

You can use a SINGLE NVIDIA card on a CROSSFIRE board and also u can use a single ATI card on a SLI board , but u can't use 2 nvidia cards on a SLI board and viceversa

 

[chookman]

I was of the thought that CrossFire will work on an SLI mobo?

 

[itotallybelieveyou]

1. one card will sli them and it wont
2. no

 

[Maziar]

I was of the thought that CrossFire will work on an SLI mobo?

yes with hacked drivers

 

[chookman]

yes with hacked drivers

Thanks Maziar... i wasnt under the impression the platform made a difference in Crossfire rig. Obviously im wrong I like learning

 

[Maziar]

yeah i like learning too ,but learning in computer never finishes

 

[Ironnads]

All non-nvidia chipset motherboards don't support SLI. .

Ignoring mobile computing of course..
Ryan Adds

 

[mehdih]

It seems, you are looking for high performance graphic card .And you would like to have a chance for upgrad in 1-2 years later. But dont forget innovations in this field are very fast then you should change all of your pc just in few years.So I think it is better for you to buy a high_end graphic card in return for buy two graphic board. and buy a new card with more performance than sli, after few years.

 

[mehdih]

It seems, you are looking for high performance graphic card .And you would like to have a chance for upgrad in 1-2 years later. But dont forget innovations in this field are very fast then you should change all of your pc just in few years.So I think it is better for you to buy a high_end graphic card in return for buy two graphic board. and buy a new card with more performance than sli, after few years.

 

[neoxblu1]

Heres what to consider... you dont need the best video card to get the most from your games. Most games require dont require powerful video cards, but getting a powerful video card future proofs your system. Now I would recemmend SLI because it would be cheaper than guying the expensivest VGA card.

SCORES:

Single Nvidia 8800 ULTRA 786MB - - - - > 3900 (price: $700 - $800)

Dual Nvidia 8800 GTX 320MB - - - - > 6000 (price: $600 - $700)

But than you have to sacrafice another PCI x16 slot and a regular PCI slot (Because they are wide)

I got the scores from Tomshardware VGA Charts.

(If you gotto digitalstormonline.com, and customize a pc, goto video cards and like on "Graphic Card Charts" and there you go).

 

[Maziar]

We dont have 8800GTX 320 , its :

8800GTX 768
8800GTS 320