Hello, I am sorry if this is an obvious question, or has already been answered. I did my best to search around, and I found answers that sort of indicated both directions, so I thought it'd be easier to directly ask than try to interpret what I have read. Unfortunately, I am a bit of a hardware newbie, but I am doing my best to try and learn.
With SLI and Crossfire becoming more widespread, and the beinning of seeing cards from both ATI and nVidia which come with dual GPUs in SLI/Crossfire, e.g. the 3870x2 and the 9800 GX2, I am wondering whether games have to specifically support SLI/Crossfire for there to be any benefit.
My main reason for asking, is that I play and enjoy a lot of old games, but many of which are graphically demanding on high settings. These games were around before SLI/Crossfire took of, and probably do not know of any concepts for them.
If I get a SLI/Crossfire setup, my question is: Will these games just use the first GPU and first card? If the game is not aware of SLI/Crossfire, does the second GPU on a dual GPU card, or the second card in a setup go unused?
If so, is it better to go for a more powerful single GPU card (like the 8800 GTX) than the new dual GPU cards (like the 3870x2s or the 9800 GX2) and especially more than going for a dual card setup?
With SLI and Crossfire becoming more widespread, and the beinning of seeing cards from both ATI and nVidia which come with dual GPUs in SLI/Crossfire, e.g. the 3870x2 and the 9800 GX2, I am wondering whether games have to specifically support SLI/Crossfire for there to be any benefit.
My main reason for asking, is that I play and enjoy a lot of old games, but many of which are graphically demanding on high settings. These games were around before SLI/Crossfire took of, and probably do not know of any concepts for them.
If I get a SLI/Crossfire setup, my question is: Will these games just use the first GPU and first card? If the game is not aware of SLI/Crossfire, does the second GPU on a dual GPU card, or the second card in a setup go unused?
If so, is it better to go for a more powerful single GPU card (like the 8800 GTX) than the new dual GPU cards (like the 3870x2s or the 9800 GX2) and especially more than going for a dual card setup?
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