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Does SLI/Crossfire require game support?

Forum Graphic & Displays : Graphics Cards - Does SLI/Crossfire require game support?

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Mordar   03-21-2008 at 11:17:16 PM

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?

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stoner133   03-21-2008 at 11:58:43 PM
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Haven't used SLI but do use Crossfire and the game doesn't have to support it for it to help. But to get the best results with Crossfire you need to be running your screen resolution very high. It doesn't help much or any if your just using 1024x786 or even 1280x1024. But once you really start pushing up the screen resolution it will give you a performance boost. There are some games that have support for one or the other (SLI/Crossfire) and that will assist the game but it doesn't need to be written into the game to benifit the use.

So its really up to the size and resolution supported on your monitor that dictates if its a benifit.

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mactronix   03-22-2008 at 12:25:59 AM
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Look here for a good alround idea on whats what. http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/foru [...] sfire-faqs
Some games dont suport it and some suport it better than others but the majority of newer games should be ok.
Mactronix

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