Hi

I am sorry if I am going over old ground but I read the article about SLI and FAQ's and I noticed that it is possible to run 2 different cards in SLI mode providing they are of an identical or almost identical specification.

I have, at the moment, a single Zotac 8800GTS 512mb AMP graphics card and want to go SLI. I am finding it quite expensive to add another Zotac as the website I purchased the original one from no longer supplies them and to be honest it was a bargain at £139. The cheapest I have seen since is £170! Since reading the article I have been looking for a similar card and have found the XFX 8800GTS 512mb ALPHA DOG EDITION, which seems to do the trick. The specs for the Zotac are:

Graphics Processing Unit

- NVIDIA® GeForce® 8800 GTS @ 678MHz engine clock
- 128 Stream Processors
- Dual 400 MHz RamDAC
- Max. Resolution @ 2560 x 1600
- True 128-bit floating point high dynamic-range (HDR) lighting with 16x full- screen anti-aliasing

Memory
- 512MB GDDR3
- 1940MHz memory clock
- 256-bit memory bus

Bus Support
- PCI Express x16 2.0 (compatible with PCIe x16)
3D Acceleration
- Microsoft® DirectX®10 support
- Unified Shader Model 4.0
- OpenGL 2.0

And for the ALPHA DOG:

Core Clock (MHz) 650
Shader Clock (MHz) 1625
Memory Clock (MHz) 970 (1940)
Memory Amount 512MB
Memory Interface 256-bit
Memory Bandwidth (GB/sec) 64
Texture Fill Rate (billion/sec) 41.6

It also has 128 stream processors, same as the Zotac.

As you can see they are not exact but there is not a lot in it, and the price difference is about £35!

So, would these cards work together in SLI? Are there any other cards I should consider or should I bite the bullet and just get another Zotac?

All advice is gratefully appreciated, thanks

I am not sure if you have looked closer at XFX but they do have a card that runs at 678MHz.

XFX PVT88GYDD4 GeForce 8800GTS (G92) 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Retail

I happen to own this card and by itself it runs great. XFX wants you to also register the cards

specs on newegg

PDF of specs on XFX website

As for mixing card brands I am not positive, since I have not SLI at all much less different brands, but I would guess that if the specs are the same on both cards they should work.

I would almost offer to sell you my card since they do offer double lifetime(meaning second owner still gets the warranty)so I can get myself a 4870.