I cannot afford SLI anymore

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twit

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Apr 6, 2010
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Hi there all.

I have a stupid questions for you guys to answer, I bought a 750i FTW SLI board a couple of years ago now and had it rigged with 2 x 9600GT OC MSI cards which one of them have has gone to heaven. I can't afford to but another card and also wish to upgrade my 9600GT. I'm from Australia so graphic card prices are very exspensive here for a decent card your looking at $400 - $500 AU. So my question is can i place an ATI card onto this motherboard? I was thinking of going ATI
HD5850 or a Gigabyte 275 OC, anyways if I buy the 275 I can keep the 9600GT as a physic card, but I wanted to try something different if I could on this board by going ATI.

Thanks heaps

SPECS

EVGA FTW 750I SLI
MSI 9600 GT OC
3.16Ghz dualcore
Thermaltake 750 blue
4 x gigs crucial ballastics
Case - Xclio A380
 
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restatement3dofted

restatement3dofted

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Jan 5, 2010
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I believe you would only run into issues if you tried to crossfire multiple ATI GPUs on that board. A single ATI GPU should work just fine, but admittedly, I do not have first-hand experience.
 
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R

RazberyBandit

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Maybe it's no longer under warranty?

You can use ATI cards on that motherboard. Just because it's an SLI board doesn't mean ATI cards won't work on them at all. All it means is it has SLI support for nVidia SLI-capable cards. You won't be able to run two ATI cards in Crossfire, though. SLI boards don't support Crossfire. (The reverse is also true.)

In Windows XP and Windows 7, it is possible to use an nVidia card for dedicated PhysX with an ATI card. Vista does not support this - it will not enable 2 different video drivers simultaneously. (I think 7 requires actually requires "hack" or work-around to allow it to accept two different video drivers, though.) So, should you get the 5850 you're considering, your still functional 9600GT could still be put to use for PhysX. However, it would only help in games that actually support PhysX, as not all games do, so it's truly a situational "feature."
 
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M

megamanx00

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Sep 3, 2008
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750i boards not supporting crossfire is really an artificial limitation from nvidia. Anyway, yeah a single 5850 should be a good upgrade for you and just follow the threads on using the 9600GT as a PhysX card. Just so you know, you can't do it in Vista, but you can do it in Win 7 and XP
 
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T

twit

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Apr 6, 2010
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Thanks for all the replies. I do have Windows 7 64bit atm. My other 9600GT ran out of warranty ages ago :(... Saphire 5850 vapor X OC is the way togo I think.
 
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RazberyBandit

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I dunno... People say great things about all the 5850's. I haven't heard anyone complain about theirs yet. You may find the ability to volt-tweak ASUS and MSI models to gain overclocking headroom appealing. Or XFX's double-lifetime warranty. Obviously you like Sapphire's Vapor-X and factory OC. Other companies also offer factory OC cards.
 
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H

HKH

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Dec 15, 2009
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The 5850 isn't fast enough
Even tho I have 2 in xfire.... it still isn't fast enough for my taste
THERE IS STILL "ONE" GAME I CAN"T MAX!!
Flipping Metro 2033.....
I just hope it runs Crysis2, if not... Imma shoot myself or buy a third to tri-fire

On topic: The 5850 is great !! Might wanna upgrade ur cpu tho
 
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