SLI 9800 gtx with 9800 gtx+ from different Manufactures?

enderblair

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Apr 10, 2010
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Hey guys. Having a little trouble here. I bought an SLI ready board in 2008, along with this graphics card:
BFG Tech BFGE98512GTXOCE GeForce 9800 GTX 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16
Here's a link to it at neweg:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814143137)

My intention was to wait 6 months and buy the exact same card so I could SLI them. But I waited too long and now I can't find the card anywhere. But I can find a gtx+ version from other manufacturer's still for sell. Like this one:
EVGA 512-P3-N871-AR GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512MB 256-bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16

Here's the neweg link for the new one:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130339&cm_re=9800_gtx-_-14-130-339-_-Product

Anyway, the new one is gtx+, so I don't know if that will work. Also, its from a completely different manufacturer, so I don't know if that will work either. Any Ideas?

A friend told me for the same money ($130), I could just buy a single graphics card that would be faster than SLI-ing two 9800's. Any truth to that?


Here is my current setup:
Motherboard: MSI P6N SLI Platinum LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 650i SLI ATX Intel
CPU: Intel Celeron D 356 Cedar Mill 3.33GHz LGA 775 Single-Core Processor Model BX80552356 (I've got it overclocked to 4.6)
Memory: Kingston ValueRAM 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Desktop Memory Model KVR800D2N5K2/4G (Windows only uses 3 gig)
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX
On Windows XP Home

I also thought that uprading the cpu to a core duo would help game perfermance better than a second graphics card. And I'm sure my 500w psu is not gonna cut it if I get the new card.

Anyway, I'm just trying to figure out how I can improve my computer's gaming capability the most for the least amount of money. Any advice would be appreciated, thanks.

 
Hello and welcome to the forums :)
Before considering to SLI,i would definitely change the CPU here and not to a Core 2 duo because its out of production,but to an i5/i7 or AMD Phenom II and then i would consider upgrading the VGA.
Also about SLI'ng a 9800GTX with a 9800GTX+,its possible to do this but its recommended to put the 9800GTX+ in the first PCI-E 16x slot,and as for manufactures its not really important as long as clock speeds are the same(even if they are not the same,in most cases the faster card reduces its speed to reach the slower one)
If you needed more info about SLI/CF,read this thread:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/245454-33-crossfire-faqs