Memory clock speed effect SLI?

[DrowninG]

I am looking to replace a graphics card that died a week ago, its quite an old card now (geforce 9800gt) when i bought the computer it had 2x Geforce 9800gt's and i need to get another card to SLI with my existing one.

I have found a card which seems to be exactly the same except for one issue:

Memory clock speed on my existing card is 900mhz
Memory clock speed on potential purchase card is 1800mhz.

Would this cause any problems in terms of hooking them up via SLI? Would i need to make the card with the higher Memory clock speed the main / master card?


Thanks in advance for any advice you can provide (this is getting frustrating now)

 

[fullofzen]

I am looking to replace a graphics card that died a week ago, its quite an old card now (geforce 9800gt) when i bought the computer it had 2x Geforce 9800gt's and i need to get another card to SLI with my existing one.

I have found a card which seems to be exactly the same except for one issue:

Memory clock speed on my existing card is 900mhz
Memory clock speed on potential purchase card is 1800mhz.

Would this cause any problems in terms of hooking them up via SLI? Would i need to make the card with the higher Memory clock speed the main / master card?


Thanks in advance for any advice you can provide (this is getting frustrating now)

Good question. I did a quick google search on "sli with two different memory speeds" and most of the user community suggest that it would be fine, that the new card would just slow down to accommodate the old card. However, you could always underclock the memory of your new card back down to 900MHz.

Do both the cards have the same memory "bit-widths?" As in, do they both have 128-bit memory? It might help if you could provide the model and manufacturer of the card you're going to buy and the one you have.

 

[DrowninG]

Apologies, here are the details of the card i'm thinking of buying:

Manufacturer: XFX www. xfxforce.com
Model Number: PV-T98G-YDD4
Packaging: Retail
Bus Type: PCI-E 2.0
GPU Clock: 600 Mhz
Memory Bus: 256
Memory Type: GDDR3
Memory Size: 512MB MB
Memory Speed: 1800 Mhz
Thermal Solution: FANSINK
Minimum Power Supply Requirement: 400 Watt or greater + 1x 6pin PSU PCI-E connector
Outputs: HDTV, 2x DVI
Card Dimensions: 9.0 X 4.376 X 0.75
Feature: CUDA Technology, PhysX Technology

-------------------------

My existing card:

http://gpuz.techpowerup.com/11/06/03/58x.png

I've read up on SLI before and from what i gathered, generally if you have two cards and one out-performs the other then the better card will simply slow down to match the slower card but i was unsure if that only applied in terms of RAM

thanks for your response

 

[fullofzen]

Since the "bus width" is 256bit in both cases, you should be fine. Good luck, man -- come back and let us know how it goes so this thread can serve as a definitive resource in the future.