VeeshanVault

I have a Biostar VN7800GT Geforce 7800GT 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 video card. I heard that if I had 2 of these I could do SLI. I am really not up on what that is exactly. Could someone fill me in on what this is an how it works and if it is even worth doing. Mainly for online gaming and such. If I have 2 cards can I hook a monitor up to each?

Do you have an SLi motherboard? You didn't mention in your post.

You need an SLi MB and two of the exact same cards for SLi. Even with one card you can hook up two monitors. I have two 24" LCDs running in 1920X1200 off a single 7800GT.

What SLi does is split the rendering duties between the two cards so each card only has to render half a screen which speeds things up.

What game are you having trouble with using a 7800GT? I seem to be doing ok in 1920X1200 with the games I've played using a single 7800GT.

Do you have 2GB of system memory? If not, get that first to see if it helps.

Yeah I have an ASUS A8N-SLI Premium Socket 939 Nvidia nForce4 SLI ATX AMD motherboard and 2gig of ddr ram

And the game, hypothetically speaking would be Vanguard.

to do SLI you need a motherboard that supports it. You basically put the two cards in along with a bridge card that physically connects the two video card.

as far as I can remember (i stopped using SLI a few builds back) the two cards must be completely identical, including the manufacturer.


Is it worth it? Probably depends on who you ask. I've built and used three SLI systems and all of them have been extra-labor and left me with strange glitches. Even putting the glitches aside, I haven't ever really gained any stellar performance that I couldn't have obtained with just buying a single powerful card rather than two economical cards.

In my opinion, the benefit of SLI is that you can upgrade your system if you already have an SLI capable card without spending a ton of cash. This is the only situation now where I would consider going SLI.

Other than that, SLI typically gobbles power, is often unsupported or even borderline inoperable in some games (CoH for example), and has a pricetag that will usually get you the same performance out of a single, pricier card. I wouild not recommend getting it in a brand new system just for the hell of it

yeah, I'm not down with SLI.

I'll be upgrading my video card...but...I want a DX10 card...so no SLI for me. I'll jump from a 7800GT to whatever but getting another 7800GT won't get me DX10.

Just get the best single card you can afford when you upgrade.

The single 8800's will rival or best older Sli configurations anyway.

Upgrade to a DX10 when games like Crysis come out later in 2007.

make sure you have enough power and power connectors to run two cards at once as well. I believe a good wattage is 550 but I cant quite recall. Some power supplies even say if they are good for sli.