Small SLI Question

Discussion in 'Video Cards, Displays and TV Tuners' started by RangerMoose, Dec 31, 2006.

  1. RangerMoose

    RangerMoose Geek Trainee

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    Hello, this is my first post, and I have a pretty small question regarding SLI. To 'hook-up' a second video card to my existing one, does it have to be the same make and model? Or would it be possible to use a different video card with the same GPU and connect them with an SLI bridge? I'm asking this because I have a 6600GT video card that is SLI ready, but I cannot find any documentation for it so far ( :doh: ), and I haven't been able to find anything online that looks akin to it. I'll update this post if I find anything helpful on my video cards make and model.
     
  2. Marcus_X

    Marcus_X Expert N00b

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    Hi Rangermoose, the following is taken from Nvidia's SLI Zone which is all about SLI

    I hope this clears things up for you,

    Have a happy new year,

    Marcus_X
     
  3. RangerMoose

    RangerMoose Geek Trainee

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    Thank you so much :D . Well, I have now found the receipt from my NewEgg purchase when I bought all my parts to begin with, turns out this is my mystery card, a GeForce 6600, not 6600GT. I think I got the GT from my motherboard (it has GT in its name somewhere). But now my question is (now knowing that I have much more flexibility in my SLI choices), would my current video card accept a video card such as this using SLI, and would that be a wise upgrade an a low budget?
     
  4. Marcus_X

    Marcus_X Expert N00b

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    That's exactly the same card you've hyperlinked to, is that correct? Too bad it doesn't say any price on that page. I'll limit my advice to the 6600 series and rather not go into the discussion if it would be better to upgrade to a newer type of card rather than buying another 6600 card, that would be up to you.

    As for it being a wise upgrade, this is what SLI zone says about the performance increase with SLI enabled;

    But, searching around the web I came to the conclusion that a 6600 SLI setup performs about the same as a single 6800GT which was a very good high end card back in those days, I've owned one and was very pleased with it. The R6600 in SLI will get you 2 x 256MB DDR SDRAM videomemory which is pretty much but I can't say if it'll cards with 256MB GDDR3 SDRAM

    NvNews forums had a topic about 6600 sli vs an 6800gt, the conclusion of that was;

    Greetings,

    Marcus_X
     
  5. Willz

    Willz MiCrO$oFt $uK$ :D

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    On games that benefit SLi i still seen the 6800GT beat the SLi setup..
     
  6. Matt

    Matt Oblivion Junky

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    so what is being said here is that if you have a XFX 6600 and a Asus 6600 they will be fully compatible?
     
  7. Marcus_X

    Marcus_X Expert N00b

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    As long as it's a 6600 with a 6600 it's compatible, from Nvidia's 80's series drivers cards became cross compatible.

    Cards can be mixxed;

    Cards don't need to be of the same speed;

    Cards with different memory sizes can be paired too;

    It's all there, on Nvidia's SLI zone

    Greetings,

    Marcus_X
     
  8. RangerMoose

    RangerMoose Geek Trainee

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    Ok (sorry for asking so many questions :( ), so is what you're saying that only cards with series 80 drivers can mix and match with other models of the same GPU? If so, how can I find out if my card is series 80? Thanks alot for all this help :D .
     
  9. Marcus_X

    Marcus_X Expert N00b

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    Rangermoose, you've misinterpreted that part, Nvidia's cards are driven by a unified driver, your 6600 has the same drivers as my 7800GS. Nvidia is up to 93.71 at this moment. Somewhere around version 80.xx SLI had been introduced and Nvidia included card cross compatibility in their card drivers.

    As long as you run the latest drivers you don't have to worry about this.

    Sorry to have confused you,

    Greetings,

    Marcus_X
     
  10. RangerMoose

    RangerMoose Geek Trainee

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    Don't be sorry! Thanks for all the help, here's a cookie:
    [​IMG]
     
  11. woodmaster

    woodmaster Geek Trainee

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    sorry to jump in here and sound thick,but I have a Geforce 7600GT and I to would like to upgrade to SLI so can I do that with a Gigabyte 7600GT as long as the software version is as stated in previous post it's just that I can't get a Geforce locally only a Gigabyte.
     
  12. Marcus_X

    Marcus_X Expert N00b

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    Geforce 7600GT is the GPU's chipsetname, companies like Gigabyte, ASUS, BFG and Gainward release their own version of the card which differentiates itself with cards that have higher clock frequencies / bigger memory size or just different softwarebundle (games) included in the retailpackage.

    So the card you can only get locally is actually a Gigabyte Geforce 7600GT.

    Cheers,

    Marcus_X
     

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