I currently have one 9800GT(Newegg.com - XFX PVT98GYDLH GeForce 9800 GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card - Desktop Graphics / Video Cards) but I plan on buying this board Newegg.com - Open Box: ASUS M4A78T-E AM3 AMD 790GX HDMI ATX AMD Motherboard along with another one of these graphic cards: Newegg.com - XFX PVT98GYDLH GeForce 9800 GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card - Desktop Graphics / Video Cards. I am wondering if I will be able to use two Nvidia cards on this board using SLI. I know it supports Cross-fire but I do not use ATI. Any advice or help? Thanks.
It has a ATI chipset (and a ATI IGP for that matter), which means only Crossfire support. No SLI. I've heard that in fact Crossfire and SLI (in terms of technical implementation) are practically the same - it's a manual limitation that is built in into chipsets to support either one of them. There are mobos out there which support both. I found also this interesting discussion.
Sadly I read up on that shortly after I posted. What about a board that has no chipset? Will that work? I am attempting my SECOND PC built. I want to run an AMD Phenom II X4 with 8GB of RAM and 2x Nvidia GeForce 9800 GT graphic cards. I can find a board to support the Quad, but not Nvidia cards. Only Crossfire. I think this may be because AMD makes ATI or is at least a strong supporter of it. Thanks for you help so far.
This is one of the reasons why I like Intel more than AMD. They sure do want to promote their own video cards. With Intel, one usually has the choice. Anyway, I am kind of sure, that AMD + SLI is kind of a nogo. Maybe if you can find a board with a VIA chipset that supports the AMD x4, but I doubt that you'd want to have a VIA chipset at all. Lookup ASrock. They have weird stuff going on sometimes (once, I saw a hybrid AGP8x + PCI-E 8x motherboard).
I found a board from MSI that i think supports them both: Newegg.com - MSI NF750-G55 AM3 NVIDIA nForce 750a SLI HDMI ATX AMD Motherboard - AMD Motherboards It states- CPU Type: Phenom II / Athlon II / Sempron 100 Series Onboard Video Chipset: NVIDIA GeForce 8200 Not to mention this - "The integrated NVIDIA GeForce 8200 chipset can be augmented with two PCI Express 2.0 x16 graphics cards to achieve SLI-linked performance at a fraction of the price. Video can be output through the DVI, D-Sub or HDMI ports and accompanied by eight channels of sound from the Realtek ALC889 audio chipset." I believe this should support my CPU based on what I read. AMD has pretty much taken the "how many cores" out of the brand name. So the brand is just Phenom II, not Phenom II X2/X3/X4. There is another way to identify the number of cores. Also, I have read the reviews and those people are using X2-X4 cores with that board.
