What does crossfire and SLI mean?

[XDRoX]

What does crossfire and SLI mean? I see it in the "Recommended PC Components" thread referring to motherboards, and just wondered what it all meant.
Thanks

 

[NightSurge]

It's the ability to use 2 (or more; Tri and Quad-SLI for example) graphics cards in sync with one another to boost performance. This usually is only a good solution when playing on large monitors at very high resolutions as the main purpose of these technologies is to sustain frame rates during demanding games.

Crossfire is ATI/AMD and can only be done with ATI cards.

SLI is nVidia technology and can be used only with nVidia powered cards.

 

[dark strike1]

It's the ability to use 2 (or more; Tri and Quad-SLI for example) graphics cards in sync with one another to boost performance. This usually is only a good solution when playing on large monitors at very high resolutions as the main purpose of these technologies is to sustain frame rates during demanding games.

Crossfire is ATI/AMD and can only be done with ATI cards.

SLI is nVidia technology and can be used only with nVidia powered cards.

You forgot to mention that SLI can only be done with Nvidia boards as well, since they won't release their SLI patent to Intel.

 

[NightSurge]

Right on. Yes you have to use boards with the nVidia nforce chipset. The recent ones are 790i, 780i, 750i FTW, 680i, etc for Intel boards.

The same is true with Crossfire. You have to have boards that support this technology. Such as x38 and x48 chipset motherboards.

 

[TheOtis]

To get a bit more technical and add a couple more things-

You can only use SLI with certain cards in certain configurations-

2 card SLI-

Nvidia 6600GT's and up (Again, the cards must be indentical)

3 card SLI-

Requires 3 identical cards. 3-way SLI is only available with-

-8800GTX
-8800Ultra
-9800GTX

Quad SLI-

Requires 2 identical video cards with 2 PCB's (Printed Circuit boards) on each.

-7900GX2
-7950GX2
-9800GX2

Nvidia also supports "Hybrid SLI" with some cards. This means using a video card with on-board video.

-8400GS
-8500GT

However, these are no preferable for high end gaming.

Scalable Link Interface - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Here's a Wiki entry for Crossfire. Their are some differences between the two. Corssfire also supports a Hybrid Corssfire system, I've heard great things abou it. I believe you can use a 3850 with it, but I'm not sure what one's you can and cannot. Peep the link to find out more.

ATI CrossFire - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Prototype]

I also heard that Crossfire supports multiple-monitors while SLI doesnt.

not sure of this is true also but i heard Crossfire -> SLI