dual pci-e cards, not sli. what happens?

[joshd]

a question for a friend:

what happens if you run 2 pci-e graphics cards that are not SLId with each other? my friend wants to put a his 7800GTX with an old X300SE of mine together. at the moment he is running the GTX alongside an old ATi 7000 card, and the drivers seem to run OK with each other.

i was of the belief that you had to turn the motherboard from not-SLI to SLI mode, and this would share the 16x lanes into 2x 8x lanes, and it would be expecting an SLI bridge to be present? he has a NF4 mobo.

 

[Trifid]

You can do it, I know that much. I don't know the specifcs though. Find out and tell us what happens.

I think the board has to be in SLI mode, but obviously with out a bridge.

 

[PZEROFGH]

I believe running two cards w/o SLI bridge or SLi jumpers or not even using an SLI motherboard is kind of like having a regular PCIE16 card and a PCI video card. Just used for additional monitor outputs... But always wanted to know what would happened and the people dont know the answer

 

[joshd]

Just used for additional monitor outputs...

yea, thats whay he wants to do. at the moment, he runs his GTX and a PCI graphics card, but when the "slideshow" screensaver comes on, the ATi7000 cannot cope, and it is jerky. lol!

he doesnt want to run duals off the GTX because it decreaces performcane slightly in games. I too find that with my second monitor disabled i see about a ~3-7fps increace.

 

[Nitestick]

well if he can get the drivers working then their won't really be a problem. its probably better that SLI isn't enabled

 

[joshd]

the drivers were already working from the ATi7000.

he put them both in, without any SLI enabled, and it works just fine.

 

[NosBoost300]

well i've already tried that as well, only with a 6800, and a 7900gt, and.. it didnt seem to do anything, i didnt try split monitors with it though

 

[Nubius]

You shouldn't need to enable SLI if you're putting in some dinky little card just for multiple monitors. It should still run at 2x and the card shouldn't even really be using that.

HOWEVER.................I could be wrong