sli question

[Gamingfreak]

when i run my motherboard in sli mode (which i havent done yet) the 2 slots go into 8X mode, is this why crossfire is superior? or is it for other reasons as well? ive seen that asus now has a new motherboard which lets them both run in 16X mode so does that mean crossfire isnt that much better anymore?

 

[alvino]

nVIDIA's SLI X16. It allows both PCI-E slots to be 16x each. I don't think they sell these boards yet, though...

 

[Gamingfreak]

yup they do http://usa.asus.com/products4.aspx?l1=3&l2=15&l3=0&model=744&modelmenu=1 so would this mean that sli is just as good as crossfire now?

 

[alvino]

I guess...not like games take full advantage of PCI-E's 16x bandwidth anyways.

 

[Gamingfreak]

anyone else know anything about this?

 

[Kage]

Hmm it is weird, but Alvino's right. Games wouldn't use the full bandwidth yet.

i think I know why though in my mind.
What does 2x8 make up? 16!

So, SLI acts as 1 card running at PCI-E 16x, but the slots are halfed because the work is halfed between the two joint cards.

 

[TRDCorolla1]

That is terrible how it's not utlizing the full bandwidth (2x16). So now, we finally caught up to relieving hardware bottlenecks but with new software limiting to what a video card can do. Hardware technology is moving faster than software (can't keep up) seems like.

 

[Kage]

Yeah but SLI splits the work up of the video into two halfs anyway, so just equalling 16x doesn't seem that bad to me, since the two cards are acting as one card basically, with a part of one card transmitting images from both.

Makes sense.

Crossfire though, does that equal 2x 16?

 

[IAntDemo]

If you have both at 8x its much better, thats all you need to know until next year.

Because if you have 2x16 then gusse what, You may need 2 0r 3 Psu's to run at best Performence.

Listen to Alvino, he knows what he is talking about