Dual Geoforce 6800 cards

[mikehday]

I just purchased a Vicious PC with dual 6800 video cards. I looked at the driver and it looked like they were using the factory drivers so I upgraded them.

I have a two part question. I upgraded the video drivers as the instructions told me ... did not uninstall 1st. Was that ok?

2nd ... how do i ensure they are setup properly to run the cards in parralel? Is that standard because they have the SLI connector on the cards?

I sure wish i could find more information on how to setup these cards properly to ensure i'm getting maximum quality.

 

[dakota81]

To test, grab 3dmark05 from here:

http://www.futuremark.com/

And compare against these benchmarks:

http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20041123/sli-performance-10.html#3d_mark_2005

Of course, the performance will depend if you have plain 6800s, 6800GTs, or 6800Ultras.

 

[Krosus]

1. Unistalling first is to make sure there arent any conflicts and all remnants of the old drivers are removed, nowadays not so necessary but is a good idea.

2. Both cards are linked via an sli 'bridge' that sits astride the 2 cards

Once both cards are connected it is just down to the cards having driver support for the games you want to play, as it stands only a small handful of games use SLi and the power gains are less than stellar for the setup cost.
However as this type of setup becomes more common you will begin to see more games natively supporting the SLi standard and get better gains from the technology.

 

[paparazi]

Only the very latest Asus is soft menu SLI enabled.
This means to date boards from DFI/Gigabyte/MSI etc have an SLI switch board that needs to be swapped to SLI mode.
My Gigabyte has a card between the PCI-e 16x slots that has to be turned over to it's SLI position.

The drivers do need to be fairly recent versions that support SLI, that is 70 series onwards.

After fitment it usually takes a restart before you receive acknowlegement that your system is running in SLI mode.

And abviously your 3Dbenchmark scores take a healthy leap upwards.

Martin

We like members to GIVE and not just TAKE.
Participate and help others.

 

[mikehday]

three great answers ... exactly the info i was looking for. Thanks guys!!!