Dual video cards for gaming purposes

[superchan]

Hello,

I have W2K running on an Asus P4P800S motherboard with an ATI 9600 Pro in the AGP slot. I can't run the latest games at the 1280x1024 native resolution of my LCD anymore but I'd rather not shell out $500 for a high-end card.

Is it possible for me to install a PCI-based video card to run in conjunction with the existing video card? Would I need additional software or is the board/W2K/video card drivers smart enough to make it work?

 

[paparazi]

This is something I remember way back with the Voodoo2 video "excelerators" where two identical cards could be inter connected (via an external cable) and work in conjuntion with one another for the ultimate 3D experperience lol as it was then.
You certainly wouldn't be able to pair your two cards like you propose.
It used to be called SLI, which stands for stands for: Scan-Line Interleave andat present there are only two systems able to use this.
One is a proprietory developementby a company called Alienware, but you would have to buy the product from them.
The other is the soon to be introduced Nvidia 6600 GT, which is a midling card with good reported performance that has the capability of SLI, initially designed for PCI Express but possibly later released in AGP guise.
Trouble is, as in the old days, you would need two identical cards.
All in all I would suggest selling your 9600pro and putting the money towards a Radeon 9800pro/XT or an Nvidia 5900ultra you don't need to go for the very latest to get you frame rates playable again.
These two cards are at least 50% more powerful than you have at present and can be picked up for half of the present TOP line of cards.
Martin


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Participate and help others.

 

[cdogg]

In agreement with Martin. That's your only option to enhance your performance. You can have two video cards in a system, but not interleaved together in most modern motherboards. This is not something that software can help. It's strictly a hardware limitation.


~cdogg
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[paparazi]

Did a bit of checking and:
Seems that the soon to be released 6600GT will only have this feature (SLI) on PCI Express mainboards.
Martin


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

 

[rclarke250]

nvidia will support it on the 6800,6800gt,6800ultra,but it will only work with the same model, 6800-6800,gt-gt,ultra-ultra. And only on pciexpress boards that have 2 16x slots close enough together to take the nvidia interconnect board.(small board connects between the 2 boards,and not a cable) Neither the Alienware nor the new nvidia system are true SLI,as they don't alternate lines by card, the first card will display the upper half of the picture,and the second the lower with load balancing between the cards handled by a software app. nvidia kept the letters,but it terms it as scalable link interface.
just some more useless info. Alienware actually uses some funky board that goes between the motherboard and the video cards,to tie them together on the same bus.
Rich

I shall use google before asking stupid questions!

 

[felixc]

Can you sell your 9600 card (while it's still a hot product) to someone who does not need all the graphics power? Besides buying a higher-end board, there's no solution to your problem. No PCI card could give you enough horsepower.
BTW what games are getting too slow at 1280 x 1024?
I guess that you have a digital connection between the card and the LCD, since you can't lower the resolution? Or is it the LCD scaler circuit doing an awful job at lower resolutions?

 

[superchan]

Thanks for the replies everyone.

Any game with dynamic lighting and other bells and whistles are causing the frames to chug, and most of the latest and greatest 3D engines have them. The Samsung LCD is fuzzy outside of its native resolution, but I think every LCD would be the same.

The fan has been really noisy lately despite application of 3-in-1, so I suppose its a sign that I need to upgrade. I don't have PCI-E. And to think I only got the card last Christmas!