I have a SLI mobo on its way that I just bought. My question is do I have to have 2 video cards in it just to run it. I only have 1 Nvidia 6600 GT right now that I just bought and I dont really want to buy another one just yet if I dont have to. So can I run it on one Video card until I get around to buying a second one?
yea, you will be able to run one video card just fine on a sli rig aslong as it pciex, which I'm sure it is. the motherboard will run one 16x pciex card in single mode or 2 in pciex 8x which totals 16x
if you are like me and play your games with vsync enabled single card mode is the way to go right now anyway.nvidia has disabled vsync in sli mode for any cards right now, so to me I will not upgrade to they fix this. as I can't stand tearing at all. but anyway's sorry to ramble you will be fine.
ok i will just be helping u understand how sli works a little better as techguy said it runs at 8x per card tatalling the 16x bus of pci-express
on the motherboard there is a card that if its in 1 way sli is disabled and u can play with just 1 card and if the card is in the other way then it is running in sli mode meaning that if u have the crad that way and only 1 card in the system wont boot and visa versa
the 2 cards are linked by a bridge connector that comes with ur motherboard so keep this safe incase u ever decide to upgrade.
i would as techbuy sawt of scaved on the subject keep the bios on motherboard updated all the time as as he said they have disabled for now certain things and if running in sli the bios updates are only going to make it work better.
and finnally power in sli the power requirment is much much higher 1 card systems ussually need approx. 350w while sli systems need >500w
vsync locks the fps to your desktop refresh rate thus doing away with tearing and ripping. if your running a first person shooter like doom 3 and you look right and left real quick and see the screen like tear this annoy's me to no end with vsync and a 85 hertz refresh rate it does not do this but your fps are locked at 85. nvidia knows people like high numbers so you could get 100 to 200 fps with ripping galore try it out run a game like half life 2 with it off and on and look at the difference.
Do u have SLI yourself and just dont use it yet? Or is that a reason that your not getting SLI yet? I just ordered this stuff it wont be here till tomorrow. I basically have the same setup you do but only a 6600 GT instead of a 6800gt, but if I am only going to use one card for a little bit then I am going to get a 6800 instead.
no I don't have sli, waiting on ati's crossfire actually for my next build, which is there version of sli. yea in a 6600gt sli mode you will get the same performance as a single 6800gt. and 2 6800gts will out perform a ultra, 1 7800gtx will outperform 2 6800 ultras in sli. but that's 599.00.yes vsnyc is the reason that I'm not getting SLI yet. ati's crossfire is going to have vsync, and the reaseon only a handful of games actually support sli anyway. also mutiple monitor's in sli does not work which is foolish 6 video connectors but only 1 works. there is a workaround to this but it involves adding a older pci video card to your machine just to use 2 monitors.
