Sli and Crossfire

Post » Wed Dec 03, 2008 10:20 pm

I have a question is it possible to do Sli and Crossfire in one pc at ythe same time?for example:a mob with 4 pci slots for graphics and 2 hd5970 (4gb each) plus 2 gtx 480 superclocked.

Is it possible to make the nvidia cards do the physx and 3d vision and the ati cards do the fps increase? or something like that
User avatar
Katie Louise Ingram
 
Posts: 3437
Joined: Sat Nov 18, 2006 2:10 am

Post » Thu Dec 04, 2008 5:14 am

no

have you ever read anything about hardware before?

Flamers
User avatar
Dalley hussain
 
Posts: 3480
Joined: Sun Jun 18, 2006 2:45 am

Post » Thu Dec 04, 2008 8:20 am

anyways
a nice idea .
:-)
User avatar
Chantel Hopkin
 
Posts: 3533
Joined: Sun Dec 03, 2006 9:41 am

Post » Thu Dec 04, 2008 5:02 am

what happens if i install them in the pc?
User avatar
Mark Hepworth
 
Posts: 3490
Joined: Wed Jul 11, 2007 1:51 pm

Post » Thu Dec 04, 2008 1:02 am

[quote]what happens if i install them in the pc?[/quote]

It wont work...

There is actually one motherboard that lets you use crossfire and sli at the same time, the MSI Fusion. Check it out. :)
User avatar
Roddy
 
Posts: 3564
Joined: Fri Jun 15, 2007 11:50 pm

Post » Wed Dec 03, 2008 5:45 pm

it says it runs either not both:

Because the Fuzion board comes with Lucid’s Hydra, MSI doesn’t make a big deal over CrossFire or SLI. However, you can disable Hydra and run in CrossFireX mode, since that’s natively supported by Intel’s P55 platform. You cannot, however, revert to SLI in the event you discover an incompatibility with your dual-GPU solution running under Hydra. Thus, it’s particularly important that everything work the way it should with Hydra turned on.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/msi-fuzion-lucidlogix-hydra,2526-2.html

Flamers
User avatar
Sian Ennis
 
Posts: 3362
Joined: Wed Nov 08, 2006 11:46 am

Post » Thu Dec 04, 2008 5:35 am

It IS possible to have an ATI card do the graphical work, and an NVIDIA card to do the PhysX-y things, actually. But since NVIDIA are evil and disabled it in their drivers, you need to use HAXorzed ones.
Link: http://www.techpowerup.com/105329/Hack_Released_to_Enable_PhysX_on_Windows_7_with_ATI_GPU_Present.html

You need XP or 7. No Vista for some reason. Anyway, get 7 :)
User avatar
Laura Tempel
 
Posts: 3484
Joined: Wed Oct 04, 2006 4:53 pm

Post » Thu Dec 04, 2008 12:34 am

but thats not SLI and Crossfire :P

and check the link i posted, that combination fails, HARD

Flamers
User avatar
Leilene Nessel
 
Posts: 3428
Joined: Sun Apr 15, 2007 2:11 am

Post » Thu Dec 04, 2008 1:08 am

[quote]it says it runs either not both:

Because the Fuzion board comes with Lucid’s Hydra, MSI doesn’t make a big deal over CrossFire or SLI. However, you can disable Hydra and run in CrossFireX mode, since that’s natively supported by Intel’s P55 platform. You cannot, however, revert to SLI in the event you discover an incompatibility with your dual-GPU solution running under Hydra. Thus, it’s particularly important that everything work the way it should with Hydra turned on.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/msi-fuzion-lucidlogix-hydra,2526-2.html

Flamers[/quote]
I had a Hydra pdf that I was looking through a few months ago, and they had gotten one ATI and one Nvidia card to work together, although it only supported less than 25% of the games on their list.

I read somewhere else that the had gotten 2 ATI cards to work, and one Nvidia doing the PhysX, although now Nvidia has allowed the cpu to run PhysX.

ASUS Crosshair 5 (I think, it's been awhile since I've looked at a new mobo) had Hydra built in t as well, If your thinking about the AMD route
User avatar
Sun of Sammy
 
Posts: 3442
Joined: Mon Oct 22, 2007 3:38 pm

Post » Thu Dec 04, 2008 4:39 am

The scaling would be **** though.
User avatar
Jeneene Hunte
 
Posts: 3478
Joined: Mon Sep 11, 2006 3:18 pm

Post » Thu Dec 04, 2008 12:12 am

2 NVIDIA GTX 480!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
User avatar
alyssa ALYSSA
 
Posts: 3382
Joined: Mon Sep 25, 2006 8:36 pm

Post » Thu Dec 04, 2008 1:50 am

and what if i install 2 hd5970 in crossfire and 1 gtx 480 for physx?
Can i play game with good frames and physx?
and can i watch videos in 3d if i have nvidia 3d vision?
User avatar
lisa nuttall
 
Posts: 3277
Joined: Tue Jun 20, 2006 1:33 pm

Post » Wed Dec 03, 2008 10:37 pm

I don't think that the drivers that allows ATI + Nvidia for physX works with the Fermi Cards, and about the 3D vision you can't
User avatar
Motionsharp
 
Posts: 3437
Joined: Sun Aug 06, 2006 1:33 am

Post » Thu Dec 04, 2008 4:37 am

you can do nvidia+ati
using lucid chips
but the drivers blow
who wants 2 5970s anyway
3 480s same performance
User avatar
Miguel
 
Posts: 3364
Joined: Sat Jul 14, 2007 9:32 am

Post » Thu Dec 04, 2008 8:53 am

You can. More importantly: Would you want to? No.

You have to remember that all a GPU really does is render little squares of color called pixels on your screen. Whatever math it has to do with shader calculations, texture resizing or whatever, the END PRODUCT (i.e. the bit that comes out at the end or the bit that really matters) is how fast it can draw and output these little squares of color. That's why you have to use two of the same cards when you crossfire or SLI - two different cards at different clocks would cause the screen to be out of sync, and your computer would really start to freak out as a result.

Crossfire/SLI basically makes it so that one card renders half of the screen, and another card renders the other half - it doesn't magically double computing power or memory, it simply halves the workload of one card (yes, there is a difference).

[quote]and what if i install 2 hd5970 in crossfire and 1 gtx 480 for physx?
Can i play game with good frames and physx?
and can i watch videos in 3d if i have nvidia 3d vision?[/quote]

You could do this (have the crossfired 5970s render your game and use the 480 for physx), although using a gtx 480 JUST for physx is a complete waste.

Remember PHYSX IS NOT the same as PHYSICS. You have to be playing a game with physx support (imho the only ones worth playing right now that I can think of are UT3 and Mirror's Edge). If you wanted to watch videos in 3d or play games in 3d, you would have to connect your 3d-capable display to the gtx 480 and set that graphics card as your primary device. But the downside would be that you would only be getting the performance of 1 gtx480 (if that can be called a downside at all) and your 5970s would be sitting in your case eating a lot of power and putting out a ton of heat.

So basically, if you have enough money to blow on 2 5970s and 2 gtx 480s, just buy 2 480s, put them in SLI and spend the rest of your money on some good ram, a SCREAMING processor (because yes, unless you have a very fast processor, you will begin to bottleneck those cards), a fast hard drive, and most importantly your electric bill (because electricity makes the world co round :D).

Just my 2 cents.
User avatar
Michelle Smith
 
Posts: 3417
Joined: Wed Nov 15, 2006 2:03 am

Post » Thu Dec 04, 2008 8:50 am

im not gonna buy that hardware...even i know that that is crazy!!!AHAHA
whos tha rich jerk thats goin to buy a rig like that(probably every rich kid who wants a killer pc...) !!!XD AHAHA
i only asked for curiosity cause i want to make living in the informatic area.hehe

By the way the pc that i wanted to buy was a digitalstorm with i7 930,2gtx 480 (everything watercooled except chipset) rampage III Extreme,6gb 2000mhz,1000w power supply .for me thats a killer chipset ,but im thinking to wait till the prices get lower when the ati 6xxx and gtx5xx com out
User avatar
Josephine Gowing
 
Posts: 3545
Joined: Fri Jun 30, 2006 12:41 pm

Post » Thu Dec 04, 2008 10:10 am

[quote][quote]and what if i install 2 hd5970 in crossfire and 1 gtx 480 for physx?

Can i play game with good frames and physx?

and can i watch videos in 3d if i have nvidia 3d vision?[/quote]

You can. More importantly: Would you want to? No.

You have to remember that all a GPU really does is render little squares of color called pixels on your screen. Whatever math it has to do with shader calculations, texture resizing or whatever, the END PRODUCT (i.e. the bit that comes out at the end or the bit that really matters) is how fast it can draw and output these little squares of color. That's why you have to use two of the same cards when you crossfire or SLI - two different cards at different clocks would cause the screen to be out of sync, and your computer would really start to freak out as a result.

Crossfire/SLI basically makes it so that one card renders half of the screen, and another card renders the other half - it doesn't magically double computing power or memory, it simply halves the workload of one card (yes, there is a difference).

You could do this (have the crossfired 5970s render your game and use the 480 for physx), although using a gtx 480 JUST for physx is a complete waste.

Remember PHYSX IS NOT the same as PHYSICS. You have to be playing a game with physx support (imho the only ones worth playing right now that I can think of are UT3 and Mirror's Edge). If you wanted to watch videos in 3d or play games in 3d, you would have to connect your 3d-capable display to the gtx 480 and set that graphics card as your primary device. But the downside would be that you would only be getting the performance of 1 gtx480 (if that can be called a downside at all) and your 5970s would be sitting in your case eating a lot of power and putting out a ton of heat.

So basically, if you have enough money to blow on 2 5970s and 2 gtx 480s, just buy 2 480s, put them in SLI and spend the rest of your money on some good ram, a SCREAMING processor (because yes, unless you have a very fast processor, you will begin to bottleneck those cards), a fast hard drive, and most importantly your electric bill (because electricity makes the world co round :D).

Just my 2 cents.[/quote]

Actually with regards to most crossfire systems each gpu will render one frame at a time and they will be sent out. IF it were done as you say I would foresee huge issues with synchronization between the two halves of the screen
User avatar
clelia vega
 
Posts: 3433
Joined: Wed Mar 21, 2007 6:04 pm

Post » Thu Dec 04, 2008 10:18 am

^ Ah, that probably makes more sense. I always thought that each card rendered every other line (like interlaced video), but now that I think about it, that seems like a pretty dumb thing to do.
User avatar
Ryan Lutz
 
Posts: 3465
Joined: Sun Sep 09, 2007 12:39 pm

Post » Wed Dec 03, 2008 10:18 pm

This should help clear up any confusion :)

http://news.filefront.com/how-to-choose-between-nvidia-sli-and-ati-crossfire

(part 4)
User avatar
Angela
 
Posts: 3492
Joined: Mon Mar 05, 2007 8:33 am

Post » Thu Dec 04, 2008 4:53 am

Possible but dangerous... don't continue with it unless your really brave.
User avatar
Add Me
 
Posts: 3486
Joined: Thu Jul 05, 2007 8:21 am


Return to Crysis