Differences between motherboards that support SLI

[a giant fox]

Hi everyone

I'm thinking about upgrading MB in a few months but i'm a but confused about the support SLI options. I was looking at the Intel gigabyte boards on OCUK and some more expensive ones seem to support Tri SLI and others also suport it but say:

x3 PCI Express x16 slots (x16, x16, x8), x2 PCI Express x1 slots (x1)

What does this stuff mean

I'm looking at:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-326-GI&tool=5

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-327-GI&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=

Is the extra 100 pounds worth it for that board or should I just get the cheaper MB.

Thanks

 

[a giant fox]

Also I was looking at this board, if i'm reading the full psec correctly does this board support TRI SLI running all 3 slots at 16x

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-049-AK&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1906

PCI-Express Slots x3 PCI Express x16 slots (x16), x2 PCI Express x1 Slots

Thanks

 

[ScottiB]

The spec is confusing because it's wrong. When it says 16x slot it doesnt actually mean it will run at 16x if you use more than one card.

One thing to remember is that P67 only supports one 16x or two cards in 8x/8x, although there are some cheap boards doing 16x/4x (not SLI certified) but there are only three boards supporting more lanes. These acheive this by fitting a second chip to provide more lanes.

Asus Maximus 4 Extreme and Gigabyte UD7 use the aging NF200 chip and MSI Big Bang Marshal uses the new Lucid Hydra chip. They all provide the same number of lanes but the MSI also offers hybrid-GPU support too (i.e. you dont need three identical cards, you dont even need three Nvidia cards, you can mix & match GPU's across brands and models)

oh & the Asrock is just a basic P67 so it doesnt support Tri-SLI as 8x/8x is the most it will do.

Hope this clears things up for you.

 

[a giant fox]

Thanks ScottiB

So if I want a board that supports TRI SLI the MSI Big Bang Marshal is the board to go for then or is their any other boards that support this feature?

 

[ScottiB]

no matter if it's ATI or Nvidia, CrossfireX or SLI, only the three boards I mentioned above have the lanes necessary to run three cards. If you look at the pricing on these you will see that the extra lanes don't come cheap.

The reason that I mentioned the Marshal, other than the obvious, is that it offers more flexibility and more connectivity than the Asus & Gigabyte equivalents.

 

[cmndr_andi]

Hi there,

Please correct me if i'm mistaken - but the MSI BIg Bang Marshall doesn't look like its supports Tri SLI (according to the product page). Dual SLI seems to be fine, though.

As for using graphics cards using hydra - from what I have seen so far the multi-GPU scaling in games has been poor so far and certainly not close to the level of SLI or CrossfireX. This article shows how good 2-way and 3-way SLI and CrossfireX scaling now is with modern cards and games.