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Quick NVidia SLi question...

buchtis

buchtis

buchtis

Soldato
Joined
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I'll more than likley be going SLi in the future but since i've not had an NVidia card in ages i'm not up to date on the compatibility. I know that with AMD cards you can literally X-Fire any card in the same series but from what I remember NVidia is a bit more stringent?

I've got a Gigabyte GTX 580 Overclock Edition (NOT the Super Overclocked one) (795/1590/2004), what cards would be compatible with this card in an SLi configuration please.

Thanks.
 
pretty much the same card, to sli you have to have the same amount of vram on both cards and both cards have to have the same bios. if you have 2 cards that sre the same but one is the overcloed version and the other is stock, then the overclocked one will downclock, hope i helped :)
 
In theory you can SLI with any other GTX 580.

To SLI with a 3GB card you need to use Coolbits (I think) to make it work but that would be a waste anyway as the extra 1.5GB of VRAM would be "lost".

I seem to remember Custom PC doing a review and having some issues with cards with different BIOS versions. I don't know how serious the issue is.

So basically any other 1.5GB GTX 580 and hopefully you won't get any BIOS conflict issues.

FYI two 1.5GB cards in SLI still only gives you effectively 1.5GB of VRAM.
 
Ta arc. :)

So basically any other 1.5GB GTX 580 and hopefully you won't get any BIOS conflict issues.

FYI two 1.5GB cards in SLI still only gives you effectively 1.5GB of VRAM.
Click to expand...

Seems like the best bet is to get the exact same card then. Bugger.

How come you only get 1.5? I would have assumed it would have doubled.
 
buchtis said:
How come you only get 1.5? I would have assumed it would have doubled.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, for any multi-gpu configuration you don't gain any extra performance where the memory is concerned e.g. 1.5 + 1.5 = 1.5 usuable memory, 2gb + 2gb = 2gb. The extra fps generated from having a dual gpu config comes from having double the processor power, texture units etc. :)
 
You do not need the exact same card. Any 1.5Gb GTX580 will work with another 1.5Gb GTX580. They dont have to be the same clockspeeds, same manufacturer or same BIOS.
Take it from me ive had SLI dozenbs of times :)

You cannot SLI a 1.5gb card with a 3gb card according to the nvidia website. This hasnt always been the case as i had a 1gb 9800gt with a 512mb 9800gt at one point, not sure why they changed it tbh.
 
You can mix any 1.5gb cards fine in sli, but cards with different memory is a bit of a curse. Even if you run a factory overclocked card with a standard model. This is fine, but the higher clocked card will default to the speed of the lower clocked card. But this is easily sorted with a mild clock on both cards, ie a clock slightly above the speed of the higher clocked card. Factory overclocks arent that signifigant tbh, just an excuse to get more money from you.
 
I wouldn't worry about bios compatability, it can be a problem sometimes but it is easy enough to dump the bios from one card and load it into the other.
 
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